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Jonathan Wild

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Historical figures

   Jonathan Wild in the condemned cell at Newgate Prison
   Jonathan Wild in the condemned cell at Newgate Prison

   Jonathan Wild (c. 1683– May 24, 1725) was perhaps the most famous
   criminal of London — and possibly Great Britain — during the 18th
   century, both because of his own actions and the uses novelists,
   playwrights, and political satirists made of them. He invented a scheme
   which allowed him to run one of the most successful gangs of thieves of
   the era, all the while appearing to be the nation's leading policeman.
   He manipulated the press and the nation's fears to become the most
   loved public figure of the 1720s; this love turned to hatred when his
   villainy was exposed. After his death, he became a symbol of corruption
   and hypocrisy.

Life

   Wild was born in Wolverhampton in 1683 to a poor family. After serving
   as an apprentice to a buckle-maker, he worked as a servant and came to
   London in 1704. After being dismissed by his master, he returned to
   Wolverhampton, where he was arrested for debt. During this time in
   debtor's prison, he became popular and received "the liberty of the
   gate" (meaning being allowed out at night to aid in the arrest of
   thieves). There, he met one Mary Milliner (or Mary Mollineaux), a
   prostitute who began to teach Wild criminal ways and, according to
   Daniel Defoe, "brought him into her own gang, whether of thieves or
   whores, or of both, is not much material." With these new methods of
   raising money, Wild was able to pay his way out of prison.

   Upon release, Wild began to live with Mary Milliner as her husband,
   despite both of them having prior marriages and — in Wild's case — a
   child. Wild apparently served as Milliner's tough when she went
   night-walking. Soon Wild was thoroughly acquainted with the underworld,
   both with its methods and its inhabitants, and he parted with Milliner.
   At some point during this period, Milliner had begun to act as
   something of a madam to other prostitutes, and Wild as a fence, or
   receiver of stolen goods.

   Wild began, slowly at first, to dispose of stolen goods and to pay
   bribes to get thieves out of jail.

Wild's public career

   Wild's method of illegally amassing riches while appearing to be on the
   side of the law was ingenious. He ran a gang of thieves, kept the
   stolen goods, and waited for the crime and theft to be announced in the
   newspapers. At this point, he would claim that his "thief taking
   agents" (police) had "found" the stolen merchandise, and he would
   return it to its rightful owners for a reward (to cover the expenses of
   running his agents). In some cases, if the stolen items or
   circumstances allowed for blackmail, he did not wait for the theft to
   be announced. As well as "recovering" these stolen goods, he would
   offer the police aid in finding the thieves. The thieves that Wild
   would help to "discover", however, were rivals or members of his own
   gang who had refused to cooperate with his taking the majority of the
   money.

   Crime had risen dramatically in London between 1680 and 1720, and in
   1712 Charles Hitchen, Wild's forerunner and future rival as
   thief-taker, said that he personally knew 2,000 people in London who
   made their living solely by theft. Hitchen, the City's top policeman,
   would himself end at the pillory, as it appeared later that he accepted
   bribes to let thieves out of jail and to selectively arrest criminals
   and coerce sexual services from molly houses; his testimony was in
   connection with his criminal conspiracy investigation by the London
   Board of Aldermen. (Hitchen's downfall would occur when he was arrested
   for sodomy, rather than corruption.)

   The advent of daily newspapers had led to a rising interest in crime
   and criminals. As the papers reported notable crimes and ingenious
   attacks, the public worried more and more about property crime and grew
   more and more interested in the issues of criminals and policing.
   London depended entirely upon localized policing and had no city-wide
   police force. Unease with crime was at a feverish high. The public was
   eager to embrace both colourful criminals (e.g. Jack Sheppard and the
   entirely upper-class gang called the " Mohocks" in 1712) and valiant
   crime-fighters. The city's population had more than doubled, and there
   was no effective means of controlling crime. London saw a rise not only
   in thievery, but in organized crime during the period.

"Thief-Taker General"

   Wild would be recognizable today as the prototype of a "media don",
   courting the public while simultaneously ruthlessly administering a
   crime empire like John Gotti.

   Wild's ability to hold his gang together, and indeed the majority of
   his scheme, relied upon the fear of theft and the nation's reaction to
   theft. The crime of selling stolen goods became increasingly dangerous
   in the period from 1700 to 1720. Low-level thieves ran a great risk in
   fencing their goods. Wild avoided this danger and exploited it
   simultaneously by having his gang steal (either through pick-pocketing
   or, more often, 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 City Marshal to
   practice extortion. He had pressured brothels and pickpockets to pay
   him off or give him the stolen goods for return to their owners since
   purchasing the position in 1712. 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
   in 1714 and found that Wild was now a rival, and one of Wild's first
   bits of gang warfare was to eliminate as many of the thieves in
   Hitchen's control as he could. In 1718, Hitchen attempted to expose
   Wild with his A True Discovery of the Conduct of Receivers and
   Thief-Takers in and about the City of London. There he named Wild 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 held a virtual monopoly on crime in London. He kept records of all
   thieves in his employ, and when they had outlived their usefulness,
   Wild sold them to the gallows for the £40 reward. Wild's system
   inspired a fake or folk etymology of the phrase " double cross". He
   kept the names of the thieves in his employ in a ledger. It is alleged
   that, 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. Note that the noun "double cross" did not enter English
   usage until 1834.

   In public, Wild presented a heroic face. He was the man who returned
   stolen goods. He was the man who caught criminals. In 1718, Wild called
   himself "Thief Taker General of Great Britain and Ireland". By his
   testimony, over sixty thieves were sent to the gallows. His "finding"
   of lost merchandise was private, but his efforts at finding thieves
   were public. Wild's office in the Old Bailey was 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
   would offer to help find the criminals for an extra fee. However, while
   fictional treatments made use of the device, it is not known whether or
   not Wild ever actually turned in one of his own gang for a private fee.

   In 1720, Wild's fame was such that the Privy Council consulted 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 went from forty pounds
   to one hundred and forty pounds within the year. This amounted to a
   significant pay increase for Wild.

   There is some evidence that Wild was favoured, or at least ignored, by
   the Whig politicians and opposed by the Tory politicians. In 1718, 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 made excellent press. Wild himself would
   approach the papers with accounts of his derring-do, and the papers
   passed these on to a concerned public. Thus, in July to August of 1724,
   the papers carried accounts of Wild's heroic efforts in collecting
   twenty-one members of the Carrick Gang (with an £800 reward -
   approximately £25,000 in the year 2000). When one of the members of the
   gang was released, Wild pursued him and had him arrested on "further
   information". To the public, this seemed like a relentless defense of
   order. In reality, it was a gang warfare disguised as national service.

   When Wild solicited for a finder's fee, he usually held all the power
   in the transaction. For example, David Nokes quotes (based on Howson)
   the following advertisement from the Daily Post in 1724 in his edition
   of Henry Fielding's Jonathan Wild:

          "Lost, the 1st of October, a black shagreen Pocket-Book, edged
          with
          Silver, with some Notes of Hand. The said Book was lost in the
          Strand, near Fountain Tavern, about 7 or 8 o'clock at Night. If
          any Person will bring aforementioned Book to Mr Jonathan Wild,
          in the Old Bailey, he shall have a Guinea reward."

   The advert is extortion. The "notes of hand" (agreements of debt) mean
   signatures, so Wild already knows the name of the book's owner.
   Furthermore, Wild tells the owner through the ad that he knows what its
   owner was doing at the time, since the Fountain Tavern was a brothel.
   The real purpose of the ad is to threaten the notebook's owner with
   announcing his visit to a bordello, either to the debtors or the
   public, and it even names a price for silence (a guinea, or one pound
   and one shilling).

The Jack Sheppard struggle and downfall

   By 1724, London political life was experiencing a crisis of public
   confidence. In 1720, the South Sea Bubble had burst, and the public was
   growing restive about corruption. Authority figures were beginning to
   be viewed with scepticism.
   A gallows ticket to view the hanging of Jonathan Wild.
   Enlarge
   A gallows ticket to view the hanging of Jonathan Wild.

   In February 1724, the most famous housebreaker of the era, Jack
   Sheppard, was apprehended by Wild. Sheppard had worked with Wild in the
   past, though he had struck out on his own. Consequently, as with other
   arrests, Wild's interests in saving the public from Sheppard were
   personal.

   Sheppard was imprisoned in St Giles' Roundhouse and immediately
   escaped. In May, Wild again had Sheppard arrested, and this time he was
   put in the New Prison. Sheppard escaped in less than a week. In July,
   Wild had Sheppard arrested for a third time. He was tried, convicted,
   and put in the condemned hold of Newgate Prison. On the night that the
   death warrant arrived, August 30, Sheppard escaped. By this point,
   Sheppard was a working class hero (being a cockney, non-violent, and
   handsome). On September 11, Wild's men caught him for a fourth time,
   and Sheppard was placed in the most secure room of Newgate. Further,
   Sheppard was put in shackles and chained to the floor. On September 16,
   Sheppard escaped yet again. Sheppard had broken the chains, padlocks,
   and six iron-barred doors. This escape astonished everyone, and Daniel
   Defoe, working as a journalist, wrote an account. In late October, Wild
   found Sheppard for a fifth and final time and had him arrested. This
   time, Sheppard was placed in the centre of Newgate, where he could be
   observed at all times, and loaded with three hundred pounds of iron
   weights. He was so celebrated that the gaolers charged high society
   visitors to see him, and James Thornhill painted his portrait.

   Sheppard was hanged at Tyburn on November 16, 1724.

   During the pursuit of Sheppard, Wild appeared as much to disadvantage
   in the press as Sheppard did to advantage. Wild was now despised. When,
   in February 1725, Wild used violence to perform a jail break for one of
   his gang members, he was arrested. He was placed in Newgate, where he
   continued to attempt to run his business. In the illustration from the
   True Effigy, above, Wild is pictured in Newgate, still with notebook in
   hand to account for goods coming in and going out of his office.
   Evidence was presented against Wild for the violent jailbreak and for
   having stolen jewels during the previous August's installation of
   Knights of the Garter.

   The public's mood had shifted; they supported the average man and
   resented authority figures. Wild's trial occurred at the same time as
   that of the Lord Chancellor, Lord Thomas Parker, Earl of Macclesfield,
   for taking £100,000 in bribes. With the changing tide, it appeared at
   last to Wild's gang that their leader would not escape, and they began
   to come forward. Slowly, gang members began to turn evidence on him,
   until all of his activities, including his grand scheme of running and
   then hanging thieves, became known. Additionally, evidence was offered
   as to Wild's frequent bribery of public officers.

   When Wild went to the gallows at Tyburn on May 24, 1725, Daniel Defoe
   said that the crowd was far larger than any they had seen before and
   that, instead of any celebration or commiseration with the condemned,

          "wherever he came, there was nothing but hollowing and huzzas,
          as if it had been upon a triumph."

   Wild's hanging was a great event, and tickets were sold in advance for
   the best vantage points (see the reproduction of the gallows ticket).
   Even in a year with a great many macabre spectacles, Wild drew an
   especially large and boisterous crowd. In the 18th century, autopsies
   and dissections were performed on the most notorious criminals, and
   consequently Wild's body was sold to the Royal College of Surgeons for
   dissection. His skeleton remains on public display in the Royal
   College's Hunterian Museum in Lincoln's Inn Fields.

Literary treatments

   Jonathan Wild is famous today not so much for setting the example for
   organized crime as for the uses satirists made of his story.

   When Wild was hanged, the papers were filled with accounts of his life,
   collections of his sayings, farewell speeches, and the like. Daniel
   Defoe wrote one narrative for Applebee's Journal in May and then had
   published True and Genuine Account of the Life and Actions of the Late
   Jonathan Wild in June 1725. This work competed with another that
   claimed to have excerpts from Wild's diaries. The illustration above is
   from the frontispiece to the "True Effigy of Mr. Jonathan Wild," a
   companion piece to one of the pamphlets purporting to offer the
   thief-taker's biography.

   Criminal biography was already an existing genre. These works were
   popular then, as now, because they could offer a touching account of
   need, a fall from innocence, sex, violence, and then repentance or a
   tearful end. Public fascination with the dark side of human nature, and
   with the causes of evil, has never waned, and the market for mass
   produced accounts was large.

   By 1701 there had been a Lives of the Gamesters (often appended to
   Charles Cotton's The Compleat Gamester), about notorious gamblers. In
   1714 Captain Alexander Smith had written the best-selling Complete
   Lives of the Most Notorious Highwaymen. Defoe himself was no stranger
   to this market: his Moll Flanders was published in 1722. Further, he
   had, by 1725, written both a History and a Narrative of the life of
   Jack Sheppard (see above). Moll Flanders may be based on the life of
   one Moll King, who lived with Mary Mollineaux/Milliner, Wild's first
   mistress.

   What differs about the case of Jonathan Wild is that it was not simply
   a crime story. Parallels between Wild and Robert Walpole were instantly
   drawn, especially by the Tory authors of the day. Mist's Weekly Journal
   (one of the more rough-speaking Tory journals) drew a parallel between
   the figures in May 1725, when the hanging was still in the news.

   The parallel is most important for John Gay's The Beggar's Opera in
   1728. The main story of the Beggar's Opera focuses on the episodes
   between Wild and Sheppard. In the opera, the character of Peachum
   stands in for Wild (who stands in for Walpole), while the figure of
   Macheath stands in for Sheppard (who stands in for Wild and/or the
   chief officers of the South Sea Company). Robert Walpole himself saw
   and enjoyed Beggar's Opera without realizing that he was its intended
   target. Once he did realize it, he banned the sequel opera, Polly,
   without staging. This prompted Gay to write to a friend, "For writing
   in the cause of virtue and against the fashionable vices, I have become
   the most hated man in England almost."

   In 1742, Robert Walpole lost his position of power in the House of
   Commons. He was created a peer and moved to the House of Lords, from
   where he still directed the Whig majority in Commons for years. In
   1743, Henry Fielding's The History of the Life of the Late Mr Jonathan
   Wild the Great appeared in the third volume of Miscellanies.

   Fielding is merciless in his attack on Walpole. In his work, Wild
   stands in for Walpole directly, and, in particular, he invokes the
   Walpolean language of the "Great Man". Walpole had come to be described
   by both the Whig and then, satirically, by the Tory political writers
   as the "Great Man", and Fielding has his Wild constantly striving, with
   stupid violence, to be "Great". "Greatness," according to Fielding, is
   only attained by mounting to the top stair (of the gallows). Fielding's
   satire also consistently attacks the Whig party by having Wild choose,
   among all the thieves cant terms (several lexicons of which were
   printed with the Lives of Wild in 1725), " prig" to refer to the
   profession of burglary. Fielding suggests that Wild becoming a Great
   Prig was the same as Walpole becoming a Great Whig: theft and the Whig
   party were never so directly linked.

   The figures of Peachum and Macheath were picked up by Bertolt Brecht
   for his updating of Gay's opera as The Threepenny Opera. The Sheppard
   character, Macheath, is the "hero" of the song Mack the Knife.

   More recently, Jonathan Wild appeared as a character in the David Liss
   novel A Conspiracy of Paper, ISBN 0-8041-1912-0. Jonathan Wild is also
   the title character in the 2005–2006 Phantom stories "Jonathan Wild:
   King of Thieves" and "Jonathan Wild: Double Cross".

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