The forms of corrupt dealing that came to the attention of magistrates in the
generation after the Revolution—though without at first causing much of a
stir—arose from the opportunities for blackmail that thief-takers’ knowledge of
crimes and offenders provided. A case in 1701 involvingJohn Connell (or Con-
nelly) and Mary, his wife, illustrates some of the possibilities that a position
poised between the authorities and criminals gave rise to—some of the pres-
sures they could exert when they themselves acquired a certain degree of au-
thority. The Connells had been involved in thief-taking through the 1690 s with
several associates—with John in particular appearing as a witness or prosecutor
in cases involving highway robbery, coining, and clipping. He also shared in at
least one reward payment—a sum of two hundred and eighty pounds paid by
the sheriff of Surrey in 1702.^66 In the previous year the Connells had been
accused of extorting money for agreeing not to prosecute. They had been em-
ployed by the victim of a theft to find three rolls of cloth stolen from a wagon
and, by means that are not disclosed, discovered one of the rolls in the shop of
Gavin Harding. The wagoner was willing to pay for the return of the cloth, but
it appears that the Connells agreed not to tell him about their discovery in return
for a handsome pay-off. Mrs Harding later complained to a magistrate that in
the first of two meetings in public houses, Mary Connell ‘menac’d [her] and
threatened to have her gaoled’, whereupon she gave her four guineas; on the
second occasion ‘by Threatnings and Canting upon her, sometimes giving her
Sweet words and sometimes Sower’, she paid over a further four guineas, Mary
Connell promising ‘you shall never here [sic] noe more of it’.^67
Corrupt manipulations of this kind were not confined to those who engaged
in thief-taking. Constables, watchmen, magistrates, even Sir Salathiel Lovell,
recorder of London in the 1690 s and well into Anne’s reign, were accused of il-
legally profiting from the discretion they could wield over various stages of pros-
ecution.^68 But thief-takers had more frequent opportunities to do so. Many
years later Connell was remembered at the time ofJonathan Wild’s trial, and an
elaborate story was told about him by Bernard Mandeville, to illustrate the
proposition that there were ‘Thief-Catchers of note before Jonathan’, and that
they were invariably corrupt.^69
Other opportunities for corruption are illustrated by the shady career ofJohn
Gibbons, who prosecuted coiners and clippers in the 1690 s, but was accused of
profiting mainly by protecting them. The most damaging evidence was given by
an accused Irish coiner William Ivey (or Ivie) and his wife, who were deposed at
Detection and Prosecution 241(^66) PRO, T 1 / 80 , no. 71 , fo. 236. (^67) LMA, MJ/SP/ 1701 /April/ 28 – 9.
(^68) Lovell’s greed and corruption was attacked by Thomas Brown, Letters from the Dead to the Living( 1702 ),
in which the devil is made to say that Lovell ‘never sav’d any Man for his Money, but he hang’d another
in his room’ (pp. 49 – 50 ). And for other evidence, see Wales, ‘Thief-takers and their Clients’, p. 83 , n. 39.
(^69) The British Journal, 24 April and 1 May 1725. These letters follow by two weeks the six printed by
Mandeville in the same newspapers that were to form the basis of his Enquiry into the Causes of the Frequent
Executions at Tyburn( 1725 ).