Confessions of the Fox

In Chapter 1, Jack Sheppard is hanged. He has been caught by the Thief-Catcher General, Jonathan Wild. Wild is a thief and gang leader who works within the legal system for his own benefit. He has a personal vendetta against Sheppard and relishes trussing up the execution cart and being seen as the one who caught the legendary thief.

Jack worries about his loved ones, Bess and Aurie, as the execution procession makes its way to Tyburn. Tyburn is historically an infamous place in London for the hanging of thieves, rebels, and other outcasts. Jack does not know what happened to either Bess or Aurie in the aftermath of his capture. The chapter ends with Jack’s internal prayer to Bess, his lover.

The chapter begins with speculation on the part of unnamed townspeople, some of whom believe that the plague ships led to Jack’s capture and death. The plague ships are quarantined in the river Thames, away from the docks, suspected to have plague-ridden crews on board. The first plague ship to arrive was the Repulse. In the first days, dozens of ships arrived without warning or information as to why they sat in the middle of the river without docking at the city.

This chapter begins by presenting an alternative theory to the one laid out in Chapter 2: Some believe that Jack was doomed from the start as a transgender man seeking freedom in 18th-century England. In October 1713, an adolescent Jack is sold by his mother to Kneebone, a carpenter. Jack is supposed to serve as his apprentice. Both Jack and Kneebone misgender him and treat him as a girl. This treatment causes Jack to dissociate frequently. Both Kneebone and his mother call him “P—,” an omitted name that hurts Jack (his birth name, colloquially called a “deadname” in the transgender community) (24). Kneebone treats Jack like a cog in a machine whose purpose is to make him money. He keeps him under lock and key like property and routinely physically abuses him. Kneebone looks down on the impoverished as inherently immoral and lazy and believes he has rescued Jack. Kneebone places a notice for the Act for the Prevention of Fugitive Laborers on the inside of Jack’s door to remind him of his status as property belonging to Kneebone. Jack is indentured to Kneebone for 10 years and spends his days making luxury stools for the small lapdogs of the aristocracy.

Bess Khan arrives in London in December 1713. Bess has never visited the city before and is appalled by the lack of nature and the hostile, filthy environment. She sees the city as a collection of shops and a monument to profit at the expense of the natural environment. Bess is penniless, with no trade and no connections. Seeking refuge at an Anabaptist church, she stumbles into a sermon partway through. The preacher calls for equality and a return to community over profit. He condemns the individualism and cruelty of contemporary London society, with its laws against idleness and privatization of common spaces. Bess agrees with all his views but sours when he suggests that the way forward is peace. She notices that the front row of the congregation contains upper-middle-class merchants who are very enthusiastic about the preacher’s ideas of peace.

Bess considers the entire sermon a sham. She is approached by Jenny Diver, who also finds the sermon ridiculous. Jenny recruits Bess into sex work, which Jenny believes holds a far more authentic philosophical approach to life and the vices of capitalism than pacifism. Bess’s first client is the preacher himself, Ezekiah Smith. Smith tells her about his beliefs in extreme pacifism as she conducts her business.

Voth comments in the footnotes on Bess’s characterization as a person of south-east Asian descent. Historically, Bess is a mysterious figure that only appears in connection with Jack Sheppard. Confessions is the first source to portray her as a woman of color. Voth believes this makes the text more authentic, as London was a highly diverse city in the 18th century and not as white as many people believe it was.

Jack lives two lives: Outside of Kneebone’s house, he is a free man, while inside, he is a captive, treated as property and misgendered as a woman. Jack has difficulty breathing correctly due to an unsafe level of binding (a practice within the transgender community of taping or pressuring one’s breasts down to create a flat, masculinized chest). On March 12, 1724, Jack is out for his routine business on Kneebone’s behalf when he makes eye contact with Bess. Bess calls him a “handsome boy,” the first time anybody else has recognized Jack’s gender (45). Encouraged by Bess’s attention, Jack picks his locks that night and escapes into the nightlife of London. Jack heads for the Black Lion, hoping to find Bess.

Andrews, the Dean of Surveillance, calls Voth into a meeting in the newly constructed offices in the library. Andrews is very concerned with Voth’s productivity and efficiency at work. Thanks to the hi-tech surveillance equipment installed all over the campus, Andrews has hours of video footage of Voth playing Scrabble on his phone during his office hours. Andrews tells him this is a violation of his contract and a misuse of labor time that belongs to the university: Voth’s phone-game playing is tantamount to theft. Voth tries to defend himself: Students don’t visit during office hours, and he has little else to do. Andrews is not persuaded and puts Voth on indefinite unpaid leave. Voth takes this as a sign to focus all his energy on the manuscript.

Jack meets Bess at the Black Lion, where she is surrounded by other sex workers and mollies (an archaic term for all varieties of gender-nonconformity among people assigned male at birth). Bess and Jack have a conversation in London Cant, a jargon-laden variant of English that sex workers and the criminal underworld used to weed out undercover officials and discuss illegal activities in broad daylight. Bess calls Jack a “fox,” a term Voth notes was typically associated with men but could mean an attractive individual of any gender. Bess calls Jack a professional at breaking and entering given his ability to slip away from Kneebone. Bess’s confidence encourages Jack to view thievery as a form of liberation. Jack’s conversation with Bess is the first time he decides on the name Jack; he does not tell her his deadname.

Jack continues to slip out and see Bess. He tries to visit her at her brothel, Seraglio, but does not have the money to enter. Jack scales the building and slips in through Bess’s window. The two talk, and Bess offers to buy him dinner and gives him a velvet coat left by a customer. During their dinner, a bar patron throws racist insults at Bess. Jack makes a show of wanting to defend her, but Bess admonishes him for his performative courage, which she says is for the benefit of his own ego and not to help her. Bess directly suggests that Jack take up thieving and free himself to free himself from his double life.

Voth begins a relationship with his pharmacist, Ursula, at the local Rite Aid. The two are neighbors, and Voth sees her regularly. Ursula is highly interested in his scholarship and the manuscript. The two plan to have dinner at her home in the near future. Voth welcomes the distraction from his personal life, where he is beginning to struggle due to the lack of income.

Jack’s nightly adventures cost him sleep and he begins nodding off on the job. Kneebone hits him when he falls asleep and withholds his food as punishment. While out on his routine business, Jack sees an unattended pocket watch in a storefront and contemplates stealing it. Before he can, another thief named Tom “Hell-and-Fury” Sykes steals it. Sykes makes a scene and blames the theft on Jack. In a panic, Jack runs and is tackled by a police officer, who searches him thoroughly. Jack manages to escape after the pat down. Afterward, Jack spots Sykes and slyly steals the watch from him.

Jonathan Wild, the Thief-Catcher General, keeps his offices in the Waste House where he can watch all the sewage flow out of London. An unnamed woman comes and asks him to investigate the theft of the watch. After she leaves, Sykes appears and reveals that he stole the watch on Wild’s orders. Wild knew the woman would come to him, and now he can return the watch to her and split the profit with Sykes. Sykes discovers that the watch is not on his person, and a furious Wild dismisses him from the office.

Wild receives a third guest, James Evans, who is conducting cryptic experiments on Wild’s behalf. These experiments are an effort to replicate the formula for the strength gravel introduced in later chapters.

As he spends more time with Bess and listens to her radical views on liberation, Jack begins to imagine a future with her—one in which he can live as his authentic self. Jack shows her the watch, and Bess is immensely proud of his courage. Jack is one of the few thieves in the city who isn’t owned by Wild. Under Wild, thieving has become a sensationalized scourge of the city. Wild drums up the moral panic around thieving and then sells the solution—his services—back to the city. Bess suggests that she and Jack meet a contact of hers at the docks so that Jack can fence the watch without crossing paths with Wild.

The two become intimate, but Jack flees before they become too involved, fearing how Bess might react to his body. Bess offers him a place to stay, but Jack is afraid of taking charge of his life. Jack forgets to lock up his own shackles that night, and Kneebone beats him when he discovers Jack has picked his locks. Jack decides that he must escape Kneebone and “steal” his own labor and life back from Kneebone.

Jack finds Bess at the docks. He meets Jenny along with two mollies named Franny and Laurent. Jack finds the mollies beautiful but remembers Kneebone’s claim that they are responsible for disease and other social ills. Jack is struck by the difference in the beauty of the mollies and Kneebone’s opinions on them.

Before Bess can introduce Jack to her contact, Jack is arrested for the theft of the watch. The police find it in his pocket and use it as evidence to drag him off to prison.

Jack is imprisoned at Newgate and sentenced to hang. While awaiting his execution, Jack meets Wild. Wild tries to recruit Jack to work for him, presenting himself as a guarantor of trade and commerce. Wild values the exchange of goods and profit above everything else. Jack refuses to work for him. While he awaits his execution, Jack is treated as an exhibition for the middle class to gawk at. He begins to hear voices that seem to come from nowhere. Only later will he learn that he has the ability to hear the voices of objects, provided that those objects are traded as commodities.

Voth meets Ursula for dinner. Sexual tension builds between the two as Ursula becomes overly involved in telling Voth about her troubles as a single parent raising a child who has just discovered masturbation. Voth destroys the tension by turning the conversation to his unpaid suspension from work. Voth has not been in a relationship for a long while and feels a lot of self-pity for his inability to communicate smoothly with a woman.

Voth receives an email from P-Quad Inc., a company known for its pharmaceutical supplements. P-Quad is a major partner of Voth’s university and has found out about the manuscript. The company wishes to fund his transcribing and annotation of the manuscript through a freelance position. P-Quad uses highbrow references to Jacques Derrida and other intellectual luminaries to persuade Voth of their sincerity. Voth declines the offer.

Jack uses a loose nail from the floorboards of his cell to unlock his shackles. His expertise in carpentry allows him to break out of the prison with nothing but the nail. Jack’s escape from a high-security prison makes him a legendary folk hero overnight. Jack listens to talk about himself when he stops at the Olde Eare Inn for dinner. Some people believe he will liberate the lower classes from oppression. The people nickname him the Gaolbreaker General.

Jack finds his way back to Bess after escaping, and the two have sex for the first time. Jack refuses to let Bess touch him sexually due to his gender dysphoria and worry that she will not find him as attractive as her cisgender men clients. Jack worries that Bess will hold his behavior against him, but Bess refuses to put words to the experience. She believes that sexual ecstasy isn’t under the sway of an individual’s free will and is beyond words. Bess gained this understanding from the work of the Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza. While Bess sleeps afterward, she cries out about Popham’s Eau, a reference Jack does not yet understand.

Voth comments in the footnotes about the unusual description of the sex between the two. If the manuscript were authentic to its time period, then there should be obscenely detailed descriptions of Jack’s genitals as a transgender person. Sexologists (early scientists who studied human sexual dimorphism) of the time period are known for writing pages-long descriptions of atypical genitals and the genitals of transgender people. Confessions omits descriptions of Jack’s genitals entirely. This deviation from the conventions of the genre suggests, paradoxically, that the manuscript is either less authentic or more authentic than it seems. Either it's a later forgery and not an 18th-century manuscript at all, or it contains Jack’s voice in a much more unmediated form than Voth would normally expect.

In Chapter 15, Bess muses on her night of intimacy with Jack. Bess sees that Jack has a fundamentally different relationship to sex than the men she sleeps with for work. Jack’s different relationship to sex is a key reason Bess finds him enigmatically attractive. Other men, Bess believes, reduce themselves to children for an orgasm. They are “infantile,” “easily given to abandon,” and “secure and pleased with themselves” (107). Jack is none of these things and remains an adult throughout their intimacy. Jack’s refusal to lose himself makes Bess want to undo him sexually.

Jack wanders the shore of the Thames at night. He recalls Kneebone, explaining that even the waste and refuse thrown into the river belongs to the city. This legal ownership means that the impoverished people who scavenge it are committing theft and liable to go to prison. Jack trips over a man while lost in thought. The man pins him to the ground, believing Jack is a police officer. After a brief exchange in London Cant, the man realizes he is Jack Sheppard, the legendary thief, and lets him go. The man introduces himself as Aurelius “Blueskin” Blake, or Aurie for short. Aurie is a fellow thief who, like Jack, refuses to work for Wild.

The two men decide to rob a toy store together. Jack uses his expert knowledge of architecture to slip them into the toy store. Once inside, Jack begins hearing voices despite the store being empty. Inaudible to Aurie, the voices are overwhelming to Jack, and he soon realizes they come from the toys and objects that line the shelves. They shout gibberish and tell Jack about how they were made. The objects beg Jack to steal them and make use of them. Jack decides to steal a rocking horse, and the two slip out of the store.

Voth visits Ursula at work, hoping to make up for the awkwardness of their dinner date. Ursula is distant and distracted during their conversation. Voth receives multiple calls from the university and ignores them, which only makes the situation more awkward. The two plan another dinner date. Outside in his car, Voth discovers that the Dean of Surveillance, Andrew, was trying to schedule a meeting with him.

Jack brings the rocking horse back to Bess and gives it to her. The two have sex again while Bess rides the rocking horse. Jack finally allows her to touch him and worries that she will reject him. Bess tells him that he’s “Something,” a word that Jack has always used internally to refer to his identity as a transgender man, his general differences, and his ambiguous genitals. She compares him lovingly to creatures made of multiple different parts of different animals, like the Sphinx or a centaur. Bess gives him a prosthetic penis and harness to help him achieve the kind of sex he would like to have with her.

Afterward, Jack tells her about the commodities that spoke to him. Bess believes it was the same voices he heard when he was put on display by Wild in Newgate. As an object for the rich to gawk at, Jack was turned into a commodity like the toys on display in the windows of the toy shop. Bess believes the objects speak to Jack because, as a thief, he can liberate them from the dusty shelves where they go unused.