Jonathan Wild

Born circa 1682 (Wolverhampton, Staffordshire); died 24 May 1725 (London). British thief-taker and criminal.

Jonathan Wild was originally trained as a buckle-maker. He married early, but at about the age of 21 deserted his job and family and went to London. Having run himself into debts, Wild was soon imprisoned in a debtor’s prison. There, in his two to four years of imprisonment, he first got into contact with London’s underworld and established close ties with his fellow inmates, especially with those criminals he thought could be useful for him after his release.

In the aftermath of his imprisonment, Wild first returned to his former profession but couldn’t resist the temptation and began handling stolen property. At the same time, he opened several offices around London to help victims of crimes in the recovery and restoration of stolen goods. The goods Wild recovered for his clients were most of the time small pieces of sentimental value for which he expected the owners to pay good rewards. These goods themselves had either been stolen on Wild’s specific orders by some of his dependants, or Wild (because of his many contacts in the underworld) knew who had stolen them and could buy the goods in order to sell them at an even higher price. By using this scheme, Wild successfully circumvented an Act of Parliament from 1707 which made fences accessories to robberies.

What is more, he expanded his ‘business’ and soon became head of a large corporation of thieves. This corporation was divided into smaller gangs, each of which covered certain London districts, and / or had a specialist operational target (e.g. there were gangs robbing churches, gangs of highwaymen and conmen, gangs collecting protection money and gangs controlling prostitution). However, Wild was not actively involved in any of these gangs, but only occupied an advisory and organisational function.

Wild also gained notoriety as a thief-taker. Those criminals who operated outside of Wild’s system and those who did not do as he asked or were illoyal and tried to betray him, were mercilessly reported to the authorities by Wild. The rewards he gained as a thief-taker helped him to make a very good living and also increased his power in London’s underworld. Some 120 men were sentenced to death on the basis of Wild’s testimonies or leaks to the authorities.

If it could be avoided, Wild did not handle stolen goods himself, but ‘employed’ artists and craftsmen to alter the design of the valuables (i.e. jewelry and objects of art) that were stolen on his orders. Wild also owned warehouses for storage purposes and had a sloop for smuggling items from London to Holland and Flanders and back.

The authorities were not able to catch Wild until his criminal network began to crumble in the winter of 1724 / 1725, although there were suspicions against him earlier. In 1717, his activities are said to have encouraged an Act of Parliament, the so-called ‘Jonathan Wild's Act’, which made it a capital offence (comparable to felony) to take a reward for the recovery of stolen goods without prosecuting the thief. Initially, Wild was able to circumvent the new law. His offices had to be closed, but work could be carried on in the coffeehouses and on the streets.

Wild was eventually arrested and sentenced to death in early 1725 under the terms of the new Act for the return of some lace he was accused of having stolen before, i.e. for a transaction worth £40. On May 24, 1725, Wild tried to commit suicide with an overdose of laudanum. However, his suicide attempt did not work, and he was hanged at Tyburn the same day.

Many authors wrote about him. Wild’s Life and Actions were related by Daniel Defoe in 1725. In 1743, Henry Fielding published the short novel The Life of Jonathan Wild the Great as the third volume of his Miscellanies. In this novel, which is a satire based on the life of Wild, Fielding satirises the hypocrisy of public figures of power (such as Robert Walpole) by setting the figure of Wild as an example of someone who is admired for his clever practices, but who achieves success at the expense of honesty and the good. The satire is not covered by copyright anymore and can be downloaded from Project Gutenberg.

Sources

Cannon, John Ashton (ed.). The Oxford Companion to British History. Oxford: University Press, 1997.

Drabble, Margaret (ed.). The Oxford Companion to English Literature. Oxford: University Press, 1985.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A3176291

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/643490/Jonathan-Wild