“Reading Merely”

Ainsworth's Jack Sheppard: A Romance, was serialized in Bentley's Miscellany from January 1839 to February 1840.Footnote ⁴ The novel weaves two plotlines: the first, the path of the historical Jack Sheppard, and the second, that of the entirely fictional Thames Darrell, Sheppard's fellow apprentice who maintains virtue through many trials and is ultimately rewarded with a French peerage and marriage to the woman whom Sheppard loves.Footnote ⁵ These interwoven storylines, in which virtue is finally rewarded and vice, despite how attractively it may be rendered, is punished, was common fare for the middle-class audience of Bentley's Miscellany. A middle-class publication both in content and in price, Bentley's Miscellany was, at 2s.6d., too costly for most lower-class readers. Jack Sheppard remained expensive when issued in fifteen monthly parts at a shilling each, and even more so when sold in three volumes at £1.5s.

When first published in formats aimed at a primarily middle-class audience, Jack Sheppard received either modest critical acclaim or was glossed over as a pleasant and innocuous romance similar to Ainsworth's previously successful Rookwood (1834), in which he fictionalized the life of another popular eighteenth-century criminal, Dick Turpin.Footnote ⁶ Within the first nine months of publication, Jack Sheppard was described as “display[ing] much graphic truth and beautiful sentiment” (“The Public Journals”) and as having “infused new promise into Bentley's Miscellany” (“Bentley's”).Footnote ⁷ William Thackeray writes in an article for Fraser's Magazine, “we have the strongest curiosity and admiration for Mr. Ainsworth's new work, Jack Sheppard,” and elaborates on his and his readers’ affinity for other literary rogues: “Mr. Long Ned, Mr. Paul Clifford, Mr. William Sykes, Mr. Fagin . . . and Mr. Richard Turpin . . . are gentlemen whom we must all admire. We could ‘hug the rogues and love them,’ and do – in private. In public it is, however, quite wrong to avow such likings, and to be seen in such company” (408). Laman Blanchard echoes Thackeray in his 1842 memoir, observing that, “Critics . . . were in raptures with the old established brigand . . . could hug Robin Hood as fondly as ever, and dwell with unhurt morals on the little peccadilloes of Rob Roy . . . [and] had no objection to ride behind Turpin to York any day” (xii). Thackeray's “curiosity and admiration” was typical of the initial public reaction to Jack Sheppard, but the novel sparked the interest of the lower classes, leading critics to believe “that housebreakers are disreputable characters” (Blanchard xii).

Thackeray's and Blanchard's comments delineate the class division in (un)authorized textual pleasure, and the distrust with which middle-class critics viewed lower-class narrative consumption. Based on their comments, middle-class readers (Thackeray's “we”) may indulge in the illicit pleasures of morally questionable reading with less fear of contamination precisely because their educational training enables them to separate fiction from reality, and their bourgeois morality and class position predispose them to curb any desires to emulate the criminal heroes. This kind of (middle-class) reading is a sort of textual slumming, in which participants may dabble in questionable narrative environments and then leave them behind, having enjoyed the titillation but being none the worse for it. This was not thought to be the procedure of lower-class readers, however. As Blanchard points out, “the prison-breaker's popularity became all at once an offence . . . because low people began to run after him at the theatres” (xii). The problem, as we shall see, was that some lower-class readers began “playing” Jack Sheppard in real life, which seemed to confirm middle-class critics’ suspicions that these readers were unable to distinguish between fiction and reality.

Soon after Bentley's Miscellany began serializing Jack Sheppard, playwrights, plagiarizers, and literary hacks recognized that significant profit could be made by reproducing the Sheppard story in forms affordable to the lower classes such as ballads, penny serializations, barely altered plagiarisms, and cheap theatrical adaptations performed at “gaff” theaters.Footnote ⁸ The theatrical portrayals of the Sheppard story caused the most stir because the theatricalizations were perceived as glamorizing Sheppard, rendering his actions appealing to susceptible lower-class audiences. John Springhall, in his study of the “moral panic” generated by the gaffs, explains that the popularity of plays featuring characters like Jack Sheppard “with young audiences was seen as symptomatic of rising juvenile crime and as an index of the danger to society in general from the new urban working classes” (166). The very environment of the gaffs, not to mention the content of the plays performed, was perceived as being likely to turn young patrons criminal.Footnote ⁹ In one case a shoemaker's son was accused of robbery and his father testified of his conviction that a local gaff (featuring “a new version of the adventures of Jack Sheppard”) had been responsible for his son's corruption; for it had been there that his son had met a “notorious thief” who had urged him to steal (“Thames Police”). Charles Mackay, commenting on the subject matter at these theaters, wrote:

Mackay's quote hits on the failure of lower-class readers (or audience members) to distance themselves sufficiently from the action in the narrative; the text copies elements from real life, but instead of the mimesis stopping when the curtain falls, the reader then copies the text, and perhaps even encourages others to do so. Whereas middle-class readers perhaps indulged in fantasies about living the exciting life of crime and escape represented in Ainsworth's Jack Sheppard, all the while recognizing that this lifestyle was only meant to be experienced within the bounds of the text, lower-class readers, it was feared, would simply absorb what they read and act on their desires to live like Sheppard. Unlike Thackeray, who knew that he was supposed to keep his appreciation of Sheppard “private,” and also knew how to do so, lower-class readers might take their enjoyment of the text public, and there was plenty of evidence seeming to confirm that they did.

Criticism of Ainsworth's story did not begin in earnest until it was reproduced in forms more affordable to lower-class audiences. Most criticism asserted that the exposure of the lower classes to the Sheppard story would result in the corruption of those audience members (especially young boys) who would, it was thought, strive to emulate and perhaps even expand upon Sheppard's criminal exploits. As one example among many, Chamber's Edinburgh Journal wrote, “it is scarcely possible for the life of Jack Sheppard to be read all at once by thousands, and acted night after night at once in five London theatres, without causing the idea of burglary to be dwelt upon for the time with some degree of fervor” (“Moral Epidemics” 90). Implicit in the Chamber's comments is the idea of contagion or contamination. Sheppard's criminality was figured as a disease that could be carried and transmitted by gaffs or other forms of lower-class cultural texts to unsuspecting, but very susceptible, audience members or readers who would then spread the contagion to others. Articles written about crimes thought to be inspired by these plays suggest the “communicability” of this criminality in their titles: “A Young Jack Sheppard,” “Again Jack Sheppard,” “Another Jack Sheppard,” and “Re-Performance of Jack Sheppard.” They imply that one could “catch a case” of “Jack Sheppard,” the symptoms of which would manifest in new acts of juvenile delinquency.

Young men were thought to be especially prone to the Sheppard infection, since the guilty parties in the crimes reported often shared characteristics with him such as being an apprentice, having a proclivity for spending time in low haunts, behaving particularly unrepentantly when charged with a crime, or simply being young and male. Most significantly, though, they were in danger of contamination because they lacked the ability to separate fiction from reality. The crime reported in the Morning Chronicle article titled, “Re-Performance of Jack Sheppard” is a particularly pointed instance of the blurring of fact and fiction. The article tells of two youths charged with stealing a £5 snuff box from Paul Bedford, the actor famous for his portrayal of Sheppard's criminal sidekick Blueskin in J. B. Buckstone's adaptation of Jack Sheppard for the Adelphi theater. Bedford in this case also received a reprimand, being told:

In this instance, Bedford is guilty of playing a role in the spread of the Sheppard contagion, and the remarks of the defense highlight that the effect of the play on the “poor wretches” in the gallery was “anticipated” to be an inducement to commit crimes. Critics frequently assumed that lower-class spectators lacked the interpretative ability to separate what they saw played on the stage from real life. They were thought to be merely passive spectators, liable to absorb and “re-perform” the theatricalized crimes.

Arguments concerning the deleterious effects of the plays on audience members were not without some foundation, since many young culprits did claim to have found inspiration for their crimes by either watching Sheppard on stage at the penny gaffs, or hearing and reading about his legend in other street literature. In one instance, an inspector found on the person of a twenty-two-year old apprehended for loitering with felonious intent some verses replicating the style of the popular song from the Jack Sheppard plays, “Nix my Dolly, Pals, Fake Away!” These verses included altered lines such as:

Apparently Baker had been thwarted in love and, like the character of Sheppard in the novel, offered this as an excuse for trading virtue for a life of crime (“Another Jack Sheppard”).Footnote ¹¹ One twenty-year-old watch-maker's apprentice who had stolen “seventeen watches altogether” testified that “Jack Sheppard had a very bad effect on my mind” (“Preston House”). Henry Mayhew refers to having seen “poor little wretches . . . grin with delight at receiving the degrading titles of ‘Blueskin,’ ‘Dick Turpin,’ and ‘Jack Sheppard’” (3: 370). The report of a chaplain at a house of correction expressed consternation that in the case of at least three boys who came from “a respectable condition of life, far removed from want, residing with their parents or masters,” the “sole motive for their committing the numerous robberies traced to them, appear[ed] to have been to emulate the exploits of Jack Sheppard” (“Felon Literature” 373). Excerpts from the boys’ own testimonies confirm this claim.

The most famous criminal case associated with the Sheppard craze was the conviction and execution of François Benjamin Courvoisier, a valet who murdered his master Lord William Russell on 5 May 1840. In his confession, Courvoisier declared that he wished “to let it be known to the world, that the idea of committing the crime was first suggested to him by reading and seeing the performance of Jack Sheppard. The book containing the history of Jack Sheppard had been lent to him by one of the servants of the Duke of Bedford, and he lamented that he had ever seen it” (“Confessions”). As may be expected, this claim by Courvoisier added significant fuel to the critical fire engulfing Jack Sheppard and was accepted as the primary motivation for the crime.Footnote ¹²

After the Morning Chronicle printed Courvoisier's confession, Ainsworth wrote the paper a letter stating that he had personally followed up on the veracity of Courvoisier's claim regarding Jack Sheppard and had found it “utterly without foundation” since the “wretched man declared he had never read the work in question, nor made any such statement” (“Courvoisier”).Footnote ¹³ Ainsworth stated that even though Courvoisier had read “A collection of lives of noted malefactors [probably the Newgate Calendar] . . . the account of [Jack Sheppard], in this series, had not particularly attracted his attention” (“Courvoisier”). The man to whom Courvoisier confessed, however, responded to Ainsworth in a letter to the Times reconfirming that Courvoisier had told him Jack Sheppard was the inspiration for his crime. Significantly, the editors of the Morning Chronicle summed up their opinion on this correspondence with the assertion that, “If the statement of Mr. Ainsworth had remained uncontradicted, it would not have altered our opinion of the character and tendencies of Jack Sheppard” (“Courvoisier”). It was the opinion of these editors that Courvoisier was a symptom of the wider contamination cause by the circulation of Jack Sheppard.

Isolated incidents of crime with any hint of association with the Sheppard narrative continued amassing blame on Ainsworth's novel in the minds of critics. A writer for the Monthly Magazine chalked up the Courvoisier crime, a recent assassination attempt on Queen Victoria's life, and another murder in which the “murderer's proceeding[s] . . . were copied from Mr. Ainsworth's romance,” to the “Jack Sheppardism of the age” (“A Few Brief Remarks” 105). While this writer may not have meant to explicitly suggest that Jack Sheppard was responsible for all of these crimes (such as the assassination attempt), it was the most prominent example of an ongoing cultural phenomenon held responsible for spreading criminality through the susceptible masses. Jack Sheppard was, after all, only one of a series of popular “Newgate Novels” that displeased critics, though its infamy succeeded in further sullying the reputation of the genre and implicating Sheppard's story in the genesis of criminal acts both minor and outrageous.

There did appear, then, to be some substance to the accusations against Ainsworth's novel and its apparently nefarious influence on impressionable youths.Footnote ¹⁴ While the anxieties of critics most often focused on the effects of the Sheppard story on male juveniles, many feared the wider corruption of adult lower-class readers. Many of these readers, regardless of age, had in common one important thing: a burgeoning literacy. Teaching the lower classes how to read was viewed by some as an important aspect of improving their lives and, by extension, society, but if new readers only learned how to read without a supplemental education regarding what to read, and what not to read, literacy became only another avenue to corruption (”Remarks on the Relation” 207). Popular texts about figures such as Jack Sheppard were read eagerly and frequently, which only increased middle-class anxieties about the implications of mass literacy.

In this period a perception existed that the lower classes were predisposed to corruption because they had received little to no moral education. This predisposition was viewed as especially problematic due to the popular reading material that was made affordable to the lower classes. The lower-class press was viewed with skepticism and was the subject of many debates between its supporters and detractors over whether it really afforded its readers an opportunity to educate and refine themselves. This point became especially contentious when it was discovered that people most often shunned educational or moralistic literature in favor of sensational and demoralizing fiction. Much of the evidence presented by Edward Jacobs in his study of the tensions surrounding early-nineteenth-century gaffs and street literature suggests that “lower-class people would rather give a penny for the bloods and criminal biographies that articulated their own culture than read even free literature that came complete with ‘moral perception’” (323). Some commentators questioned the prudence of educating people in literacy without also ensuring that they had been equipped with the moral compass to guide them in choosing proper reading material.

Writers and publishers of objectionable material denied their culpability in corrupting readers, arguing that “they merely [fell] in with a disposition, which they [found] existing among their readers . . . the stock was to be found in the original depravity and weakness of our nature” (“Progress” 231). The “original depravity and weakness” that made one susceptible to immoral influence was actually viewed as being innate in every human being, and caused by “the inherent corruption of our nature; and of the fatal truth, that the human mind, when left to itself, will take to wickedness” (Alison 27). People in the lower classes, then, were not naturally more corrupt than people in the higher classes. The logic followed that because the lower classes lived in environments and participated in reading and other activities that exposed them frequently to immorality, and since they had not received sufficient instruction in resisting worldly temptations, they were particularly vulnerable to these influences. As Henry Mayhew characterized it, “We teach a lad reading, writing, and arithmetic, and believe that in doing so we are developing the moral functions of his nature; whereas it is often this ability to read merely – that is to say, to read without the least moral perception – which becomes the instrument of the youth's moral depravity” (3: 370). “Reading merely” suggests a primitive sort of reading in which the subject matter is simply absorbed by the reader without the aid of any moral filter to separate those aspects of texts to be simply enjoyed (as Thackeray did, in private), and those worthy of emulation in one's life.

An article from the Examiner emphasizes Mayhew's point as it relates to reading (i.e., viewing) productions of Jack Sheppard in the established theaters: “In every one of these places the worst passages of [the] book . . . are served up in the most attractive form to all the candidates for the hulks or rope – and especially the youthful ones – that infest this vast city. All the original insignificance of the thing is lost” (“Literary Examiner”). In a seeming paradox, “reading merely” ensures that the reader will actually read too much into the story and ascribe significance to an otherwise pleasant but forgettable text. Jack Sheppard becomes dangerous when it is taken too seriously. In an attack on “the ‘Jack Sheppard’ of Mr. Ainsworth,” Mayhew explains the process by which Sheppard is made to seem more important than he is:

Jack Sheppard is presented as a hero but, unlike other heroes, isn't supposed to be imitated. The problem here, as Mayhew sees it, is a failure of judgment rooted in knowing the basic mechanics of reading while remaining ignorant of what to read and how to read it properly. This ignorance enables “a paltry thief” to become a great romantic hero in the eyes of readers who cannot recognize that which is real and that which is, and should remain, fiction.

Those fortunate enough to receive a middle- or upper-class education were thought to be better protected from succumbing to the innate sinfulness of human nature. A writer for Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine stated the case succinctly:

Without the advantages of educational “safeguards,” the lower classes, many of whom were subjected to daily scenes of corruption, would succumb early to sin and be led by unsavory stories into crime and debauchery. An archbishop is also quoted in the Blackwood's article above, pointing out that, “Our corrupt hearts, when they are once set in motion, are like the raging sea, to which we can set no bounds. . . . As there is a connexion of one virtue with another, so vices are linked together, and one sin draws many after it” (“Progress” 229). Walking a virtuous path seemed almost impossible if one's education (or lack of education) did nothing to remedy the immoral effects of one's environment.

In this context, it is easier to understand why Jack Sheppard was accused of corrupting the lower classes, especially when there seemed to be direct evidence of its criminal influence. By drawing direct connections between the book, its lower-class reproductions, and the corruption of its audience, John Forster's critique of Jack Sheppard in the Examiner clearly reflects the contemporary view of how immorality was spread:

Here the Sheppard threat is emphasized in language like “poisonous” and “drugged,” as if Jack Sheppard is the source of some miasma capable of seeping into the nooks and crannies of culture, tainting all who come into contact with it or, as in the case of the gaff theaters, tainting even those found in its vicinity. Forster emphasizes that Jack Sheppard threatens “public” morality and decency through the corruption of individual readers.

Embedded in the anxiety surrounding Jack Sheppard, then, was a deeper concern over the moral consequences of encouraging literacy among the poor. Edward Jacobs argues that because education had been anticipated as a way of “controlling ‘the lower orders,’” middle-class reformers were especially distraught by the “misuse” of this education by lower-class readers for consuming texts that “articulated their own culture” (323). Jacobs suggests that the “historical coincidence in England between industrialism and ‘popular education’ . . . motivated many English poor people to perceive popular education and industrialism as related disciplines, and thus motivated them to develop a literacy of their own, outside of hegemonic, disciplinary institutions” (323).Footnote ¹⁶ This motivation is evident in the variety and volume of Jack Sheppard adaptations and plagiarisms. As the wellspring of these imitations and adaptations, Jack Sheppard was demonized as one of, if not the worst of, the “bad” books.

Legal Changes

Jack Sheppard's serialization and the subsequent explosion of lower-class versions of Sheppard's story would have perhaps been troubling at any historical moment, but it was especially so in 1839 due to its coincidence with a significant juncture in English penal history. In 1837, only two years before Jack Sheppard began appearing in Bentley's Miscellany, capital punishment had been repealed for all but the most serious crimes. Then in 1839, the same year the novel began causing such a sensation, more extensive powers were granted to the new police force and a wider range of lower-class cultural practices were criminalized. Jack Sheppard resonated most strongly with the early-nineteenth-century lower classes just when legislative shifts induced a crisis of legitimacy for the criminal law, as had been the case in the eighteenth century when the Sheppard phenomenon followed on the heels of the passage of the severe Black Act. I argue that this crisis of legitimacy in the nineteenth century informed the themes highlighted in the lower-class Jack Sheppard texts I analyze below, and the responses to the Sheppard phenomenon from readers and critics. Discussing this particular legal context is not intended to exclude other contemporary influences shaping the texts or their receptions, but I do want to suggest that the legislative shift and the ensuing crisis of legitimacy in the criminal law are important for understanding the significance of Jack Sheppard in the early nineteenth century.

The partial repeal of capital punishment came after decades of debate and many small victories for reformers. Advocates for the retention of hanging as the primary punishment for most crimes argued that the best means of social control was terror. Proponents of capital punishment like William Paley, the eighteenth-century utilitarian philosopher, were convinced of the efficacy of fear in deterring crime, regardless of any inconsistencies in actually dispensing punishment (Block and Hostletter 25–26). At this time, however, there were several ways, such as transportation to the Australian colonies, by which the execution of a capital sentence could be avoided or circumvented. Juries unwilling to sentence a person to death for a property crime frequently undervalued stolen or damaged property to avoid a felony conviction. In the Monthly Magazine, an article titled “Capital Punishments” records that prosecutors and juries “shuddered at the thought of being instrumental in hurrying a human being into eternity for some comparatively trifling offence” (543). It was never quite clear who would and would not hang after receiving the death penalty.

Those against capital punishment argued that inconsistency in punishment, regardless of the reason, undermined the punishment's effectiveness. Sir Samuel Romilly, one of the key figures in the movement to repeal capital punishment, was especially adamant that the presence of caprice in punishment was one of the greatest failures of the system. Romilly's solution to this was abolishing capital punishment altogether and exploring more humane alternatives that could be implemented consistently.Footnote ¹⁷ This solution echoed the opinions established by Cesare Beccaria, author of On Crimes and Punishments (1764), who argued that small, consistent punishments were more effective than inconsistent severe punishments (Block and Hostletter 23–24).Footnote ¹⁸

Before the partial repeal of capital punishment in 1837, the instability of the penal code was a source of anxiety for both proponents and detractors of the death penalty. Most crucial was the concern that inconsistent punishment suggested that the law was arbitrary, and therefore encouraged the perpetration of crimes already found by the lower classes to be illegitimate based on communal perceptions of justice (Hay, “Crime and Justice” 72). Prior to 1837 the public would witness executions frequently throughout the year, and it was often the case that more than one criminal would be executed at a time. Executions could draw crowds as large as 100,000 and were usually day-long events. With the change in the criminal law, far fewer people were being sentenced to death, and therefore the number of executions decreased dramatically. This sudden decrease in executions was perhaps the most visible contributor to the crisis of legitimacy for the criminal law. According to V. A. C. Gatrell, in the 1820s London itself averaged twenty-three hangings a year, but in 1838, the year after the abolition of almost all capital punishments, only six people were executed in the entire country (9).Footnote ¹⁹ Since this change in the criminal law, says Gatrell, “[t]here has been no greater nor more sudden revolution in English penal history” (10).

The decrease in the number of executions resulting from the partial repeal of capital punishment was the most obvious demonstration of inconsistency in the criminal law because it essentially meant that a crime punishable by death one day could be punished much less severely the next. Because some of the laws for which people were executed were already viewed by the lower classes as unjust, a change in the consistency with which these laws were punished (even if it meant that fewer lives were lost and that people felt less threatened by death) suggested that punishments that had already been meted out had been unnecessary – there was no essential right or wrong to them beyond what motivated lawmakers to impose them. In many ways, this particularly acute exposure of the inessentiality of the law only reinforced what many in the lower classes had always recognized. Hay suggests that in the eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries “a wide range of . . . crime enjoyed broad community sanction. . . . [P]oachers, smugglers, pillagers of wrecked ships, and makers of counterfeit coin all worked collectively within communal definitions that legitimized their crimes” (“Crime and Justice” 61). The de facto legitimization of certain crimes by lower-class communities implies a simultaneous communal delegitimization of the laws defining and punishing these crimes: “the disjunction between [the lower classes’] experience and the interpretations [of crime by] the judiciary and police is the root of the legitimacy that the law has, or does not have” (Hay, “Crime and Justice” 67). That middle-class commentators were anxious about the potential delegitimization of the criminal law in the eyes of the lower classes is evident in the consistency of opinions in the press advocating for the repeal of the capital code.

Many contemporary articles warned of the potential consequences of the lower classes believing the criminal laws to be artificially and unjustly imposed. In an 1836 article for the Gentleman's Magazine the writer admitted, “we can conceive nothing so tending to demoralize and brutalize the character of the lower orders, than laws which they consider to be cruel, unjust, and capricious, or irregular in their action” (“Punishment of Death” 293). In this passage, the writer highlights the importance of the “lower orders” agreeing that the criminal laws are just, and implies that laws interpreted as illegitimate (because unjust or inconsistent) tend to encourage the rejection of the laws and the further commission of crimes. This sentiment is echoed in two different articles in the Examiner, written three years apart. In the first article, written in 1835 on the inconsistency of punishment and the arbitrary extension of mercy in a case of assault, the writer(s) said, “We are well known to be no advocates of the punishment of death; all that we contend is, that if it was too severe a sentence in the instance in question, it should be abrogated in all offences of the sort . . . a nominal capital punishment we regard as a great mischief” (“Caprices”). In 1838, about a year after the partial repeal of the death penalty, the Examiner reiterated its previous concern that having no rhyme or reason in the punishment of crime sends the wrong message to would-be criminals:

The Monthly Magazine expressed the opinion that “Uniformity of origin [in the law] . . . is not of vital consequence as connected with the law, where its absence is far less injurious than the presence of ambiguity in expression. Only from a clearly defined and obvious application of the law can the subject and his property derive that certain freedom and protection which the law professes to provide, and should in all cases afford” (“Guarantees” 405). In all of these excerpts is a common theme: inconsistently applied laws result in an uncertainty of punishment, which consequently encourages defiance of the law. As Hay suggests, if the lower-class community deemed certain laws illegitimate, then they would likely defy them or express their contempt for the law in some other form of rebellion. Critics feared that capricious punishment could only exacerbate the rejection of certain laws by the lower classes because there was no effective deterrent. In the case of the capital code, many reformers saw punishment by death as brutalizing and uncivilized and wanted to abolish it on that basis alone, but along with this progressive reason for repeal, as has been shown, was the anxiety that an unstable law would only make crime worse.

The final elimination of capital punishment was the ultimate objective for most reformers, though some, like Sir Robert Peel, hesitated to push too strongly for complete abolition for fear that the general public would not accept such extreme changes, and that the more general cause would suffer setbacks (Block and Hostletter 48–49). In one discussion on the abolition of capital punishment except in the case of murder, members of the House of Commons voiced particular concerns regarding the state of the “public mind” and debated whether or not the public would benefit from, or even sanction, the partial repeal of capital punishment.Footnote ²⁰ However, the “public mind,” at least as it is represented in many articles in the years leading up to 1837, was generally in favor of eliminating the death penalty. In the same article from the Gentleman's Magazine mentioned above, the author summarizes a commonly shared opinion: “The great argument which we should bring to support the justice of this change in our [criminal] code is, that the very act of harmonizing and softening the cruel severity of the law, will itself tend to diminish the enormity of crime, by humanizing and softening the character of the delinquent. Cruel laws make cruel subjects” (“Punishment of Death” 293). The reduction of capital felonies in 1837 to only the most serious crimes such as murder, rape, and treason overturned a system of law and punishment that had been in place for centuries. Though some reformers were still keen to abolish capital punishment entirely, the 1837 reform was the last major change in criminal law until 1868, when executions were moved inside the walls of prisons.

One must appreciate the good intentions of the reformers; they not only wanted to institute a more effective criminal justice system but were also concerned with how the frequent spectacle of hanging, especially for insignificant property crimes, brutalized and demoralized the public.Footnote ²¹ These reformers risked the potential consequences that came with portraying the law as artificially constructed and inconsistent in order to correct an unjust and unequal dispensation of justice. This necessary move by reformers was something of a double-edged sword, however, since it simultaneously advanced their goal of repealing capital punishment and highlighted the inessentiality of the law which, some feared, might encourage the rejection of other legal imperatives. The texts analyzed later in this essay share common themes that emphasize injustice and inconsistencies in the criminal law; they suggest that one important way representations of Jack Sheppard resonated with readers was in his mockery and dismissal of legal authority. In order to correct the greatest failings of the capital code and create some consistency in punishment that would hopefully encourage rather than discourage adherence to the law, an alternative to capital punishment was required. This alternative lay in granting extended powers to the Metropolitan Police and exerting more precise and consistent control over the lives of the lower classes.

Britain had long resisted the establishment of a unified police force and had relied almost completely on the threat of death for the prevention of crime. As Douglas Hay characterizes it, “the gentry would not tolerate even the idea of [a police force]. They remembered the pretensions of the Stuarts and the days of the Commonwealth, and they saw close at hand how the French monarchy controlled its subjects with spies and informers” (Hay, “Property” 18). E. P. Thompson, in The Making of the English Working Class, confirms this: “any centralised force with larger powers [than guards and watchmen] was seen as: ‘a system of tyranny; an organized army of spies and informers, for the destruction of all public liberty, and the disturbance of all private happiness’” (81). Despite these long-standing aversions to the police, the creation and strengthening of a force that could improve the consistency of law enforcement became necessary as more and more capital statutes were eliminated and theories of punishment began shifting from deterrence to discipline and reform. As a partial repeal of capital punishment became more likely, commentators were very concerned, as has been shown, that there be uniformity in the prosecution and punishment of crime.

For a more lenient system of punishment to be effective in deterring crime there must be little hope of escaping the law. State power therefore, instead of being focused into a single event or display (such as a hanging), was dispersed into a mobile and visible police force. As Michel Foucault explains in Discipline and Punish, for the law to be effective, “Above all no crime committed must escape the gaze of those whose task it is to dispense justice. . . . Hence the idea that the machinery of justice must be duplicated by an organ of surveillance that would work side by side with it, and which would make it possible either to prevent crimes, or, if committed, to arrest their authors” (96). A writer for Fraser's Magazine for Town and Country expresses this same idea in an assessment of the purpose of the police: their “great ambition ought to be to prevent crimes, and, by vigilance, produce a conviction that criminality cannot exist without danger of detection” (“Principles of Police” 171). The police were a necessary evil if the gallows were to be abandoned.Footnote ²²

In 1829 Robert Peel led the way in establishing the Metropolitan Police. Peel, concerned with statistics indicating an increase in crime, responded to anxieties about the new police force presaging a loss of liberty saying, “I want to teach people that liberty does not consist in having your house robbed by organized gangs of thieves, and in leaving the principal streets of London in the nightly possession of drunken women and vagabonds” (qtd. in Tobias 77).Footnote ²³ Before the advent of the Metropolitan Police, there was no centralized authority organizing the movements and strategies of a united force, and the result was an ineffective response to crime. The new force eliminated or absorbed the disparate bodies that had formerly attempted to protect citizens (Tobias 74–76). On 29 September 1829, the “place [of the parish watchmen] was taken by the constables of the Metropolitan Police, clad in blue uniform, walking round a short beat at a regulation slow pace, keeping a quiet eye on all that went on” (Tobias 85). This shift was quite visible and certainly emphasized the new importance of surveillance.

The New Police were created in 1829, and in 1839 their powers and jurisdiction were expanded. A survey of the list of new regulations outlined in “A Bill for further improving the Police in and near the Metropolis” (1839) demonstrates that many of the new laws pertained specifically to regulating and often criminalizing the livelihoods and amusements of the lower classes. In article 42, no specific crimes are mentioned, but the emphasis on surveillance for the prevention of crime is explicit:

A person could be taken into custody for showing or selling animals on the streets (including caravans intended for public amusement) “roll[ing] or carry[ing] any cask, tub, hoop . . . showboard or placard upon any footway” being drunk in public “blow[ing] any horn or us[ing] any other noisy instrument [or making] loud shouts and cries, for the purpose of calling persons together, or of announcing any show or entertainment, or for the purpose of hawking, selling, distributing or collecting any article whatsoever” “ringing any doorbell or knocking at any door without lawful excuse” or even “fly[ing] any kite, or play[ing] at any game . . . or us[ing] any slide upon ice or snow in any street or other thoroughfare” (Great Britain 22–24). Any of these infractions could incur penalties up to forty shillings.

One article related specifically to gaff theaters at which versions of Jack Sheppard might have appeared. Under article 56, police could enter any dwelling being used as an unlicensed theater and arrest the performers, those who had allowed the location to be used for the performance, and everyone in the audience (Great Britain 18–19). It is important to remember that much of lower-class life happened out of doors in public spaces. Since many homes were too uncomfortable or crowded for play or leisure, and many occupations depended on hawking wares in the streets, laws regulating public spaces could greatly impinge on the mobility of lower-class people and their freedom to work and play. Many of the statutes in the new bill are aimed specifically at reducing public “nuisance,” though definitions of what constituted “nuisances” could be quite slippery and were likely to work in the favor of those claiming to be annoyed.Footnote ²⁵

The swiftness and effectiveness of the new enforcements were lauded in a newspaper report titled “First Fruits of the New Police Act.” This article noted that “the gin-palace neighbourhoods of Clare-market, the Seven Dials, St Giles's, the New-Cut, Lambeth, and the Broadway in Westminster . . . were on Sunday morning mournfully silent, and while their wonted occupants lingered about them with a fidgety sort of patience, the observer could not fail to notice the contrast . . . which last Sunday presented from many previous Sabbaths” (“First Fruits”). This comment responds specifically to the changes enacted by article 52 in the new police bill, which specified that on Sundays, shops selling alcohol could not operate between 8 a.m. and 1 p.m. (Great Britain 18). This article goes on to list several other examples of the success of the new act: a prostitute was imprisoned for three days “for annoying a gentleman by her solicitations”; a man received “15 days’ hard labour, for furiously knocking and ringing at the door [of an M.P.]”; a “decently-attired female” was “charged . . . with being intoxicated, and making use of bad language” (“First Fruits”).Footnote ²⁶ The woman in the last example was fined 20s. and was to be imprisoned for seven days if she could not pay (“First Fruits”). The new police bill, then, quickly had a significant impact on the lower classes as they discovered new prohibitions on many activities on which they depended for their livelihoods and in which they took pleasure. Hay suggests how the lower classes may have reacted to the new police power and laws:

It is not difficult to imagine that many of the newly criminalized behaviors mentioned above would still have been viewed as acceptable by lower-class communities and therefore, as Hay suggests, punishment for these “crimes” would have been held by the lower classes to be illegitimate. The consequences of this delegitimization may have included a simple disregard for the law, or it may have resulted in the creation “of solidarities where none had existed before,” manifesting in communal action like riots (Hay, “Crime and Justice” 74, 59–61).

The effects of these changes in police organization and the criminal law may be thought of as the inverse of the 1837 near-total repeal of the “bloody code.” Whereas one day a person could be apprehended, prosecuted, and potentially hanged for an offense, and the following day he or she could not, the new police bill meant that a person could do something legally one day but not the next. The intersection of these two legal changes contributed to the delegitimization of aspects of the criminal law in the eyes of the lower classes and informed the ways in which Sheppard's narrative resonated with them. These changes exposed the law to criticism from the lower classes, which was especially problematic in light of the simultaneously mounting agitations of the Chartist movement. The moment in which a substantial portion of the lower classes were agitating for reform and broader voting rights was not a convenient time for a concurrent weakening of the authority that held traditional hierarchies in place, and part of the middle-class anxiety over Jack Sheppard was rooted in this context.

Sheppard literature (including the novel and the lower-class versions of the narrative analyzed below) reinforced themes highlighting the illegitimacy of legal authority and seemed to celebrate criminality's defiance of the law. This literature was especially problematic for middle-class critics since it seemed to infect readers with a desire to thwart authority and encouraged the disregard for potential punishment. That some lower-class readers imitated Sheppard's criminality, or expressed the desire to do so, seemed to confirm the belief that they were incapable of separating fantasy from reality. Middle-class critics saw lower-class reading as passive, and failed to recognize that lower-class readers were actively interpreting Sheppard's story based on the texts’ relevance to their own historical moment.

Ballads, Plays, and Plagiarisms

The contemporary tensions between the criminal law and the lower classes contributed most significantly to Jack Sheppard's cultural resonance. Sheppard mocks and thwarts figures of authority such as his master, Mr. Wood, the villainous thief-taker Jonathan Wild and, of course, the guardians who attempt and twice fail to restrain him at Newgate. Audiences may have realized that if Jack Sheppard had been thieving in 1839, he most certainly would not have been executed as he was in 1724, which would only remind people of the inconsistency of the law. In the novel, Ainsworth's decision to make Sheppard an accessory to the murder of his master's wife may have been in part intended to justify Sheppard's punishment for a nineteenth-century audience.Footnote ²⁷ At the time of the nineteenth-century Jack Sheppard mania, murder was one of the only crimes punishable by death. Traditionally, gallows crowds would support criminals about to be hanged when their crimes were trivial or their sentences perceived as unjust, but “[t]he hanging of murderers was usually approved” (Gatrell 59). Ainsworth's implication of Sheppard as an accessory to a murder would have made his hanging more justifiable by 1839 legal standards, but was not enough to condemn Sheppard for many readers.

Many examples of lower-class retellings of the Sheppard story comment explicitly on his fate. Broadsheets such as Jack Sheppard's Glory and Jack Sheppard's Garland contain a ballad titled “The Life of Jack Sheppard,” which is a condensed version of Ainsworth's narrative sung to a popular tune. This ballad demonstrates one way many in the lower classes without the means to acquire and read Ainsworth's novel could have become familiar with the primary events of that story. Additionally, some key moments within the ballad point to an intentional reinterpretation of Sheppard's actions and the moral of the story. The ninth stanza reads:

The line “One day when Jack had got no money” suggests a motivation for Sheppard's crimes that is not in the novel. In Ainsworth's original story, Sheppard's descent into crime is initiated by his mistreatment at the hands of his master's wife, Mrs. Wood, and encouraged through the tutelage of Jonathan Wild.Footnote ²⁸ After Sheppard comes home and discovers Jonathan Wild and Blueskin sitting at his master's table in disguise, he attempts to warn the Woods and is struck in the face by Mrs. Wood. Sheppard responds to this mistreatment by swearing, “May I be cursed if ever I try to be honest again!” (Ainsworth, Jack Sheppard 149; vol. 2, ch. 5). In the novel, Sheppard is not wealthy, but as an apprentice, his primary needs are cared for and, being very skilled, he shows much promise for enjoying future success and prosperity. The ballad, though, cites Sheppard's poverty as the reason he robs his master. Giving this reason for Sheppard's turn to crime would likely have garnered sympathy (or even empathy) with impoverished audience members, and facilitated a stronger identification with the ballad's hero. Two of the last stanzas of this ballad are equally significant:

According to this ballad, Jack Sheppard allowed himself to be hanged because, simply stated, he was “tired of escaping.” Implicit in the idea that Sheppard “let them hang him up” is a powerful agency, fearless of death and the authorities, in which the reader is invited to share. This ballad also very intentionally glamorizes Sheppard, though it is not clear whether Ainsworth had the intention of doing so in his novel.Footnote ³⁰ Sheppard, having grown “tired of escaping . . . lives renowned in story” and has “three volumes” dedicated to his life alone – Thames Darrell and his bourgeois morality have no place within this ballad.

Perhaps the most important lines of the ballad are the last two. An initial reading simply seems to allude to the murder of Mrs. Wood and suggests that Ainsworth was attempting to provide the reader with a moral lesson. Any lesson that Ainsworth was attempting to impart, however, is completely undercut by the ballad because it suggests both that Sheppard was only drawn to crime because of poverty, and that Sheppard allows himself to be executed. In the first instance, Sheppard is absolved from blame because he steals out of necessity, which delegitimizes and renders unjust the law that requires Sheppard's capture and punishment. The ballad then completely strips the law of its own agency by enabling Sheppard to be the arbiter of his own destruction. The law is rendered totally impotent, which also empties the story of any didacticism. If Sheppard cannot be punished against his will and only submits to punishment because he wants to, then he has definitely not learned his lesson.

These lines also emphasize the disjunction between historical and contemporary criminal law. Implicit in the phrase “Who murder makes with morals rife,” is an acknowledgement that Ainsworth fabricated his account of Mrs. Wood. To acknowledge that Ainsworth fabricated the murder to make his tale “with morals rife,” when there was no historical basis for this event, means that for the writer and the readers of the ballad, the murder fails to legitimize Sheppard's execution. Ainsworth hanged Sheppard for the sake of historical accuracy but needed an appropriately serious crime to warrant this extreme punishment. Sheppard was never anything but a thief and jail-breaker, and people may have recognized that Sheppard's real crimes would not have resulted in his hanging in 1839. The final lines in the ballad imply that without the murder, Ainsworth's story offers no moral except, perhaps, that Sheppard was hanged by an unjust law in 1724 that would have spared his life in 1839. The ballad also questions the justification for any punishment by highlighting that the real lesson to be learned from Sheppard's story is that the law is mutable.Footnote ³¹

In October of 1839, at least seven different versions of Jack Sheppard were playing concurrently at London theaters, with most of these plays opening in the same week. The adaptations portray various elements of Sheppard's life, but some vary significantly in their explanations of what motivates Sheppard's turn to crime and in their depictions of Sheppard's ultimate fate. Although plays would circulate among different playhouses throughout London, examining where the plays opened and how they differ in their treatment of Sheppard's hanging suggests how each of the plays may have been shaped to appeal to particular audiences.Footnote ³²

First establishing the geographical and demographic contexts in which three of the Jack Sheppard plays appeared will better situate an analysis of the plays’ endings. The transpontine Surrey Theatre, which debuted Thomas Haines's Jack Sheppard: A Domestic Drama in Three Acts, attracted an economically diverse audience. In the immediate neighborhood lived working-class men and women who were carpenters, engineers, tailors, shoemakers, printers, cabmen, and needlewomen, and these more skilled artisans comprised what many critics considered more respectable audiences (Davis and Emeljanow 16–17). The Surrey was also patronized by audience members from the West End, who traveled across the Thames using well-established transportation lines (Davis and Emeljanow 14).

George White's play, Jack Sheppard! A Domestic Drama in Three Acts, premiered in the northern part of the West End at the Queen's Theatre. This theater initially boasted prices double those of the Surrey, reflecting the expectation of a more fashionable clientele. These high prices were not filling seats, however, and they were soon lowered due to “the general depression of the times, and in order to afford the inhabitants of the West End of the town an opportunity of witnessing Theatrical Representations, upon the same scale of economy as other Minor Theatres” (Davis and Emeljanow 139). The Queen's audience may never have been as consistently fashionable as its management hoped, but as we shall see, its production of Jack Sheppard indicates that the theater continually strove toward attracting an audience ideologically situated with a middle and higher class.

The East End was home to the City of London Theater, at which was performed the anonymous Jack Sheppard. A Drama in Three Acts, as Performed at the City of London Theatre. The East End was an area populated by unskilled laborers who worked cheaply and, because they often relied on seasonal or temporary employment, were subject to the vicissitudes of the market, which could leave some absolutely destitute. Since “East End [theater] audiences were arguably neighborhood audiences,” we can characterize attendees at the City of London as being generally from the working and lower classes (Davis and Emeljanow 47).

Though they were located in different areas of London's theatrical landscape, each theater capitalized on the Jack Sheppard craze and adapted Ainsworth's story to appeal to their primary audiences. It is important to remember that all three of these plays opened 21 October 1839, though the serialization of the novel would not be finished until February 1840. The playwrights, then, took creative license with their theatrical adaptations, and, unless they were concerned with adhering to the historical circumstances of Sheppard's life, could end their plays according to considerations of audience. Haines's play at the Surrey was the only performance endorsed by Ainsworth. In a letter to the theater manager, Ainsworth wrote, “Having . . . witnessed your Rehearsal, and perused the Drama founded on ‘Jack Sheppard,’ in preparation at the Surrey Theatre, I am satisfied it will furnish a complete representation . . . and have, therefore, no hesitation in giving my entire sanction to the performance” (Haines x).Footnote ³³ White's play ends similarly to Haines's, since in both plays Sheppard is shot and killed. The plays deviate from one another most acutely in their depiction of what happens to Sheppard's body after he dies.Footnote ³⁴

The final scene of White's play begins when Blueskin calls out, “Now, then, my lads, to the rescue!” and his plan to save Sheppard is put into action (White 50). Sheppard and Blueskin are both shot but Sheppard is killed instantly while Blueskin stumbles toward Wild, grabbing him by the throat before falling away dead. Thames Darrell attempts to assist the mob in taking Sheppard offstage but “[a] severe struggle ensues between the Soldiers and the Mob, in which the latter are overpowered. Tableau. Curtain descends” (White 50). This ending leaves no question as to who possesses Sheppard's body. The crowd is decisively overpowered and White's play freezes the defeat of the mob by the soldiers for a final moment before closing the scene. Sheppard's significance and his supporters remain in the power of the state.

Haines's play ends with a series of tableaux depicting successive illustrations from the novel. As soon as the executioner prepares the rope to hang Sheppard, Blueskin attempts his rescue and, as in the novel, both are shot by Wild and the soldiers. Blueskin falls down on stage while “the mob rescue[s] the body of Jack, and bear[s] it off” (Haines 70). As the mob attempts to remove Sheppard's body off-stage, however, the soldiers “present at the mob” and the play ends with “the whole in great confusion as the curtain falls” (Haines 70).

That the soldiers may prevent the “mob” from saving the body is significant because it implies that both Sheppard's physical body, and what Sheppard symbolically embodies, are not wholly in the possession of the mob. The legacy of Jack Sheppard is arrested and it is unclear whether the people or the state will claim his significance. If, as in White's play, the state does, then the moral lesson is enforced and the criminal hero is reduced to a “paltry thief” (Mayhew 3: 370) who suffers a just punishment. If the people win out, then the legacy of Sheppard, as one who mocks authority and thwarts the law, is allowed to carry on, and his body (and larger significance) continues to circulate off the stage. Though the final outcome of the confrontation in Haines's play is indeterminate, the soldiers’ possession of weapons suggests that they will finally claim Sheppard's body. This ending, with the “whole in great confusion,” parallels the critical disagreements circulating in the press about the significance of the novel, the plays, and the meaning of Jack Sheppard, with both supporters and detractors of the plays vying to have the last word. Though Haines's play ends more ambiguously than White's, both plays reinforce values that may have been favored by those in the Surrey and Queen's audiences who were less sympathetic to “the mob.” These plays end in stark contrast to the Sheppard adaptation performed at the City of London.

In the concluding scene of the City of London play, Sheppard's final words before being led off to Tyburn are, “I feel light at heart. [to Wild] Monster! you cannot know my feeling. I seem as though my last sad act of duty to my poor mother had given me hope of mercy – there, come on – I'm ready. Farewell to all!” (8).Footnote ³⁵ At the end of this play, the procession arrives at Tyburn and the final directions are “Blueskin's Rescue – Wild is shot – Tableau as the curtain falls” (8). This play also ends with a tableau, but it is of Sheppard and Blueskin's triumph over Wild. Sheppard is rescued and escapes suffering for his crimes and justice is served instead by Wild's death (Jack Sheppard . . . City of London 4). As in White's play, there is no moral ambiguity in this ending, but this time Jack Sheppard wins. This conclusion provides a different version of justice than the other two plays. It cannot be said that crime is rewarded, but Sheppard is given another chance and allowed to live on, his future unclear. It is my contention that Sheppard's survival in the City of London play anticipated the potential tastes of the lower-class East End audiences who may have more strongly identified with Sheppard and applauded his success.

Despite their differences, all three theatrical adaptations of the Sheppard story had the potential to remind audiences of the fact that Sheppard would not have been sentenced to hang for petty theft in 1839. Each theatrical version of Sheppard's story capitalizes on the tensions surrounding Sheppard's execution and plays into the crisis of legitimacy perpetuated by Jack Sheppard by preparing to hang and rehang Sheppard every night during a run. The plays presented constant evidence of the disparity between the historical and fictional sentencing of Jack Sheppard while simultaneously suggesting the illegitimacy of the law responsible for his death.

The City of London play is not the only text that rewrites Sheppard's fictional and historical ending. In a plagiarism titled Jack Shepperd [sic], written by “Obediah Throttle,” Skyblue (Blueskin) rescues Shepperd “in spite of every obstacle” and is able to convey away the body for resuscitation (233).Footnote ³⁶ In the final paragraphs, the reader is told that residing with Escape Darwell and his wife Barbara is “a relative of the marquis, a quiet elderly man . . . ever gentle and kind . . . beloved by all” who dies peacefully, followed by “his attendant” (Throttle 236). The elderly man and his attendant are, of course, Shepperd and Skyblue. This plagiarism was put out in serial parts costing only a penny, and would have been far more affordable to readers who may have wanted a happy ending for Sheppard.

Suggesting that the ending of George White's play reinforces the punishment of criminal actions does not necessarily imply that Sheppard's survival in the City of London play and in Throttle's Jack Shepperd denies all punishment. What is really at stake here is the legitimacy of Sheppard's crime and the legitimacy of the law in the perceptions of readers and audiences. The texts that conclude with Sheppard's ultimate escape imply that his punishment is unjustifiable and present a different version of justice that punishes Wild, a symbol of illegitimate authority. The endings of these lower-class texts suggest that the authors assumed readers and audience members would be in favor of letting Jack Sheppard live, and playing to such sympathies for Sheppard would be a likelier way of capitalizing on the story. The multiple endings suggest that Sheppard's crimes and punishment represented a theme that resonated with audience members and was one with which some readers identified. Critics vilified Ainsworth's novel as the primary source of these texts and feared their potential influence on lower-class readers. What these commentators failed to realize was that these readers were not passively replicating these texts, but were actively responding to the themes in these texts that they found relevant to their own cultural experiences.

Active Reading and Antidiscipline

In “Reading as Poaching,” Michel de Certeau explains that non-elite reading (by “the masses”) is typically viewed by cultural authorities as passive because readers are seen “‘becoming similar to’ what [they] absorb” rather than, as de Certeau argues, “‘making something similar’ to what [they are], making it [their] own, appropriating or reappropriating it” (de Certeau 166). The perception that consumers passively “absorb” texts likens them to the children in Gradgrind's and M'Choakumchild's school in Dickens's Hard Times, who are characterized as “pitchers” waiting to be filled up with facts (42). These readers are consumers in a system that privileges the producers of texts and gives primacy to interpretations by “privileged readers” (de Certeau 171). Cultural authorities insist that texts have “literal meanings” that can only be accessed by “socially authorized professionals and intellectuals” who possess the proper “passport,” or legitimate knowledge with which to interpret texts (de Certeau 171). Alternative readings are “either heretical (not ‘in conformity’ with the meaning of the text) or insignificant (to be forgotten)” (de Certeau 171). The danger comes, as middle-class critics of Jack Sheppard feared, when common readers passively absorb a text (which they cannot help but do) in ways that are opposed to authorized interpretations. It follows that non-elite readers should only read texts that will not lead them astray. Because, as de Certeau says, a text is “[b]y its very nature available to a plural reading, the text becomes a cultural weapon,” (171) and it has the potential to serve as a mechanism of domination, if culturally subordinate readers can only be got to read texts that maintain the hierarchical status quo (166). As de Certeau cautions, however, “it is always good to remind ourselves that people mustn't be taken for fools” (176).

In the early-nineteenth century, the popularity of Jack Sheppard with the lower classes challenged the widely accepted idea that lower-class readers were passive in their consumption of texts. Lower-class readings of Jack Sheppard are examples of what de Certeau describes as “an antidiscipline,” or a way in which “popular procedures [such as education] . . . manipulate the mechanisms of discipline and conform to them only in order to evade them” (xiv–xv). The assumption that lower-class readers were passive is evident from the earlier explanation of why engaging with “low” texts was considered dangerous. The hypothesis that the lower classes were more corruptible was predicated on the notion that lower-class readers were more likely than middle- and upper-class readers to “become similar” to what they read because they read “merely,” without discerning between fiction and reality. The moral panic that erupted around the lower-class reproductions of the Sheppard story is evidence of these assumptions. Because contemporary critics of lower-class texts believed that lower-class readers were only capable of passive interpretation, criticism was directed toward Jack Sheppard as a source of corruption. Jack Sheppard was labeled a “bad book” since “bad” reading (and, in consequence, automatically reproducing the text) was something that lower-class readers could not avoid. Readers who had learned to “read merely” could perhaps be criticized for making “bad” texts popular, but the problem was still seen to be in the texts. Critics did not realize that the real “problem” was active interpretation of Sheppard's story on the part of lower-class readers who were responding to the text based on their own experiences.

Texts like Jack Sheppard exemplify what Tony Bennett refers to as sites that are “productively activated” due to the “interaction” between “the culturally activated text and the culturally activated reader, an interaction structured by the material, social, ideological, and institutional relationships in which both text and readers are inescapably inscribed” (3, 12). Bennett's characterization of the interpretive process emphasizes the importance of understanding the historical contexts in which both texts and their readers are situated if one is to attempt to argue for ways in which those texts may have been read. In the case of the middle-class readings of both the Jack Sheppard novel and its lower-class versions, magazine and newspaper articles demonstrate the variety and types of readings those readers “activated.” Less known are the variety and types of interpretations “activated” by lower-class readers. Unfortunately there are no stock-piles of documents that record first-person interpretations by lower-class readers of the Sheppard plays and other adapted texts. Middle-class publications record some lower-class interpretations, as has been seen, in the service of connecting the Sheppard story with the perpetration of crimes, but aside from the suggestion that Jack Sheppard was “glamorized” by the theatrical adaptations, there is no clear explanation as to why Sheppard and Sheppard's story were so popular with the lower classes. This essay has attempted to articulate and understand the power the Sheppard texts held for the lower classes by examining how the texts written for or favored by this audience were in dialogue with historical changes taking place at the time that significantly impacted the lives of those in the lower classes. By reflecting on how and why Sheppard resonated with the lower classes, we are able to adumbrate, in a roundabout way, a possible reception history. Additionally, the process of excavating this heretofore unexamined history can provide a useful model for hypothesizing similar textual receptions in the future.