Rufflers and Ripping Coves

By John Skow

THIEF-TAKER GENERAL, THE RISE AND FALL OF JONATHAN WILD by Gerald Howson. 338 pages. St. Martin's Press. $8.95.

By 1712 it had become "burthensome to the nation" to house bankrupts in London's two debtors' prisons, despite the exaction of stiff entrance fees and rents for all cells better than the most wretched. Accordingly, Parliament voted to turn the debtors loose. One of them was Jonathan Wild, an energetic, 29-year-old bucklemaker and bailiff's nark whose sole distinction before his imprisonment was that he had accumulated debts of 61 -L- 6/.

There was a much better fiscal balance to Wild's career over the next 13 years, and only a moralist could say whether he was more burdensome to the nation in jail or out. Wild perfected England's first coherent system for detecting and arresting criminals. Yet his success at organizing crime detection was due to the fact that he took great care to organize the crime in the first place. He not only became the "Thief-Taker General of Great Britain and Ireland," as he took to calling himself; he was also the realm's principal thief.

Trade in Children. The thief-taking racket had limitless possibilities; the constabulary of the time was weak, criminals were many, and Parliament had authorized payment of 40 -L- for evidence in a capital case. This system of rewards was intended to break up London's big gangs by making betrayal profitable. The trouble was that although there were some 350 capital offenses on the books, it was not always easy or politic to lay hands on those who had actually committed them. This led naturally to frame-ups, and also to a brisk trade in children and other innocents who were induced to commit crimes so that they might be betrayed.

Wild was not the first thief-taker to turn a profit in this trade; he was merely the most gifted. A proof of his talent was one of his creations known as the "Lost Property Office." Wild would approach a citizen from whom money or documents had been stolen (generally in a theft organized by Wild), and represent himself as a man whose crime-fighting had given him some knowledge of the underworld. Perhaps he could be of help. In a day or two--sometimes only a few hours--he would return with the suggestion that the citizen appear at a street-corner rendezvous, prepared to pay a reward. No, Wild wanted nothing; to be of service was satisfaction enough. From the thieves he took the greater part of their profit. Those not sufficiently grateful he betrayed to the courts.

Beggar's Opera. Achievement such as Wild's does not go unnoticed, and one day in front of Old Bailey a betrayed colleague named Blueskin Blake tried to cut the Thief-Taker General's head off with a dull knife. He failed. In 1725, though, Wild was sentenced to be hanged by a corrupt judge (appropriately, on false evidence that he had received a bit of stolen lace). Wild died wealthy, though. During his career the reward for giving evidence rose from -L-40 to -L- 140, or from $2,000 to $7,000 in modern money, as Author Gerald Howson reckons it. The figures seem inflated; he reports, for instance, that the highest-priced whores of the time cost -L-50 a night, by his scale an absurd $2,500 in 1971 dollars.

Defoe wrote about Wild, and so did Fielding (The Life of Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great). John Gay used him as the model for Peachum ("Impeach 'em") in his Beggar's Opera. The story can stand any amount of retelling, and Howson's is full of wonderful oddments: at Old Bailey in Wild's time, trials were conducted in the open air regardless of weather; the original Jenny Diver sat in church with false, gloved hands folded primly across her stomach, while her real ones picked adjacent purses. There are also some linguistic notes: "Rattling Lay" was stealing from coaches, "Rufflers" were strong-arm men, "Ripping Coves" broke into houses by ripping up roofs, and "palliards, tatterdemalions and clapperdogeons" were wanderers. At his trial Wild claimed that an unsuccessful mercury cure for syphilis had caused his mouth to water so copiously that he could not address the court without spitting. The judge refused a postponement. The hangman who hanged Wild had been a guest at his wedding. sbJohn Skow

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