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Jack Sheppard's crimes were all petty: stealing two silver spoons, a roll of cloth, £7 in cash. But he was poor and associated with prostitutes and other thieves, so when he was caught, he didn't stand a chance: he was sentenced to hang. His only options were to wait out his time in gaol or escape, which he did, only to repeat the procedure, with increasing audacity, four times.
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In contrast, crimes committed by the rich, such as fraud and embezzlement, rarely ended in such harsh sentences. A year after Jack had been repeatedly locked up, the lord chancellor, Lord Macclesfield, was found guilty of corruption. He was fined £30,000, which the king helped him to pay, and spent a mere six weeks in the Tower.
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Law enforcement was a chaotic affair. There was no national police force, but lots of local law enforcers whose work was not co-ordinated and who, in the face of a crime wave, were quite ineffective.
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