There was a spectacular public reaction to Sheppard's deeds. He was even cited (favourably) as an example in newspapers, pamphlets, broadsheets, and ballads were all devoted to his amazing exploits,[40] and his story was adapted for the stage almost immediately. Harlequin Sheppard, a pantomime by one John Thurmond (subtitled "A night scene in grotesque characters"), opened at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane on Saturday 28 November, only two weeks after Sheppard's hanging.[39][41] In a famous contemporary sermon, a London preacher drew on Sheppard's popular escapes as a way of holding his congregation's attention:

Let me exhort ye, then, to open the locks of your hearts with the nail of repentance! Burst asunder the fetters of your beloved lusts! – mount the chimney of hope! – take from thence the bar of good resolution! – break through the stone wall of despair!

imagine a place where a lumpenprole is bigger than Jesus, that's 1700s era London

In Jordy Rosenberg's 2018 novel Confessions of the Fox, a 21st-century academic discovers a manuscript containing Sheppard's "confessions", which tell the story of his childhood and his love affair with Edgeworth Bess, and make the unlikely revelation that he was a transgender man.

Academics stop writing narcissist self insert stories challenge