Thief and escape-artist Jack Sheppard sparred with thief-taker Jonathan Wild in streets thronged with gin-sellers, sex workers and beggars.

The Seven Dials area of St Giles is now pretty, but in the 18th century it was notorious for poverty and crime. Jack Sheppard was from Wych Street, an apprentice carpenter who gave up the straight and narrow to become an accomplished housebreaker. With no organised police force, thieves, highwaymen and fences bribed those hired to catch them, meeting in low-down dives where they spoke a secret language called flash. Notoriously corrupt thief-taker Jonathan Wild captured Jack Sheppard more than once, but Jack made dramatic escapes from prison aided by his sexworker-partner Edgworth Bess.

With gin selling at a penny a glass, carousing was full-on in areas outsiders called rookeries, thieves’ kitchens, the Holy Land and, for Drury Lane’s red-light zone, Little Sodom. A range of middle-class spies, social investigators, reporters and slum-tourists came to look and sometimes join in goings-on they found both appalling and titillating. John Gay portrayed Jack Sheppard and Jonathan Wild in the characters of Captain MacHeath and Mr Peachum in The Beggar's Opera, London's favourite play throughout the 18th century. But Jack's story ends at the Fatal Tree.

Laura Agustín is an historian and writer interested to tell stories of ordinary folks, those not named in history books.

The Naked Anthropologist is Laura's longtime blog, focusing now on London history walks with Gender, Sex and Class.

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