The Last Scene: Three Episodes from Jack Sheppard

George Cruikshank sequences three moments from the execution of the notorious thief Jack Sheppard across a single plate, captioned in his own hand: Jack Sheppard's Farewell to Mr. Wood, Blueskin cutting down Jack Sheppard, and The body of Jack Sheppard carried off by the Mob. The gallows at Tyburn anchors the middle panel; crowds surge in every frame with the dense cross-hatching Cruikshank inherited from Hogarth and Gillray. The stacked-panel format — sequential images, captions beneath, unified title below — is precisely the visual grammar that German Bilderbogen picture-sheets and Töpffer's comic albums were simultaneously codifying into what would become the comic strip. Cruikshank romanticizes the criminal crowd without apparent irony, flattering a working-class audience hungry for Sheppard as folk hero.