Sheppard had many imitators, but few equals. Possibly the ease with which he broke prison led to an increase in precautions, and I can find no other cases of evasion in Jack Sheppard’s manner. There are several instances of attempted escapes by the reverse process, not over the walls, but through them or along the sewers. Burnworth, while in Newgate in 1726,[138] projected a plan of escape. He got an iron crow, and assisted by certain prisoners, pulled stones out of the walls, while others sung psalms to put the turnkeys off their guard. Next day the officers came to remove five convicts awaiting execution, but found the room so full of stones and rubbish that some hours elapsed before the prisoners could be got out. Burnworth made another but equally ineffective attempt next day. Joshua Dean, capitally convicted in 1731 for counterfeiting stamps, formed a design with seven other prisoners awaiting transportations to the plantations to break gaol. They found means to get down into the common sewer no doubt by taking up the floor. Thence four of them reached a vault under a house in Fleet Lane, and so into the shop through which three got off, but the fourth was secured and carried back to Newgate. The fate of two at least of the remaining three was not known till long afterwards. In 1736, a certain Daniel Malden, who had already escaped once, again got out of Newgate by sawing his chains near the staple, by which they were fastened to the wall of the condemned hold, and getting through the brickwork, dropped into the common sewer. “Several persons were employed to search after him, but to no purpose, though the chains about him weighed nearly a hundred pounds.” Malden was not discovered, but the searchers came upon “the bodies of two persons who had been smothered in trying to escape.” These were no doubt two of those mentioned above. This method of evasion continued to be practised till long afterwards. In 1785 two convicts cut a hole in the floor of their cell, and got into the common sewer to make their escape. “But wading till they were almost suffocated, they at length reached the gully-hole, and calling for help, were taken out alive, but too weak to walk, and carried to their former quarters.”