404 Crime and the State
was typical in being named with about a dozen others in the reward payments
in December 1730 for having played some role in the apprehension and convic-
tion of three men charged together for a series of robberies. His shares of the
three proclamation rewards were six, ten, and five pounds respectively. In ad-
dition, if the three statutory rewards of forty pounds each were shared in the
same proportion, as they usually were, he would have received over eight
pounds from the sheriff. His total of close to thirty pounds would have doubled
the income that year of a London labourer and even many skilled workmen.^111
The largest number of claimants for shares of the reward payments appeared
at one session only, apparently caught up in a robbery entirely by chance as a
victim or witness or as someone who helped bring the offender to court. But the
pattern of payments reveals other men who claimed portions of rewards so often
that they were clearly involved in thief-taking, and who, while no doubt profit-
ing in a variety of other ways from their knowledge of the world of crime and
criminals, were taking advantage of the one hundred and forty pounds available
for the conviction of a single robber. They were among the largest earners of re-
ward money, despite its wide distribution. More than a dozen such men can be
found claiming more than one portion in a session, and returning again and
again in subsequent sessions to take further payments between 1730 and 1733.
Like gangs of offenders (and like the thief-takers of the 1690 s) they typically
worked together in small groups, though they might also have had some associ-
ation with other clusters of thief-takers. Henry Atkins, for example, received
portions of eight reward payments in a two-year period, amounting in total to
about one hundred and fifty pounds. He appeared most often with William
Atley and Francis Waker, each of whom made close to one hundred and sixty
pounds for their part in the prosecution of nine robbers over these years. As in
the 1690 s some of the most active men in this period were constables—most
often, again as in the earlier period, hired constables who held the post for sev-
eral years. They included Atkins, who was a deputy constable for the ward of
Castle Baynard, and John Cathery, whom we have seen earlier as active in
several aspects of the constables’ business.^112
On one level, thief-taking served the purposes the administration had in mind
in issuing the 1720 proclamation. But such large rewards also (perhaps in-
evitably) encouraged some men to engage in activity that went well beyond
using their knowledge of criminal networks to seek out and prosecute robbers.
The perjury and corruption that had fuelled many ofWild’s prosecutions were
clearly evident in the late 1720 s and the early years of the next decade. Without
corroborating evidence, it is impossible to be certain that prosecutions that seem
suspicious on their face were in fact corrupt. But several of the cases that drew
(^111) LMA: MJ/GBB/ 312.
(^112) For whom, see above, p. 153. Being an experienced deputy constable presumably added weight
and plausibility to his evidence when Atkins testified at the trial of three men for robbery in 1731 , that he
knew the prisoners ‘by sight, he being Constable’ (OBSP, July 1731 , p. 19 (Yates, Armstrong, Lampree).