Jonathan Wild “Thief Taker General”

Jonathan Wild is a London law enforcement & underworld figure, notable for operating on both sides of the law, posing as the public-spirited crimefighter, titled “Thief Taker General”

Wild exploits the public demand for action during the present crime wave. A powerful gang-leader himself, he’s a master manipulator collecting the rewards offered for valuables he has stolen himself, bribing prison-guards to release his colleagues, and blackmailing arresting and executioning his rivals.

Early life

Jonathan Wild was born in a poor family, he married and had a son before coming London. Little is known of Wild’s first years in London, but he was arrested and sent to a debtor’s prison. The prison was notoriously corrupt, with turnkeys demanding bribes for any minor comfort. Wild became popular, running errands for the turnkeys and eventually earning enough to repay his original debts and the cost of being imprisoned, and even lend money to other prisoners.

He was allowed out at night to aid in the arrest of thieves, during which time he met Mary Milliner, a prostitute who taught him criminal ways and brought him into her own gang of thieves and whores. She introduced him to a wide range of London’s criminal underclass from  which he learned new skills and made contacts.

Upon release, he lived with Mary serving as her tough when she went night-walking. Soon Wild was thoroughly acquainted with the underworld, both with its methods and its inhabitants. Mary began to act as a madam to other prostitutes, and Wild as a receiver of stolen goods. Wild began to dispose of stolen goods and to pay bribes to get thieves out of prison. He later parted with Milliner, cutting off her ear to mark her as a prostitute.

Coming into his own

Crime has risen dramatically recently in London, Charles Hitchen, Wild’s mentor obtained public office as the City’s Under Marshal after paying for the appointment. He abused his office, by practising extortion on an extravagant scale, both from thieves and from their potential victims. Hitchen accepted bribes to let thieves out of jail, selectively arrested criminals, and coerce sexual services from molly houses. He approached Wild to become one of his assistants in thief-taking, a profitable activity due to the rewards paid by the government for catching a felon.

Printed pamphlets have led to a rising interest in crime and criminals. They report notable crimes and ingenious attacks, the public worry more and more about crime and criminals. London depends entirely upon localised policing and has no city-wide police force. Unease with crime is at a feverish high. The public is eager to embrace both colourful criminals and valiant crime-fighters. The city’s population has more than doubled, and there is no effective means of controlling crime. London has seen a rise not only in thieves, but in organised crime.

By this time, Hitchen was restored to his office, but Wild went his own way, and he opened a small office in the Blue Boar tavern, in Little Old Bailey. He continued to call himself Hitchen’s “Deputy”, entirely without any official  standing, and took to carrying a sword as a mark of his supposed authority,  also alluding to pretensions of gentility.

Wild’s public career as “Thief-Taker General”

Jonathan Wild’s method of illegally amassing riches while appearing to be on the side of the law is ingenious. He runs a gang of thieves, keeps the stolen goods, and waited for the crime and theft to be announced publically. At this point, he claim’s that his “thief taking agents” had “found” the stolen merchandise, and returns it to its rightful owners for a reward.

If the stolen items or circumstances allow for blackmail, he does not wait for the theft to be announced. As well as “recovering” these stolen goods, he would offers aid in finding the thieves. The thieves that Wild helps to “discover”, however, are rivals or members of his own gang who had refused to cooperate with his taking the majority of the money.

Jonathan Wild’s ability to hold his gang together, and indeed the majority of his scheme, relies upon fear. The crime of selling stolen goods has become increasingly dangerous, low-level thieves run a great risk in fencing their goods. Wild avoids and exploits this danger simultaneously by having his gang steal, either through pickpocketing or mugging, and then by “recovering” the goods.

He never sold the goods back, explicitly, nor ever pretended that they were not stolen. He claimed at all times that he found the goods by policing and avowed hatred of thieves. That very penalty for selling stolen goods, however, allowed Wild to control his gang very effectively, for he could turn in any of his thieves to the authorities at any time. By giving the goods to him for a cut of the profits, Wild’s thieves were selling stolen goods. If they did not give their take to him, Wild would  simply apprehend them as thieves. However, what Wild chiefly did was use his thieves and ruffians to “apprehend” rival gangs.

Jonathan Wild was not the first thief-taker who was actually a thief himself. Charles Hitchen had used his position as Under-Marshal to practice extortion. He had pressured brothels and pickpockets to pay him off or give him the stolen goods since purchasing the position, and the extortion was already an established practice at that time. When Hitchen was suspended from his duties for corruption in that year, he engaged Jonathan Wild to keep his business of extortion going in his absence.

Hitchen was re-instated and found that Wild was now a rival, and one of Wild’s first acts of gang warfare was to eliminate as many of the thieves in Hitchen’s control as he could. Hitchen attempted to expose Wild when he named him as a manager and source of crime. Wild replied with An Answer to a Late Insolent Libel and there explained that Hitchen was a homosexual who visited “molly houses.” Hitchen attempted to further combat Wild with a pamphlet entitled The Regulator, which was his characterization of Wild, but Hitchen’s prior suspensions from duties and the shocking charge of homosexuality virtually eliminated him as a threat to Wild.

Wild holds a virtual monopoly on crime in London managing of his “empire.” He kept records of all thieves in his employ, and when they had  outlived their usefulness, Wild sold them to the gallows for the reward. When a thief vexed Wild in some way, he put a cross by the thief’s name; a second cross condemned the man to be sold to the Crown for hanging.

In public, Wild presents an heroic face. He was the man who returns stolen goods and catches criminals. Wild calls himself “Thief Taker General”. He has personally sent over sixty thieves to the gallows. His “finding” of lost merchandise is private, but his efforts at finding thieves are public. Wild’s office in the Old Bailey is a busy spot. Victims of crime would come by, even before announcing their losses, and discover that Wild’s agents had “found” the missing items, and Wild offers to help find the criminals for an extra fee.

Wild’s fame was such that the Privy Council consults with him on methods of controlling crime. Wild’s recommendation was, unsurprisingly, that the rewards for evidence against thieves be raised. Indeed, the reward for capturing a thief has gone from 40gps to 140gps. This amounts to a significant pay increase for Wild. A Tory group had succeeded in having the laws against receiving stolen property tightened, primarily with Wild’s activities in mind. Ironically, this strengthened Wild’s hand, rather than weakening it, for it made it more difficult for thieves to fence their goods except through Wild.

Wild’s battles with thieves mades excellent press. Wild himself approachs writers with accounts of his derring-do, and the papers passed these on to a concerned public.