committee examining the bill that became the burglary act in 1706 to which he
gave evidence about his activities. The committee resolved that ‘Mr. Joseph
Billers, of the City of London, hath been at great Expenses, and Hazard of his Life,
in detecting, and bringing to Justice, several Burglars and other Criminals, for
which he deserves Encouragement, and Protection’.^90 Protection was necessary
because he had been subjected to ‘Browbeatings, Threats, odious and
reproachful Reflections’. He was also charged—maliciously, it turned out—
with corruptly attempting to obtain a reprieve for John Read, a condemned
robber and horse-thief, who had given Billers information about his accomplices.
He was acquitted and published his Caseto clear his name.^91
Billers remained engaged in prosecutions for some time.^92 He was not the
only man to do so in Anne’s reign or to be labelled a thief-taker. But other as-
pects of the thief-taking business, besides prosecuting for profit, seem to have
come increasingly to the fore then, perhaps because of the diminishing number
of cases of serious crime coming to the attention of the courts, the offences that
drew parliamentary rewards. There were no standing rewards for the convic-
tion of minor offenders—pickpockets, for example, or the petty thieves whose
depredations so exasperated the propertied middling classes of the metropolis.
It would not have benefited thief-takers to bring such offenders to justice.
Private gratuities might occasionally have been available in such cases, but no
thanks, and no reward, from the state.
On the other hand, there was a potentially lucrative service to be offered by
those who could put victims of such offences in touch with those who had stolen
from them and negotiate the return of the goods for a fee. This required the
same kind of information about thieves, receivers, and suspicious alehouses that
thief-takers needed if they were to engage in the more dangerous business of
prosecution. The increasing number of newspapers also facilitated the work of
such brokers.^93 Acting as an intermediary must surely have been an attractive
option in cases in which rewards were not available, even though compounding
248 Detection and Prosecution
the theft of silk valued £ 53 , property of Joseph Billers, and, with other defendants, for several other thefts.
Others were indicted for similar thefts in subsequent sessions, and several women for receiving (CLRO:
SF 494 – 7 ).
(^90) Case ofJoseph Billers, 3 ; JHC, 15 ( 1705 – 8 ), 375.
(^91) Billers sought and got copies of the documents involved in that pardon process from the aldermen,
and was able to establish his innocence when his trial came on before ChiefJustice Holt at the Guildhall
on 18 February 1709 (CLRO: Papers of the Court of Aldermen,June 1708 ). The offender in question,
John Read, was executed at Tyburn, 28 January 1708. Apart from clearing his name, Billers’s Casewas
also intended to plant the suggestion (which he does liberally throughout, and which is reinforced by the
long appendix he adds setting out the law on all the grievances he hints at in the body of the pamphlet)
that the charges against him were inspired by corrupt officials who found his detective work too thorough
and too honest.
(^92) A glimpse of Billers’s continuing thief-taking is provided by the ordinary of Newgate’s account of
the life and execution ofJames Hacket, who was hanged at Tyburn in June 1707 , and who said before he
died that ‘he had given Mr. Joseph Billers a true information of all the Robberies by him committed’
(Ordinary’s Account, 6 June 1707 ).
(^93) Wales, ‘Thief-takers and Their Clients’, pp. 69 – 70.