“At night he would perambulate the brandy shops of Fleet-street, and traffic with the women who had contrived to rob drunken people of their watches or pocket-books.
“Growing bolder with success, it is on positive criminal record that he convened a meeting at his house of the most notorious thieves in London, and represented to them that if they took their booty to such of the pawnbrokers as were known not to be troubled with scruples of conscience, they—the thieves—would scarcely receive a fifth of the value of the goods which they had stolen; whereas if they could agree to bring their prizes to him he would make much more liberal terms for them.
“The penalty for failing to constitute Jonathan Wild their receiver-general was simply death. Bad faith was immediately resented by the denunciation of the thief to justice; and unless he could come to an arrangement with Wild the chances were overwhelming in favour of the robber going to Tyburn.
“Thus Jonathan Wild was not only a preceptor of thieves and a ‘putter-up’ of robberies, but also a receiver of stolen goods, and a thieftaker to boot.
“Removing from Cock-alley to a house in the Old Bailey, he found at length that he had accumulated an embarrassingly heavy stock of stolen property, and he absolutely purchased a sloop in order to transport his plunder to Holland and Flanders.
“The command of this vessel was entrusted to one Roger Johnson, a noted river pirate; and Wild’s factor at Ostend, and general Continental agent, was a superannuated thief called Randall.
“The sloop—her name, unfortunately, is not mentioned in the records of rascality—having discharged her cargo at Ostend, brought back to England such commodities as lace, wine, and brandy, which were landed at night, and, it is almost needless to say, without the custom-house authorities being troubled in the matter.
“Smuggling and dealing in stolen goods are operations possibly, no longer carried on in conjunction; still, who shall say that our modern Jonathan Wilds have not their favourite lines of steamers—it is not now necessary that they should buy ships of their own—and that they have not their factors and agents at Continental ports and in Continental cities?
“Many thousands of pounds’ worth of jewellery and bank-note—to name only two sorts of plunder—are stolen every year.
“There must be a mart for this precious merchandise, a mart the whereabouts of which must be perfectly familiar to professional burglars and thieves.