Wild had also made acquaintance, while in the Wood Street Compter, of a deep-dyed scoundrel, a certain Charles Hitchen, an ex-City marshal, who had lost his post through irregular practices, and had become an associate with and director of thieves, and an expert blackmailer. Hitchen was his early instructor in the curious art of acting as intermediary between the thieves and those persons who had been robbed of goods, or had had their pockets picked of watches and other valuable jewellery; but Wild was a genius in his own way, with a talent for organisation never equalled in his line, before or since, except perhaps by Moll Cutpurse, who flourished a century earlier. Moll, however, was ever staunch to her friends and accomplices, but Wild was always ready to sell his intimates and to send them to the cart, if it were made worth his while. So their careers run parallel for only a little distance and then widely separate.
Wild in a very little time broke with Hitchen. He left his instructor far behind, and did business on so Napoleonic a scale that he speedily aroused the furious jealousy of his sometime associate, who, unable to contain himself at the thought of Wild, once his pupil, taking nearly all his profitable business away, published a singular pamphlet, intended to expose the trade. This was styled "The Regulator; or, a Discovery of Thieves, Thief-takers, and Locks": "locks" being receivers of stolen property. It had not the desired effect of spoiling his rival's trade; and Jonathan continued to thrive amazingly. As a broker and go-between in nearly all the felonies of his time committed in and immediately around London, he speedily came to the front, and he was exceptional in that he most adroitly and astonishingly doubled the parts of Receiver-General of stolen property and self-styled "Thief-catcher-General of Great Britain and Ireland."
It might at the first blush, and indeed even after long consideration, seem impossible to pose with success at one and the same time as the friend and the enemy of all who get their living on the cross, but Jonathan Wild achieved the apparently impossible and flourished exceedingly on the amazing paradox.
The first steps in this mesh of scoundrelism that Wild drew are not sufficiently detailed, and Fielding's "History of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great" is rather an effort in whimsical, satirical imagination than in sheer biography. The considerable number of chap-book "Lives" of this arch-villain are also absolutely untrustworthy. But it is abundantly evident that he was a man of imagination and a master at organising, for we find him the brain-centre of all the robberies committed at that time in and around London, himself the secret, supreme director of them all, and at the same time the apparently "honest broker" who, for a consideration (quite after the old manner of Moll Cutpurse), would undertake to restore missing property. This self-appointed "Thief-taker" had numerous contingents, to each of which was allotted its special work. One attended churches, another visited the theatres, yet another detachment devoted their best energies to the art of shop-lifting, and another still took situations as domestic servants, and in that capacity made away with their employers' plate and jewellery. It all seems like the fantastic imagining of a novelist, but it is sufficiently real, and the theory of mutual benefits accruing to Wild and his gang by this unnatural alliance is quite sound. He received the stolen property and held it to ransom, dividing (more or less unfairly) the amounts received with his thieves, who could not, without running great risks, sell it. All concerned benefited: the plundered citizens repurchased their valuables cheaply, Wild took an excellent commission, and the thieves, pickpockets, and highwaymen made a good living without much risk. The reverse of this charming picture of distributed benefits was the alarming increase of robberies and the decrease of arrests and convictions; and another serious outcome of Wild's organisation was that he absolutely commanded the lives of those who worked with him. None with impunity offended the great man, who was merciless in his revenge, swearing away the lives of those who dared cross him. Among the numerous satirical old prints relating to Jonathan Wild there is a gruesome picture of devils lighting him with flaring torches on the red way to Hell, together with a trophy of twenty-five hanging persons, men and women, all duly named, whom he brought to the gallows as a result of differences of opinion in the business matters between them, or merely for the reason that they had outlasted their use and had become inefficient thieves, and it would pay him better to secure their conviction. And it is to be observed that in all this while he was well known to be a director of robberies and receiver of stolen goods. It was scandalously notorious that, while he advertised himself in the newspapers as "Thief-catcher-General of Great Britain and Ireland," he was colleague of those he professed to catch. And, as the law then stood, he could not be brought to book. Everything was possible to the cunning and daring of Jonathan Wild, who could not merely bring a man to trial, but could snatch him from the very jaws of death by making the prosecutor so drunk that he was not present to give evidence at the trial; whereupon the accused was discharged.
In fifteen years' activities of this kind, Wild amassed enormous sums. He established himself in a fine house in the Old Bailey, conveniently opposite Newgate, and there lived in fine style with his Molly, the widow of a criminal who had been hanged at Tyburn. A footman followed him in livery; he dined in state: "His table was very splendid, he seldom dining under five Dishes, the Reversions whereof were generally charitably bestow'd on the Commonside felons." Jewellery and valuables not ransomed were shipped by him to Holland, in a sloop he regularly maintained for the purpose, bringing contraband goods on the return voyage.
There is this undoubted tribute to Jonathan Wild's greatness, that Parliament was at last moved to pass an Act especially designed to cope with his villainies, and to lay him by the heels. This was the Act of 1718, "For the farther preventing Robberies, Burglaries, and other Felonies, and for the more effectual transportation of Felons." A portion of this measure constituted it a felony for any one to solicit or to accept a reward on the pretence of restoring stolen property to the owners, unless they prosecuted the thieves.
But this clause was evaded without much difficulty by the astute Wild. He merely reconstituted his business, and made it an Enquiry Office, where no money was accepted. Clients still came in numbers to him, seeking their lost property, for it was certain, all the while, that he had really a guilty knowledge of at least three-quarters of the robberies committed in London. This revised procedure was for the owners who called upon him to be informed that he had made enquiries, and that he had heard the articles might be recovered if a reward was despatched to a place named. The owners would then generally, acting on his advice, send out, by the hands of a ticket-porter (ticket-porters were the "commissionaires" of that period) the reward agreed upon. The porter was instructed to wait at a street-corner until a person delivered a package into his hands, whereupon he was to hand over the reward. The celerity attending these transactions was remarkable.
In other instances Wild would advise his clients to advertise their loss and to offer a reward payable to any person who should deliver the lost property to Mr. Jonathan Wild, or at his office; and no questions asked. Perhaps the most marvellous thing in these negotiations was the assumed disinterestedness of Mr. Jonathan Wild himself, who, although the most notorious evil-doer in London, posed delightfully as the instrument of good, restoring the lost valuables of utter strangers entirely without fee or reward, from the Christian love he bore the human race. Fielding truly styled him "the Great Man."
Wild's impudence increased with his success, and he is found petitioning the Corporation for the freedom of the City to be conferred upon him, in recognition of his great services in bringing criminals to justice. It does not appear that the City responded.