prodigies of ingenious wickedness and artful mischief which
have surprised the world in our time, perhaps none has made so great a
noise as John Shepherd, the malefactor of whom we are now to speak. His
father's name was Thomas Shepherd, who was by trade a carpenter, and
lived in Spitalfields, a man of an extraordinary good character, and who
took all the care his narrow circumstances would allow, that his family
might be brought up in the fear of God, and in just notions of their
duty towards their neighbour. Yet he was so unhappy in his children that
both his son John and another took to evil courses, and both in their
turns have been convicted at the bar at the Old Bailey.

After the father's death, his widow did all she could to get this
unfortunate son of hers admitted into Christ's Hospital, but failing of
that, she got him bred up at a school in Bishopsgate Street, where he
learned to read. He might in all probability have got a good education
if he had not been too soon removed, being put out to a trade, viz.,
that of a cane-chair-maker, who used him very well, and with whom
probably he might have lived honestly. But his mother dying a short time
afterwards, he was put to another, a much younger man, who used him so
harshly that in a little time he ran away from him, and was put to
another master, one Mr. Wood in Wych Street. From his kindness and that
of Mr. Kneebone (whom he robbed) he was taught to write and had many
other favours done by that gentleman whom he so ungratefully treated.
But good usage or bad, it was grown all alike to him now; he had given
himself up to all the sensual pleasures of low life. Drinking all day,
and getting to some impudent and notorious strumpet at night, was the
whole course of his life for a considerable space, without the least
reflection on what a miserable fate it might bring upon him here, much
less the judgment that might be passed upon him hereafter.

Amongst the chief of his mistresses there was one Elizabeth Lion,
commonly called Edgeworth Bess, the impudence of whose behaviour was
shocking even to the greatest part of Shepherd's companions, but it
charmed him so much that he suffered her for a while to direct him in
every thing, and she was the first who engaged him in taking base
methods to obtain money wherewith to purchase baser pleasures. This Lion
was a large masculine woman, and Shepherd a very little slight-limbed
lad, so that whenever he had been drinking and