On a November night in 1703, in the thieves’ sanctuary of the Old Mint in Southwark, a widow’s infant son is marked out for a life of crime. Ainsworth follows Jack Sheppard from idle apprentice to housebreaker and his famous escapes from Newgate, set against the cunning thief-taker Jonathan Wild, the virtuous Thames Darrell and the old London Bridge.
The sensational Newgate novel of 1839 whose popularity alarmed the moralists. Download the free EPUB.