In early 18th century England, Jonathan Wild was a notorious criminal mastermind. He lead a mafia-like empire that included everything from robbery to extortion to blackmail. What makes Wild’s story even more “wild” was that he skillfully played both sides of the coin — crime and law enforcement, profiting as an official Thief-Taker.
In the early 1700’s, London was a city plagued by rampant crime. Mr. Wild brought dozens of thieves and criminals to justice; earning him the title, “Thief-Taker General.” It was a service that garnered him the gratitude of both the public and the authorities. Behind the scenes however, Jonathan Wild was the mastermind of a vast criminal empire involving robbery, fencing, prostitution, protection, and any other crime worth a profit. As the ruler of London’s underworld, he was the Professor Moriarity of his day. Who was this infamous man?
Jonathan Wild was born in Wolverhampton around 1683, the oldest of five children. His family was not wealthy, and at fifteen, he apprenticed as a buckle-maker; then spent seven years learning the trade. While still in his teens, he married an equally young girl and they had a child. But by 24, Wild had grown bored and restless with his small-town, domestic life. He deserted his family and headed to London to find his fortune.
He struggled to support himself for the first two years. Without a steady income, Wild fell heavily into debt and was sent to Wood Street Compter, a debtor’s prison. This ended up being a life-changing event for young Wild. He put his four years in prison to very good use. Wild used it like a university to learn all about crime from his fellow inmates. He also made valuable connections within the London underworld he would use later .
Wild did not remain a regular prisoner for long. His personal charm helped him become a prison “trustee,” allowing him to run errands for the guards. He became so trusted, the guards allowed him to accompany them outside the prison to capture other criminals.
In addition to learning the tricks of the criminal trade, he also met Molly Milliner. At the time, Milliner was labeled a “buttock and file,” a prostitute and pickpocket. Moreover, she knew most of London’s underworld. Wild and Milliner fell in love and developed a romantic relationship in prison, despite the fact they were both married to others.
The pair were released in 1712, and lived together more or less as husband and wife.
Mary and Jonathan set up shop together in Covent Garden, where Wild soon found himself immersed within Milliner’s circle of criminals. They operated a scheme called “buttock and twang.” Mary, playing the prostitute, would entice a lusty customer into a dark alley. Jonathan would then whack the chap with a cudgel and rob him. The semi-conscious men, with trousers about their ankles, rarely gave chase.
This proved to be profitable enough that Wild was eventually able to buy a pub, the King’s Head Inn. Molly managing a brothel of prostitutes from the upper floors. In the pub, Wild catered to thieves and other scalawags. It was there Wild and Milliner started their first scam: an upgraded version of the “buttock and twang.”
While the whores entertained the men, Wild and Milliner would rob them, not just of their coins and jewelry, but also personal letters and diaries. They would then blackmail their victims, offering the return of their items for the price of their silence.
This new scam also proved profitable for the duo. By 1713, at the age of 30, Wild and Milliner moved their residence to Cripplegate, a more respectable section of London. They purchased an all new wardrobe, reflecting their improved status. Wild had enough left over to purchase a Brandy Shop near their new home. This quickly became the site of their second successful scam.
Jonathan Wild moonlighted as a fence of stolen goods, when he developed an even better idea.
He called a meeting of all the thieves he knew. Rather than take their goods to fences or pawnbrokers, why not offer them back to the owners? After a robbery, Wild would approach the victims, saying he was acting on behalf of someone who had inadvertently bought their stolen goods. They now wished to restore them anonymously, for fear of being arrested for fencing. The owner got their goods back, the “benefactor” (thief) got the reward, and Wild got a cut.
The bold Jonathan Wild even opened a formal office in London, offering to retrieve stolen goods for robbed clients – for a fee, of course. When victims came into his office asking for help in getting back a valuable painting or sentimental pocket watch, Wild likely already knew who had it. Business boomed and Wild was soon operating gangs of thieves in the scam.
Molly expanded her prostitution ring and Wild grew into protection and blackmail as well. He became the unofficial King of London’s criminal underworld. His public persona meanwhile was that of a helpful “crimefighter.” Around this time, Jonathan and Molly sadly parted company, and not under business-like circumstances. During a heated argument over shared cuts, Wild cut off Molly’s ear with his sword!
Unperturbed over the loss of Molly, Wild expanded his empire yet again. This time, by taking advantage of the fact that London still had a relatively small police force. Crime had exploded, fueled by London’s population growth. Law enforcement had to adapt, so the police created the position of the “Thief-Taker.” It became sort of an early bounty hunter. They offered financial rewards for anyone who could catch and help convict thieves. The people who stepped forward for the job were a rough sort with deep criminal connections. They were the also kind to often commit crimes themselves.
Few people fit the bill, and were more successful, than Mr. Jonathan Wild.
Wild developed a ring of burglars, thieves and pickpockets that would steal pocketbooks, jewelry, and other valuables. Sometimes, he would turn in the thieves for the reward, sometimes blame a patsy or a rival. Wild would always pretend to have investigated the crime, come into information about stolen items, and offer to broker their return to the original owner. He eventually earned the title of “Thief-Taker General of Great Britain.” He sent more than 120 people to the gallows and personally attended most of the hangings.
By running this third scam, Wild began to earn high regard from English society, who believed that he was catching criminals – instead of actually orchestrating the crime himself. He also took advantage of the press. The first daily newspaper in the England was “The Daily Courant.” Wild published accounts of items he had supposedly “found” with a pawn broker who had been suspicious of the merchandise.
Jonathan Wild enjoyed an arrest-free run for nearly ten years, living in grand style with a much higher-class of mistress this time than Mary Milliner. By 1724 however, cracks began to show in Wild’s empire and the authorities were getting suspicious. Two years earlier, he sent a highwayman, Joseph Blueskin Blake, to jail. Blueskin had informed on his gang and expected the reward. But Wild turned him in instead. When Blueskin was released two years later, he still held a heavy grudge against London’s “Thief-Taker General.” Blueskin teamed up with Jack Sheppard, an infamous burglar, who was jealous of Wild’s criminal empire. Sheppard had been arrested twice and managed to escape from prison twice, making him a sort of underworld folk hero.
Wild tried to recruit him, but Sheppard teamed up with Blueskin instead.
The clever Wild got Sheppard’s wife drunk, found out where he was hiding, and had him arrested again. Sheppard was held in Newgate Prison, with his feet in irons this time, chained to the stone floor. The following month, Blueskin Blake was also arrested. At his trial, Wild himself gave false testimony against him. Enraged, Blueskin attacked Wild in the courtroom with a concealed knife, slashing at Wild’s throat. The scuffle set off a street riot that spread to Newgate Prison. In the confusion of the riot, Jack Sheppard escaped again!
So Wild arranged for his arrest again, and this time, Sheppard was promptly hanged. Wild’s continued pursuit of the well-liked Sheppard did not sit well with London’s criminal class and his control began to weaken.
Because of the spotlight of being Thief-Taker General, Wild stored stolen goods away from his properties. He rented warehouses along the Thames and boats to ship his loot away as needed. Wild had one boat he used to transport items across the channel for sale there, along with goods smuggled back in. His crews was, of course, made of his thieves. When some expensive lace went missing, Captain Roger Johnson deducted the cost from the first mate’s pay. The furious mate then informed on the smugglers to port authorities and Johnson was arrested. Fearing he would turn against him in court, Wild organized a mob of his thugs to break the captain out of jail.
In a rare, sloppy act, Wild himself was at the scene and identified.
Then things got even worse. While Wild was now under attack for orchestrating the riot, the first mate flipped again, time on Jonathan Wild. The first mate knew the exact location of Wild’s warehouses and told the London authorities. A search of the premises found hundreds of stolen items. The police promptly arrested Wild. The British public was outraged. The man who paraded around as a moral crusader was in fact a criminal mastermind?! Daniel Defoe, a British journalist, wrote a pamphlet about the case:
“How infatuated were the people of this nation all this while! Did they consider, that at the very time that they treated this person with such a confidence, he had, perhaps, the very goods in his keeping, and that, perhaps, they had been stolen with that very intention?”
Wild’s trial was a huge spectacle. Defoe noted it was the largest audience he had ever seen at the Old Bailey. Wild was charged with a vast array of crimes. He tried to pin the ownership of the stolen booty on one of his cohorts, but that failed to work. Witnesses came forward that he had started the riot that helped Captain Johnson escape. Wild was found guilty of all his crimes. The overwhelming evidence and public disdain led the judge to sentence him to death.
The night before his hanging, in his cell at Newgate, Jonathan Wild attempted suicide by overdosing on laudanum. But it only succeeded in making himself sick. The next morning, 24 May 1725, the open cart carrying the condemned man rumbled out of Newgate Prison on a two-mile journey to Tyburn Tree. The trip took three hours past hoards of jeering Londoners. He was pelted with rotting fruit, dead animals, and even feces. The cart, as was customary, made three stops at pubs along the way, so condemned men could drink enough to be drunk at their hanging.
At Tyburn, another crowd waited to watch the downfall of a man once revered, and now reviled. Daniel Defoe wrote that the crowd was the largest ever assembled for a hanging as well. Because of the laudanum and ale in his system, Wild stood in a daze. He did not give any last words before the thick noose was placed around his neck. The hangman, who had been a guest at one of Wild’s weddings, made it mercifully quick. When the horse cart was pulled away, Jonathan Wild dropped and dangled on the end of his rope. He eventually stopped kicking and was dead at the age of forty-two. So ended one of the world’s first major criminal networks, lead by a single ruthless and resourceful man.
Wild, at one point London’s most celebrated Thief-Taker, then its most reviled criminal, was largely forgotten for well over a century. That is, until author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle dropped his name in a novel. He had his famous creation Sherlock Holmes refer to Professor Moriarty a true successor of Jonathan Wild, the once famous Thief-Taker General. A British movie, Where’s Jack, was made in 1969 about Wild and Sheppard’s final confrontation.
Remarkably, one can still see Jonathan Wild for themselves. Go to Hunterian Museum in Lincoln’s Inn Fields in London. Though Wild was buried in St. Pancras Old Church, next to one of his many wives, he was dug up three days later by surgeon anatomists. As a criminal, they were free to dissect his body for learning purposes. When done, they stripped away the flesh and wired up his skeleton. It is still on display at the Hunterian, the remains of the infamous criminal mastermind who once ruled all the thieves of London.