Thief-taker
In English legal history, a thief-taker was a private individual hired to capture criminals. The widespread establishment of professional police in England did not occur until the 19th century. With the rising crime rate and newspapers to bring this to the attention of the public, thief-takers arose to partially fill the void in bringing criminals to justice. These were private individuals much like bounty hunters. However, thief-takers were usually hired by crime victims, while bounty hunters were paid by bail bondsmen to catch fugitives who skipped their court appearances and hence forfeited their bail. Both types also collected bounties offered by the authorities.
Sometimes, thief-takers would act as go-betweens, negotiating the return of stolen goods for a fee. However, they were often corrupt themselves, for example extorting protection money from the criminals they were supposed to catch. Government-funded rewards for the capture of criminals were a corrupting influence, leading directly to the Macdaniel scandal.
Historical and political context
England in the seventeenth and eighteenth century suffered a great deal of political and economic disorders that brought violence into its streets. This was particularly evident in the capital and its neighbourhoods, where the population almost corresponded to that of England and Wales together. In fact London was expanding at a fast pace, so that there were no precise division between wealthy and poor areas, the rich living next to the poor. A major cause was immigration: an impressive number of different cultural groups migrated to the big city in search of fortune and social mobility, contributing to saturate jobs availability and making cohabitation a difficult matter.Streets in the metropolis were dark at night, and poorly lit, which allowed the proliferation of criminal activities, since lawbreakers were difficult to spot in the dark. Night watchmen patrolling the streets at night were not a guarantee of security. Often they were inefficient, did not join efforts with others for maintaining the peace, or were corrupt themselves.
The English judicial system was not very developed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as it was based on the Statute of Winchester of 1285, which created a basic organisation for keeping the peace prescribing the contribution of all citizens for: patrolling the streets at night in turns, hurrying to the “hue and cry”, serving as a parish constable for a period of time, and being armed with suitable objects for intervention in case of necessity.
The seventeenth century
The seventeenth century saw a peculiar phase of political and religious instability: the Glorious Revolution brought William III to reign over England, and the rise of violence in the streets of the capital because of the removal of armed soldiers from service; the government feared conspiracy and felt the urgent need to protect its currency from coiners and clippers; on the other side, a period of poor harvests contributed to deepen people's bad conditions and the issues of public security that poverty originates.In this period property was the most valuable thing to people: for this reason, what affected citizens the most were property crimes. Theft was the most perpetrated crime, and the most tried at the Old Bailey: it was mainly caused by hunger and poverty, but also by the aspiration to social mobility. Common petty crimes such as shoplifting or theft by servants became more and more frequent, later culminating with the pressure for turning them into capital offences as deterrent. Stealing from shops that exposed their luxury goods in their windows was a great temptation to women in particular, who desired to have the latest fashion or imitate the higher social class style. Furthermore, the freedom of travelling safely was connected to the importance of commercial trades, hence, attacking people on the main roads was a threat to the economic system and already a capital offence. Those who committed thefts or robberies on the King's Highways, namely the streets of London and its major surrounding roads, were called highwaymen. These individuals were often brutal and worked together in gangs carrying weapons with them to commit robberies with violence. Gangs were particularly feared because of their alleged connection with political dissidence and plotting. The counterfeit of money and clipping were as well a danger to the economy of the state, as they diminished the actual value of hard cash and increased the inflationary pressure. This practice was to be reduced with the Great Recoinage of 1696. In addition to the financial issue, coiners were thought to be politically involved with the Jacobites in plotting against the king.
Along with the rise of criminal issues, concern with morality started to be taken into account since they were thought to be highly connected: sinning and breaking the law were the two sides of the same coin. This belief led to the Reformation of Manners campaign against brothels, which were thought to be frequented mostly by criminals. Homosexuality was another moral target for The Societies for the Reformation of Manners, who made use of informers to bring to an end the business of molly houses and sentence homosexuals to death.
In the 1690s the criminal activity became so critical that it urged the government to take alternative measures: a series of rewards were introduced by statute to stimulate the prosecution and conviction of felons.
The eighteenth century
Another dark period of disorders and a climate of violence marked the 1720s. England became involved in the War of the Spanish Succession in 1702, which lasted until 1713, and brought a number of armed ex-soldiers to wander along London streets, who played a part in the rise of violent crime. Moreover, in the years following the war the city was ground for violent riots and protests against the state, subversive political dissidents, conspirators and Jacobite affiliates.After the wild speculation of the South Sea Bubble, which brought a serious financial crisis to the economy of England and ruined a great deal of people, criminal attacks increased to such a great degree of frequency and brutality that the government was compelled to take increasingly harsh measures for felonies: in 1718 the parliament approved the Transportation Act, also known as the “Jonathan Wild's Act”, which became law on 10 May 1719; in 1723 the Black Act intensified the severity of punishments for a greater number of offences, reaching the level of 350 capital crimes.
The Gordon Riots of 1780, occasioned by the Catholic relief bill of 1778, were of the last manifestations of extreme violence in the streets of London: they caused a great deal of property damages, and their suppression resulted in the killing of many demonstrators by military forces. The Old Bailey courthouse was badly attacked, and its furniture damaged and burned. Such excess of violence became abhorrent to the public and marked the desire for less sanguinary punishments.
Law enforcement in the 17th and 18th centuries
In the seventeenth and eighteenth century an official organism for law enforcement did not exist: chasing and arresting serious offenders was not the duty of the public authority. In fact night watchmen, constables and justices of the peace were not obligated to prosecute felons, but played a marginal role: night watchmen only provided surveillance for petty crimes, made rounds at night as a deterrent, and hosted those felons on hold to be brought before a justice of the peace the next day; while constables passively arrested people charged with a crime when already apprehended, and took them before a justice of the peace.As a consequence, law enforcement was mainly a private matter. Capture, prosecution and provision of evidence for the conviction of serious offenders in trials were at the expense of the victim. Moreover, all individuals were legally expected to report crimes that came to their notice, and answer any call for help - which usually were widely agreed expressions such as: Stop thief!, Murder!, or Fire! - by becoming involved in running after, detecting and catching felons.
During the eighteenth century, the pursuit of criminals involved common people to a lesser extent due to a series of factors. At the end of the seventeenth century population in London was rapidly growing in both area and population thanks to a favorable economic situation, which attracted a great number of immigrants escaping from poor living conditions. In such circumstances it was arduous to spot and find guilty suspects in the capital; and victims were afraid of organized criminals and their violent reprisal. In addition, defendants hardly suffered the consequences of their actions in trials, and felonies were for the most part not even identified. Property was of the biggest concern to inhabitants and public administration, hence theft of any kind was considered a serious crime, along with coining. In the Proceedings of the Old Bailey, theft, except robbery, emerges as the type of crime tried the most at the Old Bailey. Prosecuting was expensive and took considerable time, yet it did not ensure the return of the stolen goods to the victim. Consequently, victims started to pay private individuals to conduct investigation and provide evidence for conviction. Likewise public authorities begun to offer rewards to people actively involved in the conviction of felons or the betrayal accomplices. Those men implicated in the catching of thieves for financial purposes were called thief-takers.
Newspapers and crime literature
A notable fact that contributed to mark the perception of crime in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was a booming interest in crime literature. The acts of the capital crimes tried at the Old Bailey were first published in 1674. “The Proceedings of the Old Bailey” were only few pages reporting short summaries of the trials. At the beginning of the eighteenth century part of the original speeches pronounced in trials by prisoners, prosecutors, witnesses and judges started to be printed for the cases thought to be more entertaining for the public; the length was increased, the content reorganised and a space for advertisements created to compete with newspapers in captivating new readers.Daily newspapers started to be printed more frequently, thus playing an important role for the business of thief-takers. They were used by people to advertise their "lost" goods, offering a reward to induce private individuals to look for and bring back to the owner the belongings that were actually stolen: in fact, prosecuting criminals was difficult and expensive, but it did not ensure the property back. Jonathan Wild took great advantage of the possibility newspapers offered, and managed to increase his profits in the trade of returning the stolen goods by advertising his brokering services in the press; his business grew so profitable that Wild could establish a "lost property office", where people could go and ask for help in finding their missing goods.