Two Intruders at the Bedside — Illustration from *Jack Sheppard*

George Cruikshank's steel or wood engraving shows two tricorn-hatted men stealing into a candlelit bedchamber where two figures sleep unaware. One intruder clutches a pistol, the other reaches toward the bed; a chair draped with clothing stands in the foreground, a candle stub guttering on the mattress edge. The scene typifies Cruikshank's tightly cross-hatched narrative illustration — rooted in Hogarth's moral sequential prints and Rowlandson's dramatic tableaux — that would directly seed the visual grammar of comic strips: sequential scenes, expressive silhouettes, darkness used for moral weight. Jack Sheppard, the celebrated thief-hero, carried romantic working-class appeal that made the novel controversial; Cruikshank later claimed it glorified crime.