It was he who discovered the wealth and habit of the victim;it was he who posted the thief and seized the plunder,giving a paltry commission to his hirelings for the trouble;it was he who kept whatever valuables were lost in the transaction;and as he was the servant of the Court,discovery or inconvenience was impossible.Surely the Machiavel of Thieves is justified of his title.He was known to all the rich and titled folk in town;and if he was generally able to give them back their stolen valuables at something more than double their value,he treated his clients with a most proper insolence.When Lady Mn was unlucky enough to lose a silver buckle at Windsor,she asked Wild to recover it,and offered the hero twenty pounds for his trouble.`Zounds,Madam,'says he,`you offer nothing.It cost the gentleman who took it forty pounds for his coach,equipage,and other expenses to Windsor.'His impudence increased with success,and in the geniality of his cups he was wont to boast his amazing rogueries:
`hinting not without vanity at the poor Understandings of the Greatest Part of Mankind,and his own Superior Cunning.'In fifteen years he claimed <Pd>10,000for his dividend of recovered plunderings,and who shall estimate the moneys which flowed to his treasury from blackmail and the robberies of his gang?So brisk became his trade in jewels and the precious metals that he opened relations with Holland,and was master of a fleet.His splendour increased with wealth:he carried a silvermounted sword,and a footman tramped at his heels.`His table was very splendid,'says a biographer:`he seldom dining under five Dishes,the Reversions whereof were generally charitably bestow'd on the Commonside felons.'At his second marriage with Mrs.Mary Dn,the hempen widow of Scull Dn,his humour was most happily expressed:he distributed white ribbons among the turnkeys,he gave the Ordinary gloves and favours,he sent the prisoners of Newgate several ankers of brandy for punch.
`Twas a fitting complaisance,since his fortune was drawn from Newgate,and since he was destined himself,a few years later,to drink punch`a liquor nowhere spoken against in the Scriptures'with the same Ordinary whom he thus magnificently decorated.Endowed with considerable courage,for a while he had the prudence to save his skin,and despite his bravado he was known on occasion to yield a plundered treasure to an accomplice who set a pistol to his head.But it is certain that the accomplice died at Tyburn for his pains,and on equal terms Jonathan was resolute with the best.On the trail he was savage as a wild beast.When he arrested James Wright for a robbery committed upon the persons of the Earl of Bln and the Lord Bruce,he held on to the victim's chin by his teethan exploit which reminds you of the illustrious Tiger Roche.
Even in his lifetime he was generously styled the Great.The scourge of London,he betrayed and destroyed every man that ever dared to live upon terms of friendship with him.It was Jonathan that made Blueskin a thief,and Jonathan screened his creature from justice only so long as clemency seemed profitable.At the first hint of disobedience Blueskin was committed to Newgate.
When he had stood his trial,and was being taken to the Condemned Hole,he beckoned to Wild as though to a conference,and cut his throat with a penknife.The assembled rogues and turnkeys thought their Jonathan dead at last,and rejoiced exceedingly therein.Straightway the poet of Newgate's Garland leaped into verse:
Then hopeless of life,He drew his penknife,And made a sad widow of Jonathan's wife.
But forty pounds paid her,her grief shall appease,And every man round me may rob,if he please.
But Jonathan recovered,and Molly,his wife,was destined a second time to win the conspicuous honour that belongs to a hempen widow.
As his career drew to its appointed close,Fortune withheld her smiles.`People got so peery,'complained the great man,`that ingenious men were put to dreadful shifts.'And then,highest tribute to his greatness,an Act of Parliament was passed which made it a capital offence `for a prig to steal with the hands of other people';and in the increase of public vigilance his undoing became certain.On the 2nd of January,1725,a day not easy to forget,a creature of Wild's spoke with fifty yards of lace,worth <Pd>40,at his Captain's bidding,and Wild,having otherwise disposed of the plunder,was charged on the 10th of March that he `did feloniously receive of Katharine Stetham ten guineas on account and under colour of helping the said Katharine Stetham to the said lace again,and did not then,nor any time since,discover or apprehend,or cause to be apprehended and brought to Justice,the persons that committed the said felony.'
Thus runs the indictment,and,to the inexpressible relief of lesser men,Jonathan Wild was condemned to the gallows.
Thereupon he had serious thoughts of `putting his house in order';with an ironical smile he demanded an explanation of the text:`Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree';but,presently reflecting that `his Time was but short in this World,he improved it to the best advantage in Eating,Drinking,Swearing,Cursing,and talking to his Visitants.'For all his bragging,drink alone preserved his courage:`he was very restless in the Condemned Hole,'though `he gave little or no attention to the condemned Sermon which the purblind Ordinary preached before him,'and which was,in Fielding's immortal phrase,`unto the Greeks foolishness.'But in the moment of death his distinction returned to him.He tried,and failed,to kill himself;and his progress to the nubbing cheat was a triumph of execration.He reached Tyburn through a howling mob,and died to a yell of universal joy.
