When Thames Darrell and Jack Sheppard sprang through the window, they
were instantly assailed by Wild, Trenchard, and their attendants.
Jack attacked Jonathan with such fury, that he drove him into a
shrubbery, and might perhaps have come off the victor, if his foot
had not slipped as he made a desperate lunge. In this state it would
have been all over with him, as, being stunned by the fall, it was
some moments before he could recover himself, if another party had
not unexpectedly come to his rescue. This was Blueskin, who burst
through the trees, and sword in hand assaulted the thief-taker. As
soon as Jack gained his legs, he perceived Blueskin lying, as
he thought, dead in the plantation, with a severe cut across his
temples, and while he was stooping to assist him, he heard groans
at a little distance. Hastening in the direction of the sound, he
discovered Thames Darrell, stretched upon the ground.
“Are you hurt, Thames?” asked Jack, anxiously.
“Not dangerously, I hope,” returned Thames; “but fly--save yourself.”
“Where are the assassins?” cried Sheppard.
“Gone,” replied the wounded man. “They imagine their work is done.
But I may yet live to thwart them.”
“I will carry you to the house, or fetch Mr. Wood,” urged Jack.
“No, no,” rejoined Thames; “fly--or I will not answer for your
safety. If you desire to please me, you will go.”
“And leave you thus?” rejoined Jack. “I cannot do it.”
“Go, I insist,” cried Thames, “or take the consequences upon
yourself. I cannot protect you.”
Thus urged, Jack reluctantly departed. Hastening to the spot where
he had tied his horse to a tree, he vaulted into the saddle, and
rode off across the fields,--for he was fearful of encountering
the hostile party,--till he reached the Edgeware Road. Arrived at
Paddington, he struck across Marylebone Fields,--for as yet the
New Road was undreamed of,--and never moderated his speed until he
reached the city. His destination was the New Mint. At this place
of refuge, situated in the heart of Wapping, near the river-side, he
arrived in less than an hour, in a complete state of exhaustion.
In consequence of the infamous abuse of its liberties, an act for the
entire suppression of the Old Mint was passed in the ninth year of
the reign of George the First, not many months before the date of
the present epoch of this history; and as, after the destruction of
Whitefriars, which took place in the reign of Charles the Second,
owing to the protection afforded by its inmates to the Levellers
and Fifth-monarchy-men, when the inhabitants of Alsatia crossed the
water, and settled themselves in the borough of Southwark,--so now,
driven out of their fastnesses, they again migrated, and recrossing
the Thames, settled in Wapping, in a miserable quarter between
Artichoke Lane and Nightingale Lane, which they termed the New Mint.
Ousted from his old retreat, the Cross Shovels, Baptist Kettleby
opened another tavern, conducted upon the same plan as the former,
which he denominated the Seven Cities of Refuge. His subjects,
however, were no longer entirely under his control; and, though he
managed to enforce some little attention to his commands, it was
evident his authority was waning fast. Aware that they would not
be allowed to remain long unmolested, the New Minters conducted
themselves so outrageously, and with such extraordinary insolence,
that measures were at this time being taken for their effectual
suppression.
To the Seven Cities of Refuge Jack proceeded. Having disposed of
his steed and swallowed a glass of brandy, without taking any other
refreshment, he threw himself on a couch, where he sank at once into
a heavy slumber. When he awoke it was late in the day, and he was
surprised to find Blueskin seated by his bed-side, watching over
him with a drawn sword on his knee, a pistol in each hand, and a
blood-stained cloth bound across his brow.
“Don't disturb yourself,” said his follower, motioning him to keep
still; “it's all right.”
“What time is it?” inquired Jack.
“Past noon,” replied Blueskin. “I didn't awake you, because you
seemed tired.”
“How did you escape?” asked Sheppard, who, as he shook off his
slumber, began to recall the events of the previous night.
“Oh, easily enough,” rejoined the other. “I suppose I must have been
senseless for some time; for, on coming to myself, I found this gash
in my head, and the ground covered with blood. However, no one had
discovered me, so I contrived to drag myself to my horse. I thought
if you were living, and not captured, I should find you here,--and I
was right. I kept watch over you, for fear of a surprise on the part
of Jonathan. But what's to be done?”
“The first thing I do,” replied Jack, “will be to visit my poor
mother in Bedlam.”
“You'd better take care of your mother's son instead,” rejoined
Blueskin. “It's runnin' a great risk.”
“Risk, or no risk, I shall go,” replied Jack. “Jonathan has
threatened to do her some mischief. I am resolved to see her, without
delay, and ascertain if it's possible to remove her.”
“It's a hopeless job,” grumbled Blueskin, “and harm will come of it.
What are you to do with a mad mother at a time when you need all your
wits to take care of yourself?”
“Don't concern yourself further about me,” returned Jack. “Once for
all, I shall go.”
“Won't you take me?”
“No; you must await my return here.”
“Then I must wait a long time,” grumbled Blueskin. “You'll never
return.”
“We shall see,” replied Jack. “But, if I should _not_ return, take
this purse to Edgeworth Bess. You'll find her at Black Mary's Hole.”
And, having partaken of a hasty breakfast, he set out. Taking his way
along East Smithfield, mounting Little Tower-hill, and threading the
Minories and Hounsditch, he arrived without accident or molestation,
at Moorfields.
Old Bethlehem, or Bedlam,--every trace of which has been swept away,
and the hospital for lunatics removed to Saint George's Field,--was
a vast and magnificent structure. Erected in Moorfields in 1675, upon
the model of the Tuileries, it is said that Louis the Fourteenth
was so incensed at the insult offered to his palace, that he had
a counterpart of St. James's built for offices of the meanest
description. The size and grandeur of the edifice, indeed, drew down
the ridicule of several of the wits of the age: by one of whom--the
facetious Tom Brown--it was said, “Bedlam is a pleasant place, and
abounds with amusements;--the first of which is the building, so
stately a fabric for persons wholly insensible of the beauty and
use of it: the outside being a perfect mockery of the inside, and
admitting of two amusing queries,--Whether the persons that ordered
the building of it, or those that inhabit it, were the maddest?
and, whether the name and thing be not as disagreeable as harp and
harrow.” By another--the no less facetious Ned Ward--it was termed,
“A costly college for a crack-brained society, raised in a mad age,
when the chiefs of the city were in a great danger of losing their
senses, and so contrived it the more noble for their own reception;
or they would never have flung away so much money to so foolish
a purpose.” The cost of the building exceeded seventeen thousand
pounds. However the taste of the architecture may be questioned,
which was the formal French style of the period, the general effect
was imposing. Including the wings, it presented a frontage of five
hundred and forty feet. Each wing had a small cupola; and, in the
centre of the pile rose a larger dome, surmounted by a gilded ball
and vane. The asylum was approached by a broad gravel walk, leading
through a garden edged on either side by a stone balustrade, and
shaded by tufted trees. A wide terrace then led to large iron gates,'
over which were placed the two celebrated figures of Raving and
Melancholy Madness, executed by the elder Cibber, and commemorated by
Pope in the Dunciad, in the well-known lines:--
“Close to those walls where Folly holds her throne,
And laughs to think Monroe would take her down,
Where, o'er the gates, by his famed father's hand,
_Great Cibber's brazen, brainless brothers stand_.”
Internally, it was divided by two long galleries, one over the other.
These galleries were separated in the middle by iron grates. The
wards on the right were occupied by male patients, on the left by
the female. In the centre of the upper gallery was a spacious saloon,
appropriated to the governors of the asylum. But the besetting evil
of the place, and that which drew down the severest censures of the
writers above-mentioned, was that this spot,--which of all others
should have been most free from such intrusion--was made a public
exhibition. There all the loose characters thronged, assignations
were openly made, and the spectators diverted themselves with the
vagaries of its miserable inhabitants.
Entering the outer gate, and traversing the broad gravel walk
before-mentioned, Jack ascended the steps, and was admitted, on
feeing the porter, by another iron gate, into the hospital. Here he
was almost stunned by the deafening clamour resounding on all sides.
Some of the lunatics were rattling their chains; some shrieking;
some singing; some beating with frantic violence against the doors.
Altogether, it was the most dreadful noise he had ever heard. Amidst
it all, however, there were several light-hearted and laughing groups
walking from cell to cell to whom all this misery appeared matter
of amusement. The doors of several of the wards were thrown open for
these parties, and as Jack passed, he could not help glancing at the
wretched inmates. Here was a poor half-naked creature, with a straw
crown on his head, and a wooden sceptre in his hand, seated on the
ground with all the dignity of a monarch on his throne. There was
a mad musician, seemingly rapt in admiration of the notes he was
extracting from a child's violin. Here was a terrific figure gnashing
his teeth, and howling like a wild beast;--there a lover, with hands
clasped together and eyes turned passionately upward. In this cell
was a huntsman, who had fractured his skull while hunting, and was
perpetually hallooing after the hounds;--in that, the most melancholy
of all, the grinning gibbering lunatic, the realization of “moody
madness, laughing wild.”
Hastening from this heart-rending spectacle, Jack soon reached the
grating that divided the men's compartment from that appropriated to
the women. Inquiring for Mrs. Sheppard, a matron offered to conduct
him to her cell.
“You'll find her quiet enough to-day, Sir,” observed the woman, as
they walked along; “but she has been very outrageous latterly. Her
nurse says she may live some time; but she seems to me to be sinking
fast.”
“Heaven help her!” sighed Jack. “I hope not.”
“Her release would be a mercy,” pursued the matron. “Oh! Sir, if
you'd seen her as I've seen her, you'd not wish her a continuance of
misery.”
As Jack made no reply, the woman proceeded.
“They say her son's taken at last, and is to be hanged. I'm glad of
it, I'm sure; for it's all owing to him his poor mother's here. See
what crime does, Sir. Those who act wickedly bring misery on all
connected with them. And so gentle as the poor creature is, when
she's not in her wild fits--it would melt a heart of stone to see
her. She will cry for days and nights together. If Jack Sheppard
could behold his mother in this state, he'd have a lesson he'd never
forget--ay, and a severer one than even the hangman could read him.
Hardened as he may be, that would touch him. But he has never been
near her--never.”
Rambling in this way, the matron at length came to a halt, and taking
out a key, pointed to a door and said, “This is Mrs. Sheppard's ward,
Sir.”
“Leave us together, my good woman,” said Jack, putting a guinea into
her hand.
“As long as you please, Sir,” answered the matron, dropping a
curtsey. “There, Sir,” she added, unlocking the door, “you can go in.
Don't be frightened of her. She's not mischievous--and besides she's
chained, and can't reach you.”
So saying, she retired, and Jack entered the cell.
Prepared as he was for a dreadful shock, and with his nerves strung
to endure it, Jack absolutely recoiled before the appalling object
that met his gaze. Cowering in a corner upon a heap of straw sat his
unfortunate mother, the complete wreck of what she had been. Her
eyes glistened in the darkness--for light was only admitted through
a small grated window--like flames, and, as she fixed them on him,
their glances seemed to penetrate his very soul. A piece of old
blanket was fastened across her shoulders, and she had no other
clothing except a petticoat. Her arms and feet were uncovered, and
of almost skeleton thinness. Her features were meagre, and ghastly
white, and had the fixed and horrible stamp of insanity. Her head had
been shaved, and around it was swathed a piece of rag, in which a few
straws were stuck. Her thin fingers were armed with nails as long as
the talons of a bird. A chain, riveted to an iron belt encircling her
waist, bound her to the wall. The cell in which she was confined was
about six feet long and four wide; the walls were scored all over
with fantastic designs, snatches of poetry, short sentences and
names,--the work of its former occupants, and of its present inmate.
When Jack entered the cell, she was talking to herself in the
muttering unconnected way peculiar to her distracted condition; but,
after her eye had rested on him some time, the fixed expression of
her features relaxed, and a smile crossed them. This smile was more
harrowing even than her former rigid look.
“You are an angel,” she cried, with a look beaming with delight.
“Rather a devil,” groaned her son, “to have done this.”
“You are an angel, I say,” continued the poor maniac; “and my Jack
would have been like you, if he had lived. But he died when he was a
child--long ago--long ago--long ago.”
“Would he had done so!” cried Jack.
“Old Van told me if he grew up he would be hanged. He showed me a
black mark under his ear, where the noose would be tied. And so I'll
tell you what I did--”
And she burst into a laugh that froze Jack's blood in his veins.
“What did you do?” he asked, in a broken voice.
“I strangled him--ha! ha! ha!--strangled him while he was at my
breast--ha! ha!”--And then with a sudden and fearful change of look,
she added, “That's what has driven me mad, I killed my child to save
him from the gallows--oh! oh! One man hanged in a family is enough.
If I'd not gone mad, they would have hanged me.”
“Poor soul!” ejaculated her son.
“I'll tell you a dream I had last night,” continued the unfortunate
being. “I was at Tyburn. There was a gallows erected, and a great mob
round it--thousands of people, and all with white faces like corpses.
In the midst of them there was a cart with a man in it--and that man
was Jack--my son Jack--they were going to hang him. And opposite to
him, with a book in his hand,--but it couldn't be a prayer-book,--sat
Jonathan Wild, in a parson's cassock and band. I knew him in spite of
his dress. And when they came to the gallows, Jack leaped out of the
cart, and the hangman tied up Jonathan instead--ha! ha! How the mob
shouted and huzzaed--and I shouted too--ha! ha! ha!”
“Mother!” cried Jack, unable to endure this agonizing scene longer.
“Don't you know me, mother?”
“Ah!” shrieked Mrs. Sheppard. “What's that?--Jack's voice!”
“It is,” replied her son.
“The ceiling is breaking! the floor is opening! he is coming to me!”
cried the unhappy woman.
“He stands before you,” rejoined her son.
“Where?” she cried. “I can't see him. Where is he?”
“Here,” answered Jack.
“Are you his ghost, then?”
“No--no,” answered Jack. “I am your most unhappy son.”
“Let me touch you, then; let me feel if you are really flesh and
blood,” cried the poor maniac, creeping towards him on all fours.
Jack did not advance to meet her. He could not move; but stood like
one stupified, with his hands clasped together, and eyes almost
starting out of their sockets, fixed upon his unfortunate parent.
“Come to me!” cried the poor maniac, who had crawled as far as the
chain would permit her,--“come to me!” she cried, extending her thin
arm towards him.
Jack fell on his knees beside her.
“Who are you?” inquired Mrs. Sheppard, passing her hands over his
face, and gazing at him with a look that made him shudder.
“Your son,” replied Jack,--“your miserable, repentant son.”
“It is false,” cried Mrs. Sheppard. “You are not. Jack was not half
your age when he died. They buried him in Willesden churchyard after
the robbery.”
“Oh, God!” cried Jack, “she does not know me. Mother--dear mother!”
he added, clasping her in his arms, “Look at me again.”
“Off!” she exclaimed, breaking from his embrace with a scream. “Don't
touch me. I'll be quiet. I'll not speak of Jack or Jonathan. I won't
dig their graves with my nails. Don't strip me quite. Leave me my
blanket! I'm very cold at night. Or, if you must take off my clothes,
don't dash cold water on my head. It throbs cruelly.”
“Horror!” cried Jack.
“Don't scourge me,” she cried, trying to hide herself in the farthest
corner of the cell. “The lash cuts to the bone. I can't bear it.
Spare me, and I'll be quiet--quiet--quiet!”
“Mother!” said Jack, advancing towards her.
“Off!” she cried with a prolonged and piercing shriek. And she buried
herself beneath the straw, which she tossed above her head with the
wildest gestures.
“I shall kill her if I stay longer,” muttered her son, completely
terrified.
While he was considering what would be best to do, the poor maniac,
over whose bewildered brain another change had come, raised her head
from under the straw, and peeping round the room, asked in a low
voice, “If they were gone?”
“Who?” inquired Jack.
“The nurses,” she answered.
“Do they treat you ill?” asked her son.
“Hush!” she said, putting her lean fingers to her lips. “Hush!--come
hither, and I'll tell you.”
Jack approached her.
“Sit beside me,” continued Mrs. Sheppard. “And, now I'll tell you
what they do. Stop! we must shut the door, or they'll catch us. See!”
she added, tearing the rag from her head,--“I had beautiful black
hair once. But they cut it all off.”
“I shall go mad myself if I listen to her longer,” said Jack,
attempting to rise. “I must go.”
“Don't stir, or they'll chain you to the wall,” said his mother
detaining him. “Now, tell me why they brought you here?”
“I came to see you, dear mother!” answered Jack.
“Mother!” she echoed,--“mother! why do you call me by that name?”
“Because you are my mother.”
“What!” she exclaimed, staring eagerly in his face. “Are you my son?
Are you Jack?”
“I am,” replied Jack. “Heaven be praised she knows me at last.”
“Oh, Jack!” cried his mother, falling upon his neck, and covering him
with kisses.
“Mother--dear mother!” said Jack, bursting into tears.
“You will never leave me,” sobbed the poor woman, straining him to
her breast.
“Never--never!”
The words were scarcely pronounced, when the door was violently
thrown open, and two men appeared at it. They were Jonathan Wild and
Quilt Arnold.
“Ah!” exclaimed Jack, starting to his feet.
“Just in time,” said the thief-taker. “You are my prisoner, Jack.”
“You shall take my life first,” rejoined Sheppard.
And, as he was about to put himself into a posture of defence, his
mother clasped him in her arms.
“They shall not harm you, my love!” she exclaimed.
The movement was fatal to her son. Taking advantage of his
embarrassed position, Jonathan and his assistant rushed upon him, and
disarmed him.
“Thank you, Mrs. Sheppard,” cried the thief-taker, as he slipped a
pair of handcuffs over Jack's wrists, “for the help you have given us
in capturing your son. Without you, we might have had some trouble.”
Aware apparently in some degree, of the mistake she had committed,
the poor maniac sprang towards him with frantic violence, and planted
her long nails in his cheek.
“Keep off, you accursed jade!” roared Jonathan, “--off, I say, or--”
And he struck her a violent blow with his clenched hand.
The miserable woman staggered, uttered a deep groan, and fell
senseless on the straw.
“Devil!” cried Jack; “that blow shall cost you your life.”
“It'll not need to be repeated, at all events,” rejoined Jonathan,
looking with a smile of malignant satisfaction at the body. “And,
now,--to Newgate.”