Jack Sheppard

Mayhew's children, without schooling, knew this name.
Master gaol-breaker, exemplar of the dangerous poor, he was
their Alexander. It was the little men

of property he robbed, from whom he gathered watches,
linen swatches, bric-à-brac; but could not forage
among Lords and Commons, they who would not 'open

bags and barns, and make the earth a common treasury'.
A hundred thousand came to see him hanged.
The Tyburn crowd: their skulls deep-mined; clear-

felled their wildwood; harried of their rubies, gold,
obsidian, diamonds; one and all they mourned their chief,
who seemed to have opened for them a heavy door.

Let us recite his deeds. His hands more versatile
than goldsmith's tools, the whole sweet mechanism
between brain and fingers exquisitely tuned, he made a jest

of locks and bolts, a fool of Rackall the drunken turnkey.
Departing the Stone Room was his greatest work.
Muscling and narrowing his craftsman's hands,

he streamlined them free of the cuffs; then worked
with a silly nail at the ankle-chains; with a link of broken chain
he rooted out the chimney-bar; with a railing-spike

he forced four doors; at last, emerging in free air but high
above the surrounding roofs, he turned, went back (went back!
such mastery of suspense!) to fetch some shinning-blankets.

In Newgate, he became a peepshow (short season only!)
The embezzler Macclesfield, the kleptomaniac Lord Chancellor,
was once his audience there; the greater drew the less.

A carpenter to trade, he could masquerade
as butcher, botcher, beggar, porter - badges
of servitude he wore ironically. And once

in a carriage driving through the arch of Newgate,
he was maestro, impresario. But 'they hang poor men
if they do steal, having taken from them all their maintenance';

born in the prison-camp at Spitalfields, fettered from birth,
he could not redeem his neighbours' loss. Yet Mayhew's
children acknowledged him; even we who have walked

across the blasted plain, stood in the ruins of our cities,
who habitually turn our keys in the double locks
of our house-doors: we have not lost him yet.