by Paul Simpson
Once they were on the exterior of the ducal palace, Soradici pulled the lead sheet back into place. The two escapees inched their way on hands and knees across more than a dozen lead sheets, which were treacherous in the night air, up onto the apex of the roof. Casanova left Balbi sitting there while he went to find somewhere to tie the rope, so they could let themselves down to ground level.
The problem was that nothing presented itself, and Casanova was on the verge of giving up when he spotted a light in a garret room. Sliding down the roof to the level of the room, he saw a window with a grate protecting it. As midnight struck, his resolve was hardened, and he used his handy dagger to remove the grate. He then lowered Balbi into the room, but with nowhere to tie the rope to, was unable to let himself down – and the room was far too high for him to risk jumping to the floor. Another examination of his surroundings produced a 12-foot ladder, which, after some manhandling, he was able to manoeuvre into the room and use to reach the floor.
After Casanova grabbed a quick power nap to regain his strength, the two men examined their new surroundings, and discovered that they were in the state archives. At 5 a.m., no one else was stirring, and they were quickly able to descend to the ducal chancery, which looked out over the little courtyards around St Mark’s Square. They broke through the door of the chancery, but were defeated by the main door leading to the grand staircase.
Casanova got changed back into his best clothes, in which he had been arrested the year before, but was spotted when he looked out of the window. The gatekeeper opened up the room, thinking he’d locked someone in, and Casanova and Balbi barged past him, and ran for the canal, where they hailed a gondola, and loudly stated their destination was Fusina. As soon as they were under way, Casanova apparently changed his mind, and asked to go to Mestre, in the opposite direction.
When they reached Mestre, Casanova hired a coach to take him to Trevisa, only to discover that Balbi had disappeared into a café for a cup of hot chocolate! The delay retrieving him meant that Casanova was accosted by an old acquaintance who he was convinced would give him up to the authorities. He tried to bluff that he had been released but when the man refused to listen, Casanova took him out of sight, and prepared to kill him. Luckily for both of them, the man wriggled out of Casanova’s grasp and ran for the hills.
Balbi was determined to stay with Casanova, regarding their fates as linked. Casanova knew full well that any search would be for the pair of them together, since they made an unusual, and very distinctive, combination. He therefore told Balbi to make his own way to an agreed rendezvous, and when the monk initially refused, started to dig a hole in the ground. After working for fifteen minutes, he casually pointed out to Balbi that he should make his peace with God, as he was about to bury him there, dead or alive. Balbi took the hint and the two men made their separate ways across country. Casanova was eventually able to rid himself of Balbi after arranging a new billet for him in Bologna. Balbi disgraced himself there, was recaptured, spent two further years in the Leads, and was then returned to his monastic order. Eventually the Pope released him from his monastic vow, and he lived it up in Venice for the rest of his life.
Casanova reached Paris in January 1757, and had to regale audiences with the tale of his escape. He was finally able to return to Venice in September 1774 after he carried out a few pieces of commercial espionage for the Inquisitors, but life wasn’t the same for him. He died in Bohemia in 1798.
Sources:
Casanova, Giacomo (translated by Arthur Machen): The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt 1725–1798 (The University of Adelaide Library, 2012)
Kelly, Ian: Casanova: Actor, Lover, Priest, Spy (Tarcher, 2011)
The Prison Breaker
While many convicts might wish to become known by this nickname, it was first awarded to one of the most daring characters featured in this volume: Jack Sheppard. Although he was only twenty-two when he was hanged at Tyburn in London on 16 November 1724, he left behind a legacy of prison breaks, immortalized in print by no less an author than Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders creator Daniel Defoe, and the subject of a sermon which has been passed down the centuries in which the details of his escape were used as an analogy for living a godly life. His exploits inspired John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera, which itself became the basis of The Threepenny Opera, and a novel by William Harrison Ainsworth that on its first publication outsold Dickens’ Oliver Twist. During his lifetime, he captured the imagination of early eighteenth-century London, and ironically may even have lost a chance at cheating the hangman one more time because of the mob’s affection for him.
Most of the information we have on Sheppard derives from the Newgate Calendar, a collection of biographical accounts that started off as a monthly bulletin of executions produced by the Keeper of Newgate Prison in London, but which developed into a highly readable anthology of tales from the cells. It may not necessarily have always been accurate – various pieces of editorializing in its pages suggest that it often followed the maxim attributed to Mark Twain: “Never let the truth get in the way of a good story” – but it provided vicarious thrills for eighteenth and early nineteenth century audiences. In the case of Sheppard it certainly borrowed material from the prison breaker’s own ghost-written account, to the extent that modern editions often directly quote Sheppard’s text in place of those parts of the Calendar.
Of course, Jack Sheppard wasn’t the only person to try to escape from Newgate, although he was definitely the most famous. In 1450, one keeper, Alexander Manning, was jailed himself after being found guilty of negligent custody of his prisoners over the previous years, and allowing a mutiny to take place.
In the aftermath of the 1715 rebellion, one of the Jacobites by the name of Barlow had tried to get out from the Red Room that Sheppard would break into during his own escape, “close-shaved and neatly dressed in female clothes”, according to the Calendar, with a crowd of women surrounding him. He got as far as the keepers’ lodge before one of the warders grew suspicious and threw him to the ground. Barlow tried to keep up the pretence, as the women told the prison officer off for such behaviour, and might have got away with it if the Special Commissioner who was dealing with the rebels hadn’t arrived at that moment. Carleton Smith wouldn’t take the bribe that Barlow offered, and ensured that he was returned to the cells. Barlow was hanged around the same time that Sheppard was gaining a reputation for himself.
Born in 1702, Jack Sheppard’s path to a criminal career began about six years after his father died, when he and his brother were very young. Sheppard began drinking in the Black Lion alehouse in Drury Lane, and became very close to some of the prostitutes who frequented the pub, including Elizabeth Lyon, also known as Edgworth Bess, who would eventually become commonly regarded as his wife, and Polly Maggot. Sheppard had been apprenticed as a carpenter, and although he initially behaved honestly, after a time he began stealing from his workplaces, and then branched out into housebreaking. He eventually quarrelled with his master, and became a freelance carpenter, casing places by day and robbing them by night. Not long after he carried out a raid in Mayfair, Lyon was arrested, and placed in the roundhouse at St Giles; when he was refused entry to visit her, Sheppard knocked down the beadle in charge, smashed the door and carried her away.
It wasn’t that long before Sheppard was a guest of the roundhouse himself. His brother Tom was also a thief, and the pair had teamed up to carry out various robberies. When Tom was arrested, he tried to implicate his brother and Lyon, but they couldn’t be found. Sheppard was betrayed by another of his companions, James Sykes, who got Jack drunk and then handed him over to the police. Sheppard didn’t remain a prisoner for long; after a brief interrogation, he was sent to the roundhouse, but broke through the roof and escaped that night.
His second escape was a little trickier. Within a few days of absconding from the St Giles Roundhouse, Sheppard found himself in the one at St Ann’s, in Soho, after a pickpocketing in Leicester Fields
(modern Leicester Square) went wrong. Lyon came to visit him, was recognized as his accomplice and arrested. The pair of them were sent to New Prison in Clerkenwell by the magistrates, and because they were believed to be married, they were allowed to share a room, known as the Newgate Ward (which has led to some confusion over the years; this wasn’t part of Newgate Prison.)
Sheppard and Lyon were visited by various friends over the next few days, who were able to provide them with some necessary tools. Early one morning, Sheppard filed off his chains, then made a hole in the prison wall. The Newgate Ward was on an upper storey, and was some 25 feet above the ground. Sheppard removed an iron bar and a wooden one from the window, then tied a blanket and sheet together and fixed them to one of the remaining bars. Sheppard lowered Lyon down to the ground, then climbed down the makeshift rope himself, only to find themselves still trapped in the yard, with a 22-foot-high wall in front of them. However, Sheppard was undeterred and the two of them clambered over the gate, using the locks and bolts as hand and foot holds.
Jack Sheppard continued working as a thief but he was making enemies, notably Jonathan Wild, who became annoyed when Sheppard refused to fence his stolen goods through him. Determined to curb the younger man, but unable to lay his hands on him, Wild plied Elizabeth Lyon with brandy to make her give up Sheppard’s address. This she did, and he was arrested and indicted at the Old Bailey on several charges of robbery. On 30 August 1724, he was sentenced to death and imprisoned in the old jail of Newgate to await sentence.
Newgate Jail had been rebuilt in 1672 following its destruction in the Great Fire of London six years earlier. One of the unusual features was the area around the cells holding the condemned prisoners: the inmates came down a dark passage to a hatch, which had large iron spikes preventing anyone from passing through. Once again, outside friends were able to smuggle tools in to Sheppard, and he cut through one of the spikes so that it barely remained in position. On the day that the warrant was sent for Sheppard’s execution, Lyon and Polly Maggot went to visit him. They distracted the guards as he broke through the final piece of the spike, leaving a hole wide enough that he could wiggle through. The two women quickly dressed him in a nightshirt they had brought to disguise the irons he was wearing, and hurried him out of the prison. Some of the other convicts tried to follow him, but the prison officers saw the gap in the hatch and prevented any other escapes. Sheppard headed for the waterfront at Black-Fryers-Stairs (Blackfriars), and headed upriver to the Horse Ferry at Westminster.
Sheppard realized that London was perhaps becoming too dangerous: Wild and his men would be looking for him, as would the officers of the law. He and a friend, William Page, headed up to Warnden in Northamptonshire for a few days to stay with Page’s family. However they weren’t made welcome, and within the week they had returned to London. On Friday 4 September, the day he was due to hang, Sheppard cheekily wrote a letter that was printed in The Daily Journal, addressed to “Jack Ketch”, the popular nickname for the hangman, saying that he was drinking a toast to his health, and wishing his friends who had hanged, a “bon repo” – a good sleep.
Jack was quite right: he should have stayed away from London, and he would have been well advised to keep out of trouble when he did return. However, old habits died hard: the day after his return from Northamptonshire, he and Page stole three watches from a shop in Fleet Street. When he tried to fence them, he was advised to lay low, and the two men headed up to Finchley, north of London. However someone informed on them to the Newgate prison turnkeys, and on 10 September they were arrested. Page surrendered immediately; Sheppard tried to make a run for it, but faced with armed prison officers, gave up, begging them not to shoot him on the spot. He was taken back to Newgate, and this time the warders were taking no chances. He was put back into a portion of the condemned hold known as the Castle, where a heavy pair of irons was wrapped around him, and he was then chained to a staple fixed in the floor.
Such trifling inconveniences weren’t going to stop Jack Sheppard from escaping from Newgate. If he could get hold of the right tools, he was convinced that he could get out of his chains and away from the prison. Unfortunately, the guards were keeping a close eye on him: every visitor was carefully watched to make sure that they didn’t try to pass him anything he could use. On one occasion when he was left on his own, he spotted a small nail within reach, and used that to pick the horse padlock that was used to fix the chain to the staple in the floor. He used the freedom initially simply to stretch his legs, and to have a chance to sleep properly, rather than fixed to the chair, but one day his keepers came back in to check on him before he had a chance to get back into position. After he showed the jailers the ease with which he had picked the lock, they added a pair of handcuffs to his restraints. Sheppard desperately begged them not to do so, and even his former master, from whom he had stolen some of the items for which he was going to be hanged, tried to persuade them not to handcuff him.
It was all an act: Sheppard knew full well that he could slip the handcuffs without any difficulty, but he wanted to lull the keepers into a false sense of security. Within minutes of them leaving him, he had removed the cuffs but made sure that they were always on when he was being monitored. He even chafed the skin around his wrist to make it look as if he had been trying to remove them, in an effort to gain sympathy from his jailers, but to no avail (although some of his visitors took pity and gave him money).
On Wednesday 14 October, the sessions began once more, and that morning there was an uproar when Jonathan Wild’s throat was cut in the courtroom by one of Sheppard’s fellow thieves, Blueskin Blake. Much to the annoyance of many, including Sheppard, Wild wasn’t killed, but was seriously injured, and in the aftermath of the attack, the attention of the keepers at Newgate was diverted. This made it an ideal time for Jack Sheppard to carry out his escape.
On the afternoon of 15 October, around 3 p.m., Sheppard slipped his handcuffs and then broke a link in the chain holding him to the floor. He pulled the shackles further up his legs so they wouldn’t impede his progress, then made a hole in the chimney of the room. From there he was able to pull out an iron bar, about two and a half feet long, and an inch square. With that he broke through the ceiling of the Castle, and pulled himself up into the Red Room, which had been used years before to hold prisoners captured after the Battle of Preston during the 1715 Rebellion. The room and its doors hadn’t been used in seven years, so Sheppard had to remove a nut from the lock before he could go further.
In the Red Room, he also found a large nail on the floor, which became very useful as he progressed through the upper floors of Newgate prison. He had to break through the wall to get at the bolt that held the door to the chapel fastened, but was lucky that no one imprisoned nearby heard him. In the chapel, he broke off one of the iron spikes, and proceeded to attack the door between the chapel and the leads (the area of the roof covered by lead sheets). The next door was very securely fastened with a heavy lock, and although he was disheartened for a few minutes, he finally regained his composure and set to work. Between the nail and the spike, he made short shrift of the padlock, and got through it.
It had taken him five hours to get this far, and he heard the clock at St Sepulchre’s chime eight as he broke through yet another door, which had more bolts, bars and locks than any of its predecessors. Initially he tried to break through the lock, but when that proved impossible, he attacked the door itself – and the lock came away from the wall.
Sheppard was now one door away from the outside; the Newgate authorities didn’t think anyone could get this far without permission, so it was only bolted on the inside. It was the work of a second for Sheppard to climb through it, out onto the roof. He clambered up the roof and looked over the wall, working out where his best exit point would be. The shops outside the prison were still open, so he had to be especially careful that he didn’t screw up the escape at this late stage.
He headed back down to the Castle and collecte
d the blanket that had been placed over him at night. His luck continued to hold: one of his visitors from the afternoon had promised to return that evening but hadn’t done so, so the alarm still hadn’t been raised – the guards were still dealing with the disturbances that had followed the attack on Jonathan Wild the previous day. He retraced his steps to the leads, fixed the blanket with the spike from the chapel to the wall of Newgate, and used it to drop down onto the roof of one of the houses next to the prison, owned by a turner named William Bird.
Sheppard tried to creep softly down the stairs from the garret of the house – luckily, the door to the roof had been left open – but the woman of the house heard his irons clinking together. Rather than risk capture, Sheppard hid in the garret for a couple of hours, and around 11 p.m., made his way downstairs. When a visitor to the house left three-quarters of an hour later, Sheppard followed him out, omitting to shut the outer door behind him. To his own surprise, he was a free man once more.
The next two hours were spent heading away from Newgate, and around 2 a.m., he found himself in Tottenham Court, where he hid in an old house in the fields for a few hours. He was still wearing the fetters around his legs, which were beginning to swell and bruise as a result of the physical punishment they had endured. He stayed hidden throughout the Friday – it poured with rain all day, so no one came looking for him. That evening he used some of the money that he had been given by visitors to his cell to buy some cheese, bread and beer, but the chandler’s shop at which he purchased his necessities didn’t have a hammer available. He spent Saturday the same way, and on Sunday morning ran out of patience, and tried to break through his fetters with a large stone.
