410 Crime and the State
It is very likely that concerns of this kind explain the change in the proclama-
tion reward policy implemented in 1744 —a widely-held conviction that the
number of thief-takers had increased substantially in recent years and that, as a
consequence, corrupt practices were more common than ever. And it does
indeed appear from reward payments that the number of claimants who made
regular appearances in the reward lists had increased by the mid- 1740 s. There
are no complete records of payments made under the royal proclamations. As
we have seen, the clerks of the Middlesex side of the Old Bailey kept an account
of awards only over a three-year period in the early 1730 s. After 1733 the only
similar records are in the City sessions books. They are not as rich a cache as
those in Middlesex, but they are full enough to suggest that there had been a sig-
nificant increase by the 1740 s in the number of men and women (though there
were never many of the latter) engaging in some form of thief-taking in the
second quarter of the century.^129
Reward distributions are recorded in thirty-three cases in the City records be-
tween 1740 and 1751 , and in fully two-thirds of them at least one of the recipients
can be identified as an active thief-taker—a very much higher percentage of
cases involving such men than we found in 1730 – 3. The twenty-seven thief-
takers involved also form a much larger group than we found in the earlier
period. The rewards generated by the conviction of the nine members of the
Black Boy Alley gang in December 1744 provide a snapshot of the thief-takers of
the 1740 s, for many of them obtained some share of that blood money—an
outcome that raises questions about the nature of thief-taking in this period.
Members of the Black Boy Alley gang had been arrested early in November
1744 , following Harper’s examinations by two City magistrates. Several
escaped.^130 But nine young men—including the 14 -year-old Henry Gadd, alias
Scampy (a ‘little boy’, the ordinary said, though ‘wicked and perverse’^131 )—
were captured and brought to trial at the December sessions. As Ruth Paley ob-
serves, while there is little doubt that they had committed numerous offences,
the robberies for which they were actually indicted look suspiciously like
charges constructed for the occasion.^132 On the strength of Harper’s evidence,
they were all convicted of several robberies and sentenced to death.^133
(^129) My measure of engagement in thief-taking in this period is quite crude. I have not searched all the
possible court records and the London press for mentions of those who regularly arrested, testified
against, or in other ways discovered, detained, and prosecuted offenders. I have simply assumed that
those who appear in the reward list in more than one session of the Old Bailey were likely to be engaged
to some degree in the practice. For the most part those who profited more than once did so many times.
For Ruth Paley’s more detailed examination of thief-taking at mid-century, see below.
(^130) Six men were named in indictments as ‘not yet taken’, including Richard Morris, alias ‘Irishman’,
who became a thief-taker after being tried and acquitted in 1748 (Paley, ‘Thief-takers in London’, 309 ).
(^131) Ordinary’s Account, 24 December 1744 , pp. 5 – 6 , 10.
(^132) Paley, ‘Thief-takers in London’, 325.
(^133) CLRO: SF 807 (December 1744 : gaol calendar). The king’s promise to the lord mayor and
aldermen to withhold mercy from such offenders was carried out to full effect. The cabinet considered
the cases of eighteen capital convicts reported by the recorder of London a few weeks after the