Jonathan Wild, also spelled Wilde (1682 or 1683 – 24 May 1725), was an English thief-taker and a major figure in London's criminal underworld, notable for operating on both sides of the law, posing as a public-spirited vigilante entitled the "Thief-Taker General". He simultaneously ran a significant criminal empire, and used his crimefighting role to remove rivals and launder the proceeds of his own crimes.
Wild exploited a strong public demand for action during a major 18th-century crime wave in the absence of any effective police force in London. As a powerful gang-leader himself, he became a master manipulator of legal systems, collecting the rewards offered for valuables which he had stolen himself, bribing prison guards to release his colleagues, and blackmailing any who crossed him. Wild was consulted on crime by the government due to his apparently remarkable prowess in locating stolen items and those who had stolen them.
Wild was responsible for the arrest and execution of Jack Sheppard, a petty thief and burglar who had won the public's affection as a lovable rogue. However, Wild's duplicity became known and his men began to give evidence against him. After a suicide attempt, he was hanged at Tyburn before a massive crowd.
Since his death, Wild has been featured in novels, poems and plays, some of them noting parallels between Wild and the contemporaneous Prime Minister Walpole, known as "The Great Corrupter".
Early life Though his exact birth date is unknown, Jonathan Wild was born in Wolverhampton in either 1682 or 1683 – although he was also alleged to have been born in the nearby Shropshire village of BoningaleRaven, M. A Guide to Shropshire, 2005, p. 31 – as the first of five children in a poor family.Moore, p. 18. He was baptised at St. Peter's Collegiate Church, Wolverhampton. His father, John Wild, was a carpenter, and his mother sold herbs and fruits in the local market. At that time, Wolverhampton was the second-largest town in Staffordshire, with a population of around 6,000, many involved in iron-working and related trades.
Wild attended the Free School in St John's Lane and was apprenticed to a local buckle-maker.Moore, p. 19. He married and had a son, but came to London in 1704 as a servant. After being dismissed by his master he returned to Wolverhampton, before coming back to London in 1708.Moore, p. 20. London was by far the largest city in England, with a population of around 600,000, of whom around 70,000 lived within the ancient city walls of the City of London.Moore, p. 3.
Little is known of Wild's first two years in London, but he was arrested for debt in March 1710 and sent to Wood Street Compter, one of the debtor's prisons in the City of London. The prisons were notoriously corrupt, with gaolers demanding a bribe, or "garnish", for any minor comfort. Wild became popular, running errands for the gaolers and eventually earning enough to repay his original debts and the cost of being imprisoned, and even lend money to other prisoners. He received "the liberty of the gate", meaning that he was allowed out at night to aid in the arrest of thieves.Moore, p. 25. 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". Wild was also introduced to a wide range of London's criminal underclass. With his new skills and contacts, Wild was released in 1712 under an Act of Parliament passed earlier that year for the relief of insolvent debtors.An Act for the Relief of Insolvent Debtors by obliging their Creditors to accept the utmost Satisfaction they are capable to make and restoring them to their Liberty (via The Statutes Project, accessed 1 August 2026), cited variously as 10 Anne c. 29 by The Statutes of the Realm or as 10 Anne c. 20 by The Statutes at Large.Moore, p. 43.
Upon release, Wild began to live with Milliner as her husband in Lewkenor's Land (now Macklin Street) in Covent Garden, despite both of them having prior marriages. Wild apparently served as Milliner's tough when she went night-walking. Soon Wild was thoroughly acquainted with the underworld, with both its methods and its inhabitants. 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. He began, slowly at first, to dispose of stolen goods and to pay bribes to get thieves out of prison. Wild later parted with Milliner, cutting off her ear to mark her as a prostitute.Moore, p. 65.
Coming into his own Crime had risen dramatically in London beginning in 1680, and property crime, in particular, rose sharply as London grew in importance as a commercial hub. 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. In 1711, Hitchen had obtained public office as the City's Under Marshal, effectively its top policeman, paying £700 (£ in ) for the appointment. He abused his office, however, by practising extortion on an extravagant scale, both from thieves and from their potential victims.Moore, p. 63. He would accept bribes to let thieves out of jail, selectively arrest criminals, and coerce sexual services from molly houses. Hitchen's testimony about the rise of crime was given during an investigation of these activities by the London Board of Aldermen, who suspended him from the Under Marshal position in 1713.
In around 1713, Wild was approached by Hitchen to become one of his assistants in thief-taking, a profitable activity on account of the £40 reward (£ in ) paid by the government for catching a felon. Wild may have become known to Hitchen's associates, known as his "Mathematicians", during his lengthy stay in Wood Street Compter; certainly one, William Field, later worked for Wild.
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 increasingly interested in the issues of criminals and policing. London depended entirely upon localised policing and had no citywide 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 organised crime during the period.
The ending of the War of the Spanish Succession in 1714 meant a further increase in crime as demobilised soldiers were on the streets. By this time, Hitchen was restored to his office but Wild went his own way, opening a small office in the Blue Boar tavern run by Mrs Seagoe in Little Old Bailey. Wild 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" It is believed that 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" (bounty hunters) 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. In addition to "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.
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 between 1700 and 1720, such that 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 pickpocketing 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.
Wild was not the first thief-taker who was actually a thief himself. Hitchen had used his position as Under Marshal to practise extortion, pressuring brothels and pickpockets to pay him off. When Hitchen was suspended from his duties for corruption in 1712, he engaged Wild to keep his business of extortion going in his absence. Hitchen was reinstated in 1714 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. In 1718, Hitchen attempted to expose Wild with his manuscript, A True Discovery of the Conduct of Receivers and Thief-Takers in and about the City of London, in which he named Wild as a manager and source of crime.
Wild replied with a manuscript of his own, An Answer to a Late Insolent Libel, and there explained that Hitchen was a homosexual who visited "molly houses" (homosexual brothels). 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 (at that time) charge of homosexuality virtually eliminated him as a threat to Wild.
Wild held a virtual monopoly on crime in London, and legends arose surrounding his management of his "empire." One held that he kept records of all thieves in his employ, and when they had outlived their usefulness he would sell them to the gallows for the £40 reward. This supposed system inspired a fake or folk etymology of the phrase "double cross": it was 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. (This story is contradicted by the fact that the noun "double cross" did not enter English usage until 1834.)
Wild publicly presented a heroic face. In 1718 he 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.