An 18th century Trump: Jonathan Wild, Thief and Thieftaker.

Jonathan Wild was a notorious Jekyll and Hyde character of early 18th century London. Wild played both sides of the law brazenly. He fenced stolen goods, working with a gang of thieves and highwaymen. 

At the same time, he acted as a law-abiding citizen vigilante who informed on criminals, earning the unofficial title of "Thieftaker General." Many of the criminals he denounced to the law were rivals and even members of his gang. (Image: Wild, by Charles Knight, 1791-1873)

Wild was born in Wolverhampton @1682 the son of a carpenter. He moved to London in the early 1700s. After being arrested for debt, he became involved in the criminal underworld, learning from and working with Mary Milliner or Mollineaux, a prostitute. Around 1712 they began to live together. He set himself up as a fence of stolen goods, and Mary operated as a madam. Somehow, he managed to hide this unsavory side and present himself publicly as a respectable citizen with a veneer of gentility. he attracted the attention of the then chief thief taker in London, Charles Hitchens, who recruited him as an assistant.

Wild was aided on both sides of the law by a surge in property crimes in the 1720s. Alarm was increased by crime reporting in London's first daily newspapers. The public was demanding vigorous action, but the authorities were hamstrung. A professional police force was more than a century away, and was opposed as a possible tool of authoritarian government. Crime prevention was in the hands of superannuated night watchmen and part-time, unpaid constables who relied on public posses (the "hue and cry") to pursue thieves. Criminals had an easy time outwitting this ramshackle crew. In a grossly unequal society growing in wealth, opportunities and incentives for theft were legion. 

Wild manipulated the legal system masterly, and collected rewards for returning goods he and his colleagues stole. When one of his gang crossed him, or demanded a larger share of the proceeds, he would "impeach" them (inform on them), sending them to jail and perhaps the gallows. Wild then collected the reward for "taking a thief." The amount, £40, would be worth about £8000 today. In 1720, Wild manged to convince the government to raise the fee to £140. 

If Wild wanted to bring a thief back into his gang, he would bribe the jailers to let them out. He also used his gang members to "take" members of rival gangs, including that of Hitchens, his former mentor and partner. The two crooks engaged in a public pamphlet war, each protesting their devotion to the law and accusing the other of criminality. Wild also accused Hitchens of being a sodomite (homosexual), which stuck and eliminated him as a threat. There is no honour among thieves. 

Wild managed to balance his contradictory persona for more than a decade. But he amassed a large number of enemies. Evidence of mass corruption in the government in the early 1720s increased public skepticism of his civic spiritedness. One of his gang members he had impeached attacked him in the courtroom and cut his throat. 

Wild survived the attack, but it left him greatly weakened, and he began to lose control over his gang. Several of them came forward and testified against him. He was convicted of theft and sentenced to hang. On the morning of his execution he tried to commit but failed to commit suicide. On May 24, 1725 Wild was taken from Newgate prison and hanged at Tyburn (now Marble Arch). A huge crowd turned out to watch the execution, the largest ever to attend such a spectacle, according to Daniel Defoe. Tickets were sold for the best viewing spots. William Hogarth produced a famous engraving of an execution at Tyburn in "The Idle 'Prentice Executed at Tyburn." (1747)

In one of history's ironies, the hangman had been a guest at Wild's wedding. An 18 year old Henry Fielding was among the throng. Wild's body was dissected at the College of Surgeons. His skeleton is on display at the Hunterian Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, in Lincoln's Inn Fields, London. (Image: Ticket to Wild's Execution)

Many writers, including John Gay and Henry Fielding, were inspired by Wild's career. They used the story of Wild to attack corrupt politicians, notably Sir Robert Walpole, Britain's first prime minister. Today, it is not difficult to see a parallel between Wild and Donald Trump. The former president presents himself as a great patriot and public servant, while engaging in a series of criminal and legally questionable activities. Trump, like Wild, has often thrown his associates to the wolves to save his skin. Will the course of justice catch up with Trump as it did with Wild, or will The Donald end up more like Walpole, who survived as prime minister for 21 years? American voters will decide. 

Further Reading:

John Gay, The Beggar's Opera (1728).

Henry Fielding, The Life and Death of Jonathan Wild, the Great (1743).

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The Brexiteer's Guide to English Ancestry

Hey, Brexiteers! Mes amis! You don't have to have a DNA test to prove what a True Born Englishman you are! All you need to do is read a poem by Daniel Defoe, an Englishman of oops, Flemish descent.

"A Brexit victory's a contradiction, In speech an irony, in fact a fiction." (Apologies and thanks to Daniel Defoe,1660-1731)

Brexit is real now, sort of. Devout Brexiteers proclaim, in near holy terms, that the UK has finally achieved "independence." By the "UK", however, they really mean England. 

Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland must reconcile themselves to being dragged about by the whims of English nationalists. British companies are in the same boat. The immense costs of Brexit for those trading to Europe are becoming distressingly clear. 

Narrow English nationalists are the big winners for now. It remains to be seen what they have actually won. In fact, Brexit is a triumph of extreme nationalism, aided by ignorance and lies, over economic rationality. 

Much of the pro-Brexit vote in 2016 stemmed from xenophobia, a hatred of foreigners. In this case, "tyrannical" foreigners in Brussels. Of course, not all who voted for Brexit were motivated by by xenophobia. Yet the rhetoric of hard Brexiteers is often based on the assumption that people who are "Not English" are somehow "lesser breeds," not to be trusted and certainly not listened to.

England found itself in a similar situation more than 300 years ago. The thrones of Britain were occupied by a foreigner, the Dutch prince William of Orange. He and his wife Mary had become joint sovereigns in 1689 following the Glorious Revolution, in which he and the Dutch military had played the pivotal role. (Image: William III, of Orange)

 

Despite being hailed as the savior of English Protestantism, William III (II in Scotland) was never much liked in England or in Scotland. In Northern Ireland, of course, he is still idolized by people who remain imprisoned in a time warp, the eponymous "Orangemen." 

William became thoroughly unpopular in England after Mary died of smallpox in 1694. People not only disliked him but the Dutch soldiers, politicians, and merchants who followed him to London in particular. They were the target of numerous vitriolic pamphlets and poems. 

In 1701, Daniel Defoe took up his pen to defend the Dutch king and his countrymen. He did so in a long satirical poem that was highly successful in its time. "The True-Born Englishman" is not read much today. Perhaps it should be, at least some of it. 

Defoe was a prolific writer, mostly of political pamphlets at this time. Later he made his name as the author of Robinson Crusoe (1719) and other novels. (Image: Defoe)

The target of Defoe's satire was not Englishness per se, but anti-Dutch xenophobia. To clear up any misunderstanding about that he added an explanatory preface two years later. In it he declared "that an Englishman, of all men, ought not to despise Foreigners as such ... since what they are today, we were yesterday, and tomorrow they will be like us." 

The English were themselves foreigners, invaders who eventually assimilated into one nation. The Dutch newcomers would assimilate as well, given the chance, Defoe implied. 

The English, far from being racially pure, were in reality a mongrel race. The "English" were a people forged from the union of Celtic Britons, Romans, Scots, Picts, "Anglo-Saxons," and Danes. Somewhat oddly, Defoe left out the Normans, here wearing the latest in 12th century fashion.

Defoe pulled no punches. The "union" he meant was sexual. Englishness originated "in eager rapes, and furious lust." The "rank daughters" of the land "Receiv'd all nations with promiscuous lust." The "nauseous brood" that resulted contained the "well extracted blood of Englishmen." 

In reality, the "True-Born Englishman" did not exist: "A true-born Englishman's a contradiction, In speech an irony, in fact a fiction."

Defoe understood the biological and cultural reality of Englishness 300 years ago. Why do so many people today continue to champion a view so much at variance with history and biology? They should check the ancestry of their leader, True-Born Boris.

Further Reading: Daniel Defoe, The True-Born Englishman (London, 1701 and later editions)

  

London, Coronavirus, and The Great Plague of 1665

The last time London experienced anything like the current coronavirus restrictions was nearly four hundred years ago, in 1665. It became known as the Great Plague of London, although earlier epidemics probably killed a higher proportion of the population. How did the 1665 epidemic compare to what the city is going through in 2020? 

The outbreak of plague began slowly in the spring, accelerated in the summer. and peaked in September. It declined during the late fall. By early 1666 it was all but over. By then it had killed @100,000 people out of a pre-plague population of @450-500,000. At its height in September, 7000 deaths per week were recorded, but that was surely an undercount. Many deaths went unreported.

Nearly half the people fled London during the epidemic, obeying what was thought to be the best prescription of the time: "Flee from the infected." Thus, the mortality rate among those who remained was probably close to 50%. The royal government did not make any attempt to stop the exodus. In fact, the king and his court fled, to Salisbury, then to Oxford.

Fleeing was more feasible for people of means: aristocracy, gentry, and wealthy merchants and professionals, including clergymen and physicians. Most of them had houses in the country, or relatives they could stay with. The physicians could do little against the plague; staying would have had little impact.

People below those groups fled as well, but they often had no fixed place to go. Inhabitants of villages and towns in the areas outside London often chased them away, fearing the spread of the infection. Many people were forced into the woods, to beg, steal, scavenge, and sometimes die of starvation or exposure.

The plague spread anyway, although not as much as during the Black Death of the 14th century. One of the most famous places it spread to the was the tiny village of Eyam, whose inhabitants quarantined themselves to protect nearby villages and towns, at great cost to themselves.

To their credit, the Lord Mayor and most city officials remained at their posts. The city distributed some food aid to the people. Farmers from the nearby countryside brought food. They left it outside the city gates, and negotiated prices at a distance. People who came to buy collect it left coins in buckets filled with water to disinfect them.

There was no official "lockdown" but people were urged to keep their social distance. Just as today, many people refused to observe sensible precautions. The diarist Samuel Pepys recorded with dismay that people continued to gather in businesses and shops and attend large funerals. One evening he stood looking longingly at a jolly group of people socializing in a tavern, but turned away, having decided he did not wish to die for a drink.

The authorities ordered the building of temporary pest houses to quarantine the infected, who would have overwhelmed the few hospitals. The city also employed mandatory house quarantine. Whenever the infection broke out in any household, everyone in the house was shut up with the sick person, which could be a death sentence for all the residents. Crosses would be painted on the house doors to warn others away.

Contemporaries recalled hearing the screams of the sick and terrified in the shut up houses. People naturally tried to escape these confinements, so guards were posted outside the houses to prevent it. Rioters sometimes broke open the houses and released the residents. Sometimes the guards were bribed to let the residents  escape. Most shops eventually closed, because their owners had fled or died.


The streets were eerily quiet except for the dead carts going around to pick up the dead, who were often dumped in mass graves. Grass began to grow in the streets due to the lack of traffic.

As the number of deaths mounted, the authorities closed alehouses and limited the number of lodgers who could stay in a household. They ordered a cull of cats and dogs, in the belief that they might carry the plague. That probably made things worse, since these animals killed many rats, whose fleas were major transmitters to humans. The city government also ordered the burning of fires in the streets, based on the widespread belief that miasma, or bad air, was the cause of the disease. The fires were supposed to disinfect the air.

One of the best accounts of the Great Plague of 1665 in London is a work of fiction. Daniel Defoe wrote The Journal of the Plague Year in 1721. It was what we would call a potboiler today, written due to heightened interest in and fear of plague. A major epidemic of plague had broken out in Marseilles, France, and it was commonly believed that it would move on to London. In the event it did not. The 1665 plague was the last major outbreak in the UK.

Despite being fictional, Defoe's work was soundly based on official documents, eyewitness reports, and a few short written accounts. Defoe lived in London at the time of the plague, although he was only five years old at the time. His uncle, Henry Foe, may have been a major source of information. Foe stayed in London throughout the plague. He was a saddler. Defoe's narrator in the journal is a saddler. At the end of the book are the initials "HF."

The contemporary woodcut below provides some sense of Londoners' experiences during the Great Plague. Death is everywhere, even following those who flee the city. On the far right, those fleeing are being stopped by armed countryfolk telling them to keep out.

As if London hadn't been punished enough, the following year brought the Great Fire of London. The fire raged for five days, between September 2-6 and destroyed 4/5ths of the city inside the old Roman Wall, including St. Paul's Cathedral and 87 parish churches. Amazingly, only six people were killed.

Further Reading: A. Lloyd Moote, Dorothy C. Moote, The Great Plague: The Story of London's Deadliest Year (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004).




 

London's Iconic Newgate Prison, 1188-1902

For centuries, Newgate Prison was a London landmark and almost a synonym for incarceration. It stood on the site of a gate in the Roman Wall for more that 700 years. It was located just to the south of the equally old St. Bartholomew's Hospital, at the corner of today's Newgate Street and Old Bailey. The first Newgate Prison was built in 1188 and looked something like this:

It was rebuilt several times, including by Christopher Wren (who else?) after the Great Fire of London in 1666. The last version, pictured below, was erected in 1782. It was designed by another prolific architect, George Dance the Younger.

"New" Newgate became the scene of public executions the following year, when they were moved from Tyburn (near today's Marble Arch) to outside the prison gates. The authorities made the move because the traditional processions to Tyburn and the hangings attracted large and boisterous crowds, and sometimes produced riots. 

Nevertheless, large crowds also gathered to watch the hangings at Newgate. They often paid large sums for good observation posts. Hawkers sold "confessions" of the condemned as well food and drink to the crowds. Public executions were much like modern sports events, except everyone knew in advance who was going to lose. 

 

That sort of entertainment ended in 1868, when the authorities removed the executions from the public gaze altogether. Henceforth, they took place inside the prison walls. An illustration by French artist Gustave Dore of the prisoners' exercise yard around that time captures the grimness of life in Victorian Newgate.

Newgate closed in 1902 and was demolished. It is now the site of London's Central Criminal Court, which was moved from its earlier location nearby. It has long been known as the Old Bailey after the street it fronts upon.  A statue of Justice upon its roof announces its purpose, if not always its results.

Famous prisoners of Newgate included Ben Jonson, Daniel Defoe, alleged pirate Captain William Kidd, Casanova, and William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania. Of this group, only Kidd was executed, but he was hanged at Wapping Dock on the River Thames, as was the custom with pirates.