of Aldermen, and his anxiety to be given financial support for the scheme he
claimed to have worked out to suppress property crime and violence in the
City.^121 In his pamphlet, Hitchen noted that parliament was also responding to
the abundant evidence that receiving and thief-taking had merged in new and
striking ways in the years in which prosecutions of property offences had in-
creased in London since the end of the War of Spanish Succession. And indeed,
one clause of the Transportation Act which parliament passed in 1718 and
which was itself clearly a product of the anxiety about London crime, addressed
the issue of receiving and returning stolen goods for a fee. Apart from its main
business of making it possible for the courts to transport non-capital felons, the
act made it a felony to arrange the return of stolen goods for a fee, and a felony
that would bring capital punishment if the offence in which the goods had been
taken had been excluded from clergy.^122
The Transportation Act and the decision in 1720 to introduce the extraordin-
ary reward of a hundred pounds on top of the forty pounds already available
by statute for the conviction of a man or woman who committed robberies in the
metropolis mark a new phase of policing—a more intensive effort to deter vio-
lent crime in London. It was an effort that for the first time owed a great deal to
initiatives taken within the government, rather than by members of parliament
supported and encouraged by interested groups in the country. The govern-
ment was drawn into this engagement in part by the evidence that violent crime
was a serious issue in the capital in the years after the War of Spanish Succession
and following the rebellion of 1715 , and even more by their anxiety about the
stability of the new Hanoverian regime in the face of violent political protests on
the streets of London and the apparent strength ofJacobite feeling. Their con-
cern with violent property crime was only one aspect of their concern with dis-
sidence and violence of all kinds. And it introduced such new elements into the
prosecution and punishment of crime, that we will return to take up the career
of Jonathan Wild and thief-taking when we have examined the nature of this
new world of prosecution and punishment in the second part of the book.
256 Detection and Prosecution
(^121) A True Discovery of the Conduct of Receivers and Thief-Takers in and about the City of London( 1718 ). The in-
clusion of the City in the title suggests that the pamphlet was aimed at the aldermen. It almost certainly
grew out of Hitchen’s earlier efforts to curry favour with the court and to prove his value as a crime-
fighter. His 1718 pamphlet repeated his earlier claim to be able to devise a plan to rid the City of crime.
If only he had money enough—for guards to protect him, among other things—he would eradicate
crime by the only method with any chance of success: the suppression of the receivers who, like Wild,
trained, encouraged, protected, and profited from thieves (pp. 19 – 23 ). Wild responded to Hitchen’s
pamphlet in the same year with An Answer to a... libel, entitled A Discovery of the conduct of receivers and thief-
takers... wherein is proved... who is originally the Grand Thief-Taker.. .( 1718 ). Hitchen republished his own
pamphlet, slightly altered, in The regulator: Or, a discovery of the thieves, thief-takers and locks, alias receivers of stolen
goods.. .( 1718 ).
(^1224) Geo. I, c. 11 ( 1718 ), s. 4. Predictably—since he was pressing his own scheme and seeking financial
support for it—Hitchen thought this inadequate (True Discovery, 22 ).