About this story
Jonathan Wild's town plants fourteen yards of lace in a widow's bedding, and the apprentice answers with a file in a loaf and six feet of wall. A silent crowd walks him up the Oxford Road, where a fortune-teller's prophecy closes at the foot of the tree. Forty-five chapters carry Jack Sheppard from a Mint garret to Tyburn, and the trade to a swept bench.
How it opens
At eleven on Friday, November 26, 1703, you prepared to leave a failing house in the Old Mint.
Your food and wine have made this room less cold than it was an hour ago.
The young widow's cough interrupted thanks meant for her dead husband's former master.
Tom died at Tyburn, but his child should not be sentenced by resemblance.
Choose
Offer the child training and shelter in my own home, provided his mother may consider it freely.
Promise practical help while leaving mother and child together for as long as she can care for him.