The Lives and Exploits of the Most Noted Highwaymen, Rogues and Murderers by Stephen Basdeo

Author:Stephen Basdeo
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: TRUE CRIME / Merder / General
ISBN: 9781526713186
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 2018-09-29T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 9

Jonathan Wild: London’s First Mob Boss

As we are to record the actions of a great man, so we have nowhere mentioned any spark of goodness, which had discovered itself either faintly in him, or more glaringly in any other person, but as a meanness and imperfection, disqualifying them for undertakings which lead to honour and esteem among men. As our hero had as little as, perhaps, is to be found of that meanness, indeed enough only to make him partaker of the imperfection of humanity, instead of the perfections of diabolism, we have ventured to call him “THE GREAT;” nor do we doubt that our reader, when he hath perused his story, will concur with us in allowing him that title.

Henry Fielding, The History of the Life of Jonathan Wild, the Great (1743)

The history of the arts, deceptions, cruelty, and perfidy of this man, have alone filled a volume; and, should he occupy more room in our epitome than may be deemed necessary, we have only to observe, that the whole catalogue of other crimes exposed in this chronology, centred in one individual, would scarcely produce a parallel with this thief-taker, and most finished thief.

The New Newgate Calendar (1824)

When people hear the term, ‘organised crime’, they usually think of twentieth century criminal networks such as the Sicilian mafia, the Russian mafia, the Chinese Triad, or the Japanese Yakuza. For most people, rarely would the term conjure images from eighteenth-century England. Yet sophisticated gangs of criminals did operate at this time; whether it was pirates, who can justifiably be classed as a form of early modern transnational organised crime, or the groups of banditti and highwaymen who terrorised the roads of England in the eighteenth century. For a short time in the early eighteenth century, however, all of the crime in London was controlled by one man. And it is to the first notable instance of organised crime in Britain that we now turn, as we delve into the life of the self-styled ‘Thief Taker General of Britain and Ireland’, Jonathan Wild (c. 1683-1725). He was London’s chief agent of law enforcement, but he was also a master criminal.

Organised crime has always flourished in parts of the world where the state is unwilling or unable to maintain law and order. As we have seen in previous chapters, the state of law enforcement in the eighteenth century was not as professional as it is today. Before Henry Fielding established the Bow Street Runners in 1749, law enforcement in London was the duty of part time and often unpaid constables, who, if a criminal was caught, often had to be found ‘red-handed’. Even after Fielding founded his runners, there were so few of them that they could never truly mount a serious assault on rising crime rates. It was a reactive system of policing, rather than a preventative one. Even if a felon was caught, it was the victim who had to pay the courts to prosecute the offender. If somebody found themselves the victim of a robbery, it was much easier for them to apply to their local thief taker.

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