372 Crime and the State
robbery after the war that ended in 1713 , with the largest increase by far coming in
Middlesex.^8 Pocklington shows that indictments for robbery at the Old Bailey,
having never exceeded eighteen a year over the half-century, 1662 – 1712 , and
being most often well below that level, increased after the war to over forty by 1722.
They formed a higher proportion of all property indictments in the metropolis as
a whole in 1715 – 16 and especially in 1721 – 2 than in six previous two-year sample
periods going back to 1661 – 2.^9 Not only were larger numbers of robberies pros-
ecuted by the 1720 s, they also took on a threatening character when large numbers
were reported as being committed by groups of men who, as often as not, used
violence to make their escape. Such gangs were not tightly organized, and not so
bound by loyalty or longevity or fear that they were proof against betrayal by one
of their members who was apprehended and who could save his own skin and pos-
sibly benefit from a reward by giving evidence against his companions. But if only
for short periods the activities on the streets of gangs like Carrick’s or Spiggot’s or
Dalton’s could give rise to a good deal of alarm, particularly since offences were
increasingly widely reported in the press by the second quarter of the century.^10
The intense interest in the crime problem helps to explain several notable
developments in the literature of crime in the decades after the Hanoverian suc-
cession in 1714.^11 For one thing, the accounts of trials at the Old Bailey, the so-
called Sessions Papers, became much fuller over the ensuing quarter century,
providing more in the way of direct testimony and giving a more substantial ac-
count of at least some of the offences tried. When the Sessions Papers achieved
quasi-official status in the 1680 s, the printed Old Bailey trial accounts settled
into a single folded-sheet format—in effect a four-page pamphlet. Over the first
three decades of the eighteenth century, they were a little longer than that, but
rarely more than six or eight pages. But in December 1729 they expanded strik-
ingly—to more than twenty pages. The Ordinary’s Accountsof the lives and
deeds of those hanged at Tyburn also became increasingly substantial in the sec-
ond quarter of the century, until by the 1740 s, the ordinary and the publisher
were combining to provide extensive essays on many of the men and women
executed at Tyburn.^12 There was, in addition, a notable increase in the number
of pamphlet accounts of individual offenders and of gangs in the 1720 s, when
the exploits of the robber and gaol-breaker Jack Sheppard, or of the more
sinister Jonathan Wild, generated batches of accounts that kept crime at the
forefront of public attention.
(^8) Jeremy Pocklington, ‘Highway Robbery, 1660 – 1720 : Practice, Policies and Perceptions’, M.Phil.
thesis (Oxford, 1997 ), 41 – 6. I am grateful to Mr Pocklington for providing me with a copy of his excellent
thesis and allowing me to cite his findings.
(^9) Pocklington, ‘Highway Robbery’, 42 (figure 2. 1 ), 46.
(^10) For gangs in the 1720 s, see Gerald Howson, The Thief-Taker General: The Rise and Fall ofJonathan
Wild( 1970 ), ch. 17 , App. III.
(^11) For the literature of crime in this period, see Ch. 1 , text at nn. 3 – 10.
(^12) Andrea McKenzie, ‘Lives of the Most Notorious Criminals: Popular Literature of Crime in
England 1675 – 1775 ’, Ph.D. thesis, University of Toronto, 1999 , ch. 4.