The Thieves Opera by Lucy Moore

Jonathan Wild and Jack Sheppard were criminals as famous in their time as Dick Turpin.

They thrived in the criminal underworld of the eighteenth century.

From Gay’s ‘Beggars’ Opera’ and Hogarth’s ‘Industry and Idleness’ to the 1969 film ‘Where’s Jack’ the exploits of Jack Sheppard, burglar and escapologist extraordinaire, and Jonathan Wild, a gang boss who for twelve years convinced the Establishment of his probity, have lived in song, drama and story for almost three centuries.

Now Lucy Moore takes us deep into their world — the gaudy, bawdy, rowdy and dangerous London underworld of the early eighteenth century — and shows how in that violent yet oddly intimate society two very different criminals, who brought about each other’s downfall, could in the process achieve immortality in the popular imagination.