The etching shows a strip cartoon of four small panels in which Jack is shown escaping from the castle to the Red Room through its door and a further door separating the Red room from the Chapel.
Jack Sheppard is a novel by William Harrison Ainsworth which was published in serial form in Bentley's Miscellany from 1839-1840 with illustrations by George Cruikshank. It is derived from a true-life story of an eighteenth-century criminal who escaped from prison four times before being caught and hanged. The series ran at the same time as Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist.
