Corbet paid when Hitchen in fact arranged to have his exchequer bills returned
to him. A similar story was told by Richard Lawrence, an apothecary, for
whom—for the modest reward of two guineas—Hitchen negotiated the return
of a letter containing bills of exchange that had been lost in the Post Office.^112
The committee learned more about Hitchen’s relationship with pickpockets
and thieves from Nathaniel Smith, another Blackwell Hall factor and a Quaker,
who had lost his pocket book to a thief in Exchange Alley, and who described a
campaign of vilification carried on against him by Hitchen (when Smith de-
clined his services) designed to extort money from him for the return of his
pocket book. Smith also reported that he was encouraged ‘by some of his
Friends and Neighbours’ to seek Billers’s advice and assistance—presumably
because after a decade of fishing in the murky waters of thieves and receivers in
the City, he was well known as a thief-taker and a fixer. It was from that contact
that Nathaniel Smith’s complaint to the Court of Aldermen, and indeed the
complaints of Lawrence, Rogers, and Corbett, arose.^113
Hitchen was so confident of the protection his marshal’s office provided that,
as part ofhis sales pitch, he had taken Smith on a tour of the western edge of the
City, around Temple Bar, where he spoke to some thirty or forty young thieves,
many of whom he knew by name. The Committee of Aldermen also learned a
great deal about Hitchen’s dealing with pickpockets from a constable named
Wise who knew the neighbourhood of Moorfields well and who reported seeing
the marshal buying stolen goods in the Black Horse tavern, the Three Tuns, and
other public houses.^114 It was from him that the aldermen learned the names of
the young pickpockets who were subsequently called before the court. They
confirmed Wise’s allegations. One of them said that they dealt with Hitchen be-
cause he had threatened them with his authority, and that ‘if they did not Love
him he would make them fear him and if they did not obey him as much as they
did their parents he would put them in Prison’.^115
The aldermen were urged by Billers and others of his accusers to punish
Hitchen severely; several of them wrote to the lord mayor to remind the court of
the 1706 statute that had increased the severity of the penalties for encouraging
felony, and particularly for receiving.^116 The aldermen were clearly loath to
come down too hard on Hitchen. Having received the committee report in
December 1712 , they waited untilJune to suspend him from office and then
254 Detection and Prosecution
(^112) These and other charges against Hitchen are included in Informations among the Papers of the
Court of Aldermen (CLRO), October 1712 ; they are also included among the abstracts of those charges
contained in the same bundle.
(^113) CLRO, Papers of the Court of Aldermen, October 1712 (information of Nathaniel Smith,
22 October 1712 ).
(^114) CLRO, Papers of the Court of Aldermen, October 1712 (information of Constable Wise).
(^115) CLRO, Papers of the Court of Aldermen, October 1712 (information of Henry Broom, 9 October
1712 , and of Thomas Battle and Robert Nend).
(^116) CLRO, Papers of the Court of Aldermen, 1712 (Memorial to the Lord Mayor from Billers,
Lawrence, Smith, and Corbett). The statute in question was 5 Anne, c. 31 , ss. 6 & 7.