Talk:Jack Sheppard

Jack Sheppard is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. Even so, if you can update or improve it, please do so.

This article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on January 20, 2008.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
January 12, 2007	Peer review	Reviewed
February 10, 2007	Featured article candidate	Promoted

Current status: Featured article

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Etymology

Is he who the word a jacking, carjacking, hijacking etc. are named after? Please someone add this information if you can verify this. 12:00 20 January 20, 2008 (UTC)

older entries

Film=As far as I can tell, there is no movie called Jack Sheppard and Jonathan Wild, much less one starring Harvey Keitel and Tobey Maguire. Although it sounds like a pretty good idea. It's not on IMDB anyway.

Jack Sheppard blows! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.102.56.253 (talk) 11:11, 20 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I removed the reference. IMDb did not have any directors by that name, and the Wikipedia link led to an American Football player. Jon Harald Søby \ ^{no na} 19:17, 12 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

In May 2000 the British film production company FilmFour (owned by Channel 4) published the following news item: "FilmFour bolstered its Cannes slate by confirming that Tobey Maguire and Harvey Keitel are attached to play lead roles in Ben Ross' JACK SHEPPARD AND JONATHAN WILD. The film is to be produced by Robert Jones (THE USUAL SUSPECTS) for the Jones Co. from a screenplay by Ross and John Preston." (ifmagazine.com, May 3, 2000) Among others you could find this news on tobeyonline.com (May 10, 2000) , variety.com (May 18, 2000) and Visual Imagination, Film Review (August 2000). Something went wrong, obviously, but the film project did really exist. The director and screenwriter Benjamin Ross (born in 1964 in London) would smile at your conjecture, Jon Harald Søby, that "IMDb did not have any directors by that name" although "the Wikipedia link led to an American Football player" indeed. --Bogart99 16:57, 21 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I understand. When IMDb covers Norwegian LotR fan movies, one'd think it would have a note or something about this. However, the article should state that the movie was never made, as it obviously wasn't. Jon Harald Søby 20:56, 21 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Strange rural Viking example for American ears, I presume. Lost in a Norwegian Wood. ;-) --Bogart99 07:57, 22 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Please don't link John Preston to the eponymous WP-article. The Sunday Telegraph television critic and arts editor ^[1] who is an occasional screenwriter has nothing to do with his namesake John Preston, a homosexual erotica author who died of AIDS in 1994. --Bogart99 08:32, 22 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Note that "Jack Sheppard and Jonathan Wild" was a play. This may explain some of the mystery. The play was popular enough that, when I was writing Jonathan Wild, I couldn't find any web references to Sheppard that didn't lead to it. Thus, I can certainly believe that it was a planned film and that it will be a film in the future. Let's face it: the story is simply too, too, too good, especially as there is another quality not mentioned in the article here that was essential for the romance of the day: Jack Sheppard was very good looking. All the contemporary accounts emphasize that he was a lady's man, that he was never violent, and that he was polite ("Gentleman Jack") with a good fashion sense. He was, in some ways, the prototype of the high fashion jewel thief of contemporary film, except that he was a cockney, and hence a hero to the working classes. You'd have to imagine Michael Caine from Alfie robbing houses. Geogre 18:04, 26 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed, Geogre, the historic material had been dramatized three times in the first half of the 19th century. William Thomas Moncrieff (1794-1857) wrote the melodrama "Jack Sheppard, The Housebreaker or London in 1724" in 1825. John Baldwin Buckstone (1802-1879) dramatized the novel "Jack Sheppard" by William Harrison Ainsworth (1805-1882) in 1839, and just one year later Thomas Longdon Greenwood (1806-1879) once again. Compared to present-day expectations these dramas were probably quite mawkish and sensational fleapit productions. Nevertheless the lives of Jack Sheppard and Jonathan Wild are excellently suited for stage and screenplays. But we don't know whether we shall ever hear about the Benjamin Ross project again. --Bogart99 17:59, 18 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Images

Presuambly most of these are PD -

A copy of the print of the Thornhill portrait would be nice, and the Cruikshank cartoons of the execution at MEPL are great. -- ALoan (Talk) 12:37, 8 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

For four days now, the image on this article has been busted and refusing to display. I dunno what's wrong. Geogre 11:46, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Image:Jack Sheppard.jpg? Looks fine to me. It comes from commons - commons:Image:Jack_Sheppard.jpg. -- ALoan (Talk) 12:04, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Must be a Mozilla problem, then. It works from work but not from home. I'll chalk it up to browser games. Geogre 12:58, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The engraving at the top of this article is printed on p32 of the Linebaugh book in reverse; either that image or the one here is a mrror image. Philip Cross 20:35, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Can you scan it in? I suspect ours is reversed. See:

http://www.imagesonline.bl.uk/britishlibrary/controller/subjectidsearch?id=9375&&idx=1&startid=32393

Another interesting one is:

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/13097/13097-h/images/crim-6.jpg

A good Cruikshank would also be excellent. -- ALoan (Talk) 20:59, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Romance

Peter Linebaugh's view is so ... so ... heavily invested, let's say, that I worry about it. One thing that ought perhaps to be done is a "Sheppard as symbol" or "Sheppard as celebrity" section, where we can establish the function of Sheppard's stories in the public mind. All that Linebaugh says is undoubtedly true of how Sheppard was viewed by the public, of the function of Sheppard in the cultural mind, but it suffers from the typical problems of New Historicism by presuming to impute motives from a critical reading and assuming a cultural homogeneity that is difficult to defend, intellectually. It's fun, but it also looks like a contemporary critical historian championing a hero with as much enthusiasm as the mob going to see "The Escape of Gentleman Jack" puppet shows at Drury Lane. Geogre 11:45, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Removed from "People executed by hanging" category?!

I have a question. I was looking at the category of "People executed by hanging", and Jack Sheppard was missing from the S list! Why did you people remove that name?! It should have been kept or left alone! --Angeldeb82 20:41, 26 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It looks like a default sort order got copied across from another article and overrode the Jack Sheppard entry. Fixed now. Yomangani ^talk 21:19, 26 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry for getting in the way: I was trying to nuke the "popular culture" link (which you had already done) and ended up reverting your change accidentally (I I must have been editing an old version by mistake). -- ALoan (Talk) 22:12, 26 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Is it just me or...?

Now is it just me or is there something about one picture at the bottom of the other two in "The Last Scene" engraving by George Cruikshank in the "Legacy" section of this article? From what I could see in the bottom picture that reads, "The body of Jack Sheppard carried off by the mob", it looks kinda similar to a modern-day crowd surfing in a circle pit at metal, punk, rock, and indie concerts. You should find out more, okay? Imagine, a corpse crowd surfing. Now there's something you don't see every day. --Angeldeb82 02:24, 30 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You've got an article for The Journal of Popular Culture there: "Rock star crowd surfing as symbolic reenactment of public hanging." The rock stars are imitating the corpses, not the other way around. Geogre 10:32, 30 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

New Style Calendar

Interesting notes here. According to this article: "[Jack] Sheppard was first arrested after a burglary he committed with his brother, Tom... on 5 February 1724. ...Tom was arrested again on 24 April 1724." Of course, it's talking pre-Gregorian-Calendar New Style, pre 1752, which means that it would be February 5, 1723 in Old Style (as England used double-dating between January 1 and March 24, from the 12th century to 1752). So Jack's date of birth, March 4, 1702, in New Style would be March 4, 1701 in Old Style! Check this out! --Angeldeb82 20:45, 3 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, yes! When I say "pre-Gregorian-Calendar New Style", I mean the Julian date with the start of the year as January 1. Check this out also! So what do you think? --Angeldeb82 21:57, 3 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Where are Jack's remains now?

I asked someone via Hotmail about when the guys at St Martin-in-the-Fields are going to restore its now-lost churchyard. A Mrs. Louise Sherratt responded with an email and told me that "the burial grounds [at the churchyard] themselves were removed many decades ago and the remains respectfully reinterred in appropriate cemeteries elsewhere." I wonder which cemetery Jack's remains are in now. If someone can find any hint on which cemetery Jack's remains are in now and in which grave, I will be happy to oblige. --Angeldeb82 19:40, 5 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Oops! I guess you can't read my email, huh? Lucky for me, I have a thread about it on Find A Grave here. So I guess it turns out that Jack's remains are now lost. Pity, huh? --Angeldeb82 15:29, 6 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps they escaped during transfer. -- Anon, 23:12, 19 January, 2008

Contradiction

A later painting is said to be from Thornhill's sketch "now lost", but the first sketch in the article is attributed to Thornhill!??? Also, one appears to be a reverse image of the other. Can someone clarify? Thank you, Shir-El too 04:29, 27 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think it's the painting/portrait that is lost, while the sketch survives. I.e. we don't have his book, but we found his notes. (He also got copied.) Geogre 10:50, 27 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Jack's burial at around midnight

I think something is missing: the "Execution" section of this article says that Jack was interred at St Martin-in-the-Fields churchyard "that evening", but on page 225 of Lucy Moore's The Thieves' Opera, referenced in this article, it says "what remained of [Jack's] corpse was taken to the Barley Mow tavern", where another riot broke out outside before he was finally buried at St Martin-in-the-Fields churchyard "at about midnight". Hope someone who has read it should clarify about this. --Angeldeb82 01:00, 26 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Geographic inconsistencies within the article?

Sheppard hid in a cowshed in Tottenham (near modern Tottenham Court Road). Spotted by the barn's owner... ? This isn't correct, TCR isn't anywhere near Tottenham. --Neil Evans 01:58, 29 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Another hint of Blueskin's trial

I hate to be off-topic, but I have another hint of Blueskin Blake's trial right here on this link (just scroll down the list of names to find Blake). What do you think? --Angeldeb82 18:18, 29 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Wait, still can't find Blake? Try this link and see if that fits, okay? --Angeldeb82 18:26, 29 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

wow, both of the links above helped me a lot. thanks~!

I hate to be off-topic, but...

I think I found a pic of Blueskin attacking Jonathan Wild at the Old Bailey in the article in this link here. You should post that pic onto the Joseph Blake article if that's okay with you. --Angeldeb82 02:29, 2 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Redlinks

There are an awful lot of redlinks in this article. I thought I'd ask about it before going ahead and doing away with them: is there any compelling reason to keep them? Dylan (talk) 07:55, 20 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Is there any reason to remove them? If you want to do something useful with regard to redlinks then create an article to make them blue. Yomangani ^talk 14:30, 20 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It's a judgment call. If you believe a redlink is trivial or impossible to fill in (ever), then it's worth removing, but the presence of red links is no source of complaint. Sometimes, when an article goes onto the main page, helpful people come along and link positively every noun in the article. That kind of thing can lead to over linking. However, most of the red links are dandy things and should be left in peace. Unless a noun is, as I say, impossible (criminals who are only known to history in a single case, and that by a pseudonym) or utterly trivial (linking "thief" or "murder" can be silly), leave 'em be. Geogre (talk) 14:39, 20 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

confusing

"The inability of the notorious "Thief-Taker General" (and thief) Jonathan Wild to control Sheppard, and injuries suffered by Wild at the hands of Sheppard's colleague, Joseph "Blueskin" Blake, led to Wild's downfall."

I can't quite grasp the meaning of this sentece before reading it four times. Even then I have trouble grasping it's significance. Please reword, perhaps in three seperate sentences. :) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.64.108.73 (talk) 08:26, 20 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Artful Dodger

Recently, in the last 7 days or so, there was a documentary on BBC4 about Jack Shepherd and Jonathon Wild, though I don't recall the exact time or programme name. Anyway, this programme suggested that the Artful Dodger in Oliver Twist was also inspired by Jack Shepherd and the BBC is usually a pretty reliable source. 86.30.22.26 (talk) 05:51, 27 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

WP:URFA/2020

This featured article was reviewed as part of the URFA drive. The article will need a Featured Article Review if the article isn't updated. A list of problems is noted below.

The lead lacks clarity. Example 1 - paragraph 2 finishes with "led to Wild's downfall", how? Example 2 - "an autobiographical narrative thought to have been ghostwritten" is confusing
There are unreferenced statements such as "Jonathan Wild, secretly the linchpin of a criminal empire" and "Wild was lucky to survive, and his grip over his criminal empire started to slip while he recuperated."
The paragraph beginning "Taking advantage of the disturbance," has just two references leading to the possibility of original research.
The legacy section contains an unreferenced paragraph
The article needs copyediting for grammar for example "His badly mauled remains were recovered later and buried in the churchyard of St Martin-in-the-Fields that evening".

Desertarun (talk) 22:44, 2 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Desertarun I am not seeing the grammatical issue in your last point? Is it a BrEng thing? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:59, 3 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I misread that. Desertarun (talk) 09:30, 3 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]