Tuesday 25 November 2014

Famous Prison Escapes Part 1: Jack Sheppard

Prisons are designed to keep the unlawful detained. They are built to hold the most cunning criminals, offering them no chance of freedom. But in every cell designed to constrain, is an opportunity for escape.

This week, the Vancouver Escape Blog is travelling back to the Eighteenth Century for a look at one of England's most famous escape artists: Jack Sheppard. Shepard was a small-time criminal who hated confinement. He escaped from prison a total of four times, five if you count the time he broke into a low security facility to free his wife.

Shepard's first breakout was from a temporary holding cell at St. Gile's Roundhouse. It took the young criminal just three hours to free himself after being confined. His first escape went without a hitch and utilized two methods that would become his MO for future flights.

First, instead of looking to the heavens in defeat, Shepard gazed at the ceiling for inspiration. He realized that the timber ceiling was far weaker than the iron bars on the windows. After making a considerable amount of noise, Sheppard smashed his way skyward, finding himself on the roof of the building. He then used his bed sheets to repel down the side of the Roundhouse, a technique that he would use for a number of descents in future escapes.

Once on the ground, Sheppard joined the crowd of onlookers who had come to investigate the sounds of demolition. He pointed at the roof to distract their gaze from the obvious chains around his ankles. Once their eyes were diverted, he made his way through the gawkers and hightailed it out of there.

Freedom lasted less than a month, before authorities again captured the unlucky criminal. This time he was with his lady, who was also taken in for aiding and abetting. The couple was detained together in the same cell, a romantic gesture, but one the guards would soon regret. Within days, the couple had filed through their hand constraints. They removed a bar from a window and used their bed sheet to climb down to the ground floor. Once in the yard, they were faced with a 22 foot-tall gate. No one knows how, but Sheppard managed to get himself and his rather large wife over the wall before the authorities were alerted. And a legend was born.


With notoriety, came a few haters from the underworld. A competing crime baron sold him out and Sheppard was once again arrested and sent back to prison. He was sentenced to death, but before his hanging, his cunning wife came to visit one last time. Even before her arrival, Sheppard had loosened the bar to the visiting window. Once his lady was in the adjacent room, she distracted the guards while Sheppard squeezed himself out of the viewing window. With women's clothes, brought by his wife, Sheppard dressed in drag to escape.

Again, freedom was short-lived and within a week Sheppard was arrested and sent back to prison. After his captors twice recovered filing objects from his cell, Sheppard was transferred to the 'Castle' room, considered the most secure cell in Britain. He was strapped with leg irons and chained to metal staples in the floor. He bragged to his jailers that his locks could be easily picked and the guards doubled his constraints.


A prison riot provided a distraction for his fourth and final escape. After picking the locks on his chains, Sheppard crawled up the chimney, removing a steel bar that blocked his way. Arriving in the room above, he then broke through six steel doors, finally reaching the prison chapel. From here he climbed to the roof, but was met with a 60-foot drop. With few alternatives, Sheppard retreated back the way he came, down the chimney and back to his cell, where he retrieved his bed sheets. With his repel gear in hand, Sheppard returned to the prison roof and made his way to the roof of an adjacent house. Without waking the occupants, Sheppard broke into the building and slipped down the stairs and out into the night.

But once a criminal, always a criminal and within a week he was again back to his plundering ways. He robbed a pawnshop and made off with all the accoutrements of a man-about-town. With a wig, a black silk suit, multiple rings and a silver sword, Sheppard lived his last few days of freedom drinking and womanizing, before being captured, yet again.

Taking no chances, the courts quickly sentenced him to death. He was chained to 300 pounds of weights and left under permanent watch. Two weeks after his final capture, Sheppard was escorted to the gallows. Before leaving the cell, a prison guard discovered a pen-knife; Sheppard's final escape was thwarted. He died after a 15-minute dangle from the hangman's noose. His body was crushed by on-lookers as the mob surged forward after his limp corpse was cut free.


Sheppard became a hero to the people, inciting art, songs and dramas that recounted his daring escapes. A poor criminal, but a master of flight, Jack Sheppard is the first escape artist to be honoured in the Krakit Breakout Vault of Fame. 


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