Crime and the State 415able to point to several examples of young men being drawn into committing
robberies for which they were then prosecuted by the ‘thief-makers’ who had set
them up.^145 But most of the blatant cases of entrapment that came to light date
from after 1751 , and Cox wrote about the conspirators in 1754 as though they
had engaged in such practices in a much more active and extensive way than
had hitherto been common.^146
Even if they had not acted as blatantly as the McDaniel gang, it is likely that
many—perhaps most—of the men who had engaged in thief-taking over the
previous half century had exploited numerous opportunities to blackmail, to se-
duce the gullible, to act as middlemen between thieves and their victims, and to
profit in any number of other corrupt ways. But along with a proper emphasis
on that, it seems to me necessary also to take account of the significance of the
work of detection that at least some of them engaged in, some of the time. Cox
himself did not think that all thief-takers were as ‘dishonest’ as the Berry–
McDaniel group. And to the extent that the reward system had drawn men into
the business of catching offenders and bringing them to trial, they began to define
a role that was becoming accepted as necessary within the criminal justice system.
I suggest this not in order to celebrate the thief-takers but to take some ac-
count of what seems to have been an ambivalent attitude towards them and
their activities in this period and to draw attention to the developing element of
detection within policing. In his criticism ofJonathan Wild and the thief-takers
of the mid- 1720 s, Bernard Mandeville seems to have been particularly harsh be-
cause he thought that thief-taking was an acceptable activity and that thief-
takers had an obligation to the public to be more than merely self-interested
private bounty hunters.
It is [ he wrote] highly criminal in any Man for Lucre, to connive at a Piece of Felony
which he could have hinder’d: But a profess’d Thief-Catcher, above all, ought to be se-
verly punish’d, if it can be proved that he has suffer’d a known Rogue to go on in his Vil-
lainy, tho’ but one Day, after it was in his Power to apprehend and convict him, more
especially if it appears that he was a Sharer in the Profit.^147
It is unclear what Mandeville meant by this, but it suggests a view that men
who regularly collected the state’s rewards for prosecuting—‘professed’ thief-
takers, not just the once-only victim—were in some senses public servants and
had a duty to uphold the public interest. That was perhaps asking too much, but
the passage does suggest that thief-taking was accepted at least among the prop-
ertied, and perhaps more than just the very wealthy, as a legitimate and useful
activity that could be taken on as an occupation. That is also the sense one gets
(^145) Cox, A Faithful Narrative, 56 – 67. And see Langbein, ‘Prosecutorial Origins of Defense Counsel’,
356 – 60 , for cases in the 1730 s.
(^146) Cox, A Faithful Narrative, 1 – 3 ; Radzinowicz’s tabulation of ‘blood-money conspiracies’ that came
to light in the middle decades of the century (though far from complete) includes one case each from
1738 , 1747 , and 1750 , and seven between 1751 and 1754 (History, ii. 339 ).
(^147) Mandeville, Enquiry, 9.