[[File:Elizabeth Lyon (Edgworth Bess).jpg|thumb|Lyon escaping from [[New Prison]] in [[Clerkenwell]], aided by [[Jack Sheppard]].]]
[[File:Elizabeth Lyon (Edgworth Bess).jpg|thumb|Lyon escaping from [[New Prison]] in [[Clerkenwell]], aided by [[Jack Sheppard]].]]
”’Elizabeth Lyon”’ ({{fl.}} 1722–1726), nicknamed Edgworth Bess or Edgeware Bess,
”’Elizabeth Lyon”’ ({{fl.}} 1722–1726), nicknamed Edgworth Bess or Edgeware Bess,
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Elizabeth Lyon (fl. 1722–1726), nicknamed Edgworth Bess or Edgeware Bess,
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Lyon was born in Edgware, Middlesex. Nothing is known about her background or her early life, and it is uncertain whether Lyon was her maiden or married name. It is possible that Lyon had a partner who was an absentee soldier, although sources differ over whether she was his wife, mistress or whether she prostituted herself to him. Philip Sugden, her biographer for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography writes that it is possible that she may be the same person as the Elizabeth Miller, alias Lyon, who stole silk and cambric from her landlord, John Davenport, in St Peter, Westcheap, London. Miller was convicted of the crime at the Old Bailey in October 1721 and her hand was branded.
In 1722 or 1723 Lyon was working as a prostitute at the Black Lyon alehouse, an outlet run by Joseph Hinds, a button-mould maker in Lewkenor’s Lane, St Giles, London. She was known as “Edgworth Bess” by the drinkers there.[a] Hind had several prostitutes working out of the tavern; they would flirt with the drinkers to encourage them to spend more money. Lyon met one of the tavern’s customers, Jack Sheppard; at the time he was apprenticed to a carpenter in Drury Lane, where had also learned lock-making—and lock-picking. Sheppard is said to have been enamoured with her and the two soon entered into a relationship. She is described as a large woman and he as a small—he was only 5 feet 4 inches (1.63 m) tall—and slight man.
Lyon encouraged Sheppard to begin a career in thievery; he began by stealing two silver spoons from the Rummer tavern in Charing Cross where he was doing some carpentry. In July 1723 Lyon was arrested—either for creating a disturbance or for stealing a gold ring—and taken to the St Giles’s Roundhouse. Sheppard broke into the building, knocked over the beadle and freed Lyon. Shortly after this, in August 1723, Sheppard left his apprenticeship and moved to Fulham with Lyon. Sheppard soon graduated to housebreaking and Lyon became his accomplice, long with his brother, Thomas.
In May 1724 Sheppard was arrested and held in the St Ann’s roundhouse. When Lyon visited him the next day, she was arrested as a possible accomplice and held; they were both then placed in the New Prison in Clerkenwell; they claimed they were husband and wife and were therefore given a cell together. The gaoler had heard that Sheppard had escaped from his previous imprisonment, so fitted him with chains and weighed down with two weights, each weighing 14 pounds (6.4 kg). After some friends visited and smuggled some tools to the couple, Sheppard sawed through his weights and an iron bar before drilling through a 9 inches (23 cm) oak beam. They fabricated ropes from sheets, gowns and Lyon’s petticoats and climbed down 25 feet (7.6 m). What they did not realise is that they had climbed down from New Prison into the adjoining Clerkenwell Bridewell prison. The couple scaled the 22 feet (6.7 m) walls and escaped.
On the day of his execution Sheppard had a pamphlet printed in which he allocated the blame for his downfall on Hind and Lyon:
After all I may justly lay the blame of my temporal and … my eternal ruin on Joseph Hind, a button-mould maker, who formerly kept the Black Lyon alehouse in Drury Lane; the frequenting of this wicked house brought me acquainted with Elizabeth Lyon, and with a train of vices, as before I was altogether a stranger to.
Notes and references
[edit]
- ^ Most sources refer to Lyon’s nickname as “Edgworth Bess”, but Steadman renders it as “Edgware Bess”. The writer Mark Herber observes her nickname “Edgworth Bess” was because she was born in what was called Edgworth at the time; it has since been renamed Edgware.
- Bleackley, Horace (1933). Jack Sheppard. Edinburgh: William Hodge & Company. OCLC 608481012.
- Ellinghausen, Laurie (2018). Pirates, Traitors, and Apostates: Renegade Identities in Early Modern English Writing. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. ISBN 978-1-4875-0268-3.
- Golden, Catherine J. (2017). Serials to Graphic Novels: The Evolution of the Victorian Illustrated Book. Gainesville, Florida: University Press of Florida. ISBN 978-0-8130-6229-7.
- Grovier, Kelly (2008). The Gaol: The Story of Newgate, London’s Most Notorious Prison. London: John Murray. ISBN 978-0-7195-6132-0.
- Hamerton, Christopher (2023). Devilry, Deviance and Public Sphere: The Social Discovery of Moral Panic in Eighteenth Century London. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. doi:10.1007/978-3-031-14883-5. ISBN 978-3-0311-4882-8.
- Herber, Mark D. (2002). Criminal London: A Pictorial History from Medieval Times to 1939. Chichester, West Sussex: Phillimore & Co. ISBN 978-1-8607-7199-6.
- Hibbert, Christopher (1957). The Road to Tyburn: The Story of Jack Sheppard and the Eighteenth-century London Underworld. New York: The World Publishing Company. OCLC 319811.
- Howson, Gerald (1987). It Takes a Thief: The Life and Times of Jonathan Wild. London: Cresset Library. ISBN 978-0-0917-0861-0.
- Linebaugh, Peter (1993). The London Hanged: Crime and Civil Society in the Eighteenth Century. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-5214-5758-3.
- Linnane, Fergus (2004). London’s Underworld: Three Centuries of Vice and Crime. London: Robson. ISBN 978-1-8610-5742-6.
- Rawlings, Philip (1992). Drunks, Whores and Idle Apprentices: Criminal Biographies of the Eighteenth Century. London: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-4150-5056-2.
- Sheppard, Jack (1724). A Narrative of all the Robberies, Escapes etc of John Sheppard. London: John Applebee. OCLC 1063047538.
- Skirboll, Aaron (2014). The Thief-taker Hangings: How Daniel Defoe, Jonathan Wild and Jack Sheppard Captivated London and Created the Celebrity Criminal. Guilford, Connecticut: Lyons Press. ISBN 978-0-7627-9148-4.
- Winton, Calhoun (2015). John Gay and the London Theatre. Lexington, Kentucky: The University Press of Kentucky. ISBN 0-8131-1832-8.
Journals and magazines
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- Clark, Gregory (28 April 2018). “Average Earnings and Retail Prices, UK, 1209–2017” (PDF). MeasuringWorth. Archived from the original (PDF) on 26 July 2023. Retrieved 3 March 2025.
- Clark, Gregory (2023). “The Annual RPI and Average Earnings for Britain, 1209 to Present (New Series)”. MeasuringWorth. Retrieved 30 January 2018.
- “Elizabeth Lyon. Theft; Burglary. 2nd March 1726”. Old Bailey Proceedings Online. Archived from the original on 20 October 2025. Retrieved 20 October 2025.
- Sugden, Philip (2004). “Lyon, Elizabeth [nicknamed Edgware Bess]”. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/62078. (Subscription, Wikipedia Library access or UK public library membership required.)
- Sugden, Philip (2017). “Sheppard, John [Jack]”. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/25343. (Subscription, Wikipedia Library access or UK public library membership required.)
