And ev'ry man round me may rob, if he please.
Swift, however, was in too great a hurry: Jonathan Wild did not die then, and the thieves were not yet released from his iniquitous bondage. His wife was not then made a "sad widow," although she was soon to become one; and thus earned the remarkable distinction of having been twice a "hempen widow."
In January of the following year, 1725, the captain of Wild's sloop, a man named Roger Johnson, who had been arrested on a charge of contraband trading with Holland, sent hurriedly to him. Wild, never at a moment's loss, assembled a mob, and provoked a riot, by which the prisoner was rescued.
Himself arrested at his own house in the Old Bailey, on February 15th, 1725, on a charge of being concerned in the theft of fifty yards of lace from the shop of Catherine Stetham, in Holborn, on January 22nd, he was, after considerable delay, put upon his trial at the Old Bailey on May 15th. The lace stolen was valued at £50.
He was further charged with feloniously receiving of Catherine Stetham "ten guineas on account, and under colour of helping the said Catherine Stetham to the said lace again; and that he did not then, nor at any time since, discover or apprehend, or cause to be apprehended and brought to Justice, the persons that committed the said felony."
The evidence adduced at the trial is first-hand information of Wild's method in organising a robbery. Henry Kelly, one of the chief witnesses against him, told how he went on that day to see a Mrs. Johnson who then lived at the prisoner's house. He found her at home, and with her the great Jonathan and his Molly, and they drank a quartern of gin together. By-and-by, in came a certain woman named Peg Murphy with a pair of brocaded clogs, which she presented to Mrs. Wild. After two or three more quarterns of gin had passed round, Murphy and Henry Kelly rose to leave.
"Which way are you going?" asked Wild.
"To my lodging in 'Seven Dials,'" replied Kelly.
"I suppose," remarked Wild, "you go along Holborn?"