Summary

Chapter 2:

Narration in the Sheppard manuscript suggests that the story of how Jack arrived at the gallows began with the arrival of plague ships in London, anchored in the River Thames, there to be quarantined.

Chapter 3:

Narration then suggests that the story of Jack’s journey in fact begins when he was much younger, and apprenticed by his mother (who apparently was ashamed of him) to a carpenter named Kneebone. The text suggests at the time Jack was turned over to the Kneebones, his mother referred to him as “she”; a footnote from Voth comments that of all the stories and writings about Sheppard, there is no other reference to his having been born female, although “nearly all the texts note him as ‘slight’ or otherwise effeminate [with] his wiriness and compact size frequently cited as his ability to escape tight spaces...