The Thieves' Opera: The Remarkable Lives and Deaths of Jonathan Wild, Thief-taker and Jack Sheppard, House-breaker
Page 26
Epilogue
Wild left behind him a vacuum. He had become irreplaceable as a thief-taker. But not to his last ‘wife’, Mary Brown, despite her attempts barely a month before to kill herself. His most loyal servant, Quilt Arnold, was courting his master’s widow.
We hear that the relic of Jonathan Wild is actually contracted to Quilt Arnold, her husband’s journeyman, and is resolved to marry him at all hazards; ’tis remarkable, that this wretched woman hath had two husbands and a kinsman executed at Tyburn within these ten years: moreover, her uncle, Mr Spurling, a turnkey at Newgate, was murdered at the Sessions House, for which fact a man and a woman were executed before Newgate; so unfortunate her family bath been. Therefore, what encouragement a person of Mr Arnold’s character bath to venture on her, is a secret,
related the Daily Post only two days after Wild’s death. It remains unknown whether or not Quilt Arnold married Mary, but just before Wild’s execution he was ‘ordered to remain [in prison] till the ensuing assizes for Essex, when he is to be removed thither to be tried for a capital crime charged upon him in that county’.
Wild’s son, born just before he left Wolverhampton to seek his fortune in London, was in the capital at the time of Wild’s death. At nineteen years of age, he was only a little younger than Jack Sheppard. The newspaper reports give no indication of whether or not the young Wild had come to London before his father’s arrest, hoping, as his uncle Andrew had done, to use his influence to carve a career for himself in London’s underworld; or whether he disapproved of his father’s successes, and came to the city before his death only for a final reconciliation. The London Journal speculated that he was headed for Holland, ‘unable to bear the reflections that may be cast on him on account of his unfortunate father; who, ’tis said, had left him £300’. In fact, the young man sold himself as an indentured servant, and travelled to the New World, a voluntary transportee. Perhaps he hoped that in the American colonies the shameful fact of who his father was would pass unnoticed.
Andrew Wild, who had come to London hoping to capitalize on his brother’s success, and had kept a ‘case’, or flash-house, during Jonathan’s criminal ascendancy, was put into the Wood Street Compter for debt in 1725; nothing more was heard of him. Perhaps without the protection of his brother he was unable to keep his business going. Jonathan’s other brother, John, who had been involved in the royalist demonstrations in Wolverhampton in 1715, remained in his home town, as did his two sisters, who were married to a buckle-maker and a comb-maker.
Edgworth Bess, Jack Sheppard’s first love, was committed to Tothill Fields Bridewell, a house of correction, ‘for seducing a shopkeeper’s son to go a-thieving with her’ in April 1725. A year later she was in court again. Six stolen silver spoons had been found among her possessions. At first she claimed they ‘were left me by my dear, John Sheppard, and I have just fetched them out of pawn’, but when her accomplice — yet another impressionable young man — confessed, she was convicted and sentenced to be transported to the American colonies.
Public reactions to Wild’s execution varied. As shown at his hanging, the common people of London celebrated his death. To them he was a villain, playing on people’s desperation to bind them to him. A satirical pamphlet published after his death revealed the extent to which public opinion had swung against him when his ruthless recruitment of thieves was revealed.
Let them be men picked and chosen for their resolution, men that will do or swear anything, who, not having drunk of the milk of human kindness, have no feeling for their fellow creatures but would as soon strike a man down the skull with a hanger as the unfeeling butcher does the ox.[227]
The educated classes were more ambivalent. Once Wild’s office had closed, there was nowhere to turn to retrieve stolen property. ‘’Tis remarkable that since the dissolution of Jonathan Wild, not one felon has been convicted capitally, which by some is attributed to a reform amongst the rogues and by others to the want of a proper person to detect them,’ reported the Daily Journal six weeks after Wild’s death. Cesar de Saussure, a Swiss visitor to London, was more forthright:
Many persons in England think more harm than good was done by the execution of this famous thief. They say there is no one now to go to who will help you to recover your stolen property — and, while the government has certainly got rid of a robber, he was only one, and by his help several were hanged every year.
Jonathan’s death provided rich pickings for London’s satirists and verse-makers. Jonathan Wild’s Advice to his Successor, written by an anonymous Grub Street writer, advised the applicants to Wild’s position of what traits were necessary for success.
And I do not in the least doubt that someone or other may think it worth his while to revive my occupation, especially when he is assured of the means to render himself obscure, it being a function of no small profit, requiring little industry, honour, honesty or conscience, though the appearance of these virtues is as necessary as the non-possession of them. The mask is the summum bonum of our sanction, a mask that may be put on at any time without incurring the displeasure of the Black Act or any other in the trammels of the law.
Just as Jack Sheppard had used disguise to facilitate his escapes, so too had Jonathan Wild used his ability to feign sympathy and interest when it was needed to cultivate the business of which his death had deprived London.
Popular ballads mocked the men who had brought Jonathan to his death, then regretted their actions when there was no one who could restore their stolen property to them.
But sure, e’er long, the time will come again,
When watches shall be lost in Drury Lane;
Snuffboxes, finely painted, miss their way,
And rings, and pocketbooks shall go astray;
When Phillis at the ball or masquerade
Shall lose a present from some lover made:
Then you — unthinking monsters! — you that now
Exult at my unpitied overthrow,
Then you’ll repent too late: you then in vain,
Will wish to have your Jonathan again!
One of the most interesting treatises against thief-taking was Bernard de Mandeville’s An Enquiry into the Causes of the Frequent Executions at Tyburn, published as a series of letters in the British Journal from 27 February 1725 — twelve days before Wild was arrested. De Mandeville’s premise was simple:
The mischief that one man may do as a thief, is a very trifle what he may be the occasion of, as an agent or concealer of felons...That rogues should be industriously dispersed throughout the city and suburbs; that different hours and stations should be observed among them, and regular books kept of stolen goods; that the superintendent in this hopeful economy should, almost every Sessions, for a reward, betray, prosecute and hang one or more of his acquaintance, and at the same time keep on his correspondence amongst the survivors, whom, one after another, he sends all to their Triangular Home [the gallows]; that magistrates should not only know and see this, but likewise continue to make use of such a person for an evidence, and in a manner own that they are beholden to him in the administration of justice; that, I say, all these things should be facts, is something very extraordinary, in the principal city, and the home management of a kingdom, so formidable abroad, and of such moment in the balance of Europe, as that of Great Britain.
But it was Lord Chesterfield, writing thirteen years after Wild’s death, who summed up the ‘great man’ best.
At one great period of his life, [Jonathan Wild] seemed rather born to a ribband about his shoulders than a rope around his neck...He was certainly a man of parts, and had he set out in the world in an honest, instead of a dishonest road, we might have seen him reckoned a patriot, instead of a pickpocket...And it must be confessed, that, in his whole conduct, he showed a steadiness, that wanted nothing but better principles to support it — one almost regrets that such a man should be lost in such a cause.
Bibliography
I am particularly inde
bted to the following modern historians: J. M. Beattie, M. Dorothy George, Douglas Hay, Christopher Hibbert, Christopher Hill, Michael Ignatieff, Peter Linebaugh, Frank McLynn, Roy Porter, J. A. Sharpe and E. P. Thompson. Their books, listed below, have been of enormous use to me in my research and would also provide excellent further reading for anyone interested in general eighteenth-century history as well as its criminal history.
The works of Gerald Howson and Frederick Lyons on Jonathan Wild, and of Horace Bleackley on Jack Sheppard, are highly recommended. Bleackley’s and Lyons’s books are particularly useful as they contain reproductions of many of the relevant eighteenth-century documents.
I would also like to mention several authors who deal specifically with eighteenth-century fiction, and who, because of their literary rather than historical approach, shed a slightly different light on the subject. They are: J. Bender, I. Donaldson, P. Earle, Pat Rogers and Ian Watt. P. Wagner’s book on the political, cultural and economic impact of erotica in the eighteenth century is fascinating, as is E. J. Burford’s amusing look at eighteenth-century Covent Garden life, Wits, Wenchers and Wantons.
Practically everything I have written about William Hogarth derives from the many books on him by Ronald Paulson, who is the authority on anything Hogarth-related.
The best eighteenth-century accounts of London’s underworld are the contemporary biographies and narratives of notorious London figures including Sally Salisbury, Benjamin Child and Ralph Wilson, as well as the many lives of Jack Sheppard and Jonathan Wild. Also of interest is J. Villette’s Annals of Newgate, which contains a large number of potted histories of criminals held in Newgate Prison. Moll Flanders, by Daniel Defoe, who had an intimate (if disapproving) knowledge of the underside of London life, is the best fictionalized account of criminal London in the early eighteenth century.
Eighteenth-century foreign observers of English life provide further insights into what life was like in the London inhabited by Wild and Sheppard. I have relied heavily on the comments of Cesar de Saussure, Henri Misson and Baron Muralt, all listed below.
Wherever there is an unattributed bit of verse, it is taken from John Gay’s wonderful ode to early eighteenth-century London, Trivia.
*
Contemporary Accounts (1700-1800)
Anon., A New Canting Dictionary, London, 1735
Anon., The Foreigner’s Guide: Or, a Necessary and Instructive Companion both for
the Foreigner and Native in their Tour through the Cities of London and Westminster, London, 1730
Anon., Wat Tyler and Jack .Strawe: Or, the Mob Reformers, London, 1730
Anon., The History of Wat Tyler and Jack Strawe, London, 1750
Anon. (Gay or Swift), ‘Blueskin’s Ballad’, London, 1724
Anon., The Life of Jonathan Wilde, Thief-Taker General of Great Britain and Ireland from his Birth to his Death, London, 1725
Anon., The History of the Remarkable Lives and Actions of Jonathan Wild, Thief Taker, Joseph Blake alias Blueskin, Footpad, and John Sheppard, Housebreaker, London, 25
Anon., An Authentic History of the Parentage, Birth, Education, Marriages, Issue and Practices of the Famous Jonathan Wild, London, 1725
Anon., News from the Dead. Or, a dialogue between Blueskin, Sheppard and Jonathan Wild, London, 1725
Anon., The Whole Life and History of Benjamin Child, London, 1722
Byrom, J., Miscellaneous Poems, London, 1773
Chesterfield, Lord, ‘Common Sense’, 23 December 1738
Cleland, J., Fanny Hill, London, 1749
de Mandeville, B., An Inquiry into the Causes of the Frequent Executions at Tyburn, 1725 (reprinted with introduction by M. R. Zirker, Los Angeles, 1964)
de Saussure, C., A Foreign View of England, 1725 (trans. van Muyden, London, 1902)
Dearing, V., and C. E. Beckwith (eds), Poetry and Prose of John Gay, Oxford, 1974
Defoe, D., Robinson Crusoe, London, 1719
Defoe, D., The True and Genuine Account of the Life and Actions of Jonathan Wild, London, 1726
Defoe, D., (or ‘H. D.’), The Life of Jonathan Wiltifrom his Birth to his Death, London, 1725
Defoe, D., A Tour through the Whole of Great Britain, London, 1724-7
Defoe, D., The History of the Remarkable Life of John Sheppard, London, 1725
Defoe, D., A Narrative of alt the Robberies etc. of Jack ,Sheppard, London, 1724
Defoe, D., Moll Flanders, London, 1722
‘G. E.’, Authentic Memoirs of the Life and Surprising Adventures of John Sheppard by Way of Familiar Letters from a Gentleman in Town, London, 1724
Female Tatter, 1709-1713, I,ondon, 1992
Fielding, H., Amelia, London, 1751
Fielding, H., Jonathan Wild The Great, London, 1743
Fielding, H., The Grub Street Opera (ed. J. L. Morrissey, Edinburgh, 1973)
Fielding, H., An Enquiry into the Causes of the Late Increase in Robbers, London, 1751
Fielding, J., A Plan for Preventing Robberies within 20 Miles of London, London, 1755
Gay, J., The Beggars’ Opera 1727 (ed. P. E. Lewis, Edinburgh, 1973)
Johnson, Captain C., Lives of the Highwaymen, London, 1734
Misson, H., Memoirs and Observations of his Travels over England, 1719
Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley, Selected Letters (ed. R. Halsband, London, 1970)
Muralt, Baron, Letters Describing the Characters and Customs of the English and French Nations, London, 1726
Pepys, S., Diary (ed. R. and L. Latham, London, 1987)
Purney, T., The Behaviour, Last Dying Speeches and Confessions of the Four Malefactors who were Executed at Tyburn on the 24 of May 1725, London, 1725
Select Trials at the Old Bailey, London, 1734
Smith, Captain A., Memoirs of the Life and Times of Jonathan Wild, London, 1726
Swift, J., Gulliver’s Travels, London, 1726
Swift, J., Collected Poems (ed. J. Horrell, London, 1958)
Villette, J., The Annals of Newgate, London, 1776
Walker, Captain C., Authentic Memoirs of the Life, Intrigues, and Adventures of the Celebrated Sally Salisbury, London, 1723
Walker, T., The Quaker’s Opera, or the Escapes of Jack Sheppard, London, 1728
Ward, E., The London Spy, London, 1704
Wesley, J., The Journal, London, 1938
Wild, J., The Humble Petition of Jonathan Wild Humbly Presented to His Majesty, London, 1725
The Whole Proceedings of the Trial of Jonathan Wild, London, 1725
Wilson, R., A Full and Impartial Account of all the Robberies Committed by John Hawkins, George Simpson, and their Companions, London, 1722
*
London Newspapers, Periodicals
London Journal
Mist’s Weekly Journal
Parker’s London News
Spectator
Weekly Journal, or British Gazetteer
Weekly Journal, or Saturday’s Post
*
Modern (Post-1800)
Ainsworth, W. H., Rookwood, London, 1837
Ainsworth, W. H., Jack Sheppard, London, 1839
Allerton, R., and T. Parker, The Courage of His Convictions, London, 1962
Anon., Jack Sheppard — A Romance of Old London, London, 1870
Armens, S. M., John Gay: Social critic, New York, 1954
Beattie, J. M., Crime and the Courts in England, Oxford, 1986
Ben-Amos, I. K., ‘Failure to become Freemen’, Social History, XVI, 1991
Bender, J., Imagining the Penitentiary: Fiction and the Architecture of Mind in the Eighteenth Century, Chicago, 1987
Besant, W., London in the Eighteenth Century, London, 1902
Blackett-Ord, M., Hell-Fire Duke, Kensal, 1982
Bleackley, H., Jack Sheppard, Edinburgh, 1933
Buck, A., Dress in Eighteenth Century England, London, 1979
Burford, E. J., Wits, Wenchers and Wantons, London, 1986
Bushaway, R. W., By Rite: Custom, Ceremony and Community in Engl
and 1700-1800, London, 1982
Chancellor, E. B., The Annals of Covent Garden and its Neighbourhood, London, 1930
Chancellor, E. B., The Eighteenth Century in London, London, 1920
Chandler, F. W., The Literature of Roguery, London, 1907
Cloward, R. A., and L. E. Ohlin, Delinquency and Opportunity, London, 1961
Cockburn, J. S. (ed.), Crime in England, London, 1977
Cohen, A. K., Deviance and Control, Englewood Cliffs, 1966
Cohen, S. (ed.), Images of Deviance, Harmondsworth, 1971
Cohen, S. and A. Scull (eds), Social Control and the State, Oxford, 1983
Collins, P., Dickens and Crime, London, 1962
Coser, L. A., and B. Rosenburg, Sociological Theory: A Book of Readings, New York, 1957
Davis, D., A History of Shopping, London, 1966
Davison, L., et al. (eds), Stilling the Grumbling Hive, Stroud, 1992
Deehiseekayess, J., Tyburn Tree, London, 1849
Dickens, C., Oliver Twist, London, 1837
Donaldson, I., The World Upside-Down: Comedy from Jonson to Fielding, Oxford, 1970
Dunlop, O. J., and R. D. Denman, English Apprenticeship and Child Labour: A History, London, 1912
Earle, P., A City Full of People, London, 1994
Earle, P., The World of Defoe, London, 1976
Earle, P., The Making of the English Middle Class, California, 1989
Foucault, M., Discipline and Punish, London, 1977 (trans. A. Sheridan)
Gatrell, V. A. C., The Hanging Tree: Execution and the English People, 1770-1868, Oxford, 1994
Gatrell, V. A. C., Lenman, B., and G. Parker, Crime and the Law, London, 1980
Genet, J., The Thief’s Journal, Harmondsworth, 1971
George, M. D., London Life in the Eighteenth Century, London, 1925
George, M. D., Hogarth to Cruikshank, London, 1967
Griffiths, A., Chronicles of Newgate, London, 1884
Harris, T. (ed.), Popular Culture in England, c. 1500-1850, London, 1995
Hay, D., Linebaugh, P. and E. P. Thompson (eds), Albion’ s Fatal Tree, London, 1975
Hay, D., Linebaugh, P. and E. P. Thompson, Bulletin for the Society of the Study of Labour History, 25, 1972.