380 Crime and the State
victims a potential capital offence required the authority of statute. But the driv-
ing force, the engine, of the policy was provided by the royal proclamation that
offered a massive reward and that was entirely in the hands of the king’s minis-
ters to administer as they chose. They could make the proclamation reward
open-ended or give it a limited term; they could increase the amount offered
or decrease it; they could decide how the one hundred pounds would be
distributed.
It is thus important to emphasize that the offer made in January 1720 had no
terminal date. It was to apply, the proclamation announced, to offences com-
mitted over the previous three months and to those that might be committed
‘hereafter’. This is a crucially important point. Unlike previous proclamations
which were always in force for a limited period—six months, occasionally a
year—the offer of a hundred-pound reward as a supplement to the parliamen-
tary forty pounds was in fact to run continuously until 1745 , except for a few
months following the death of George I, in 1727. It was to have significant con-
sequences for policing and prosecution practices and the way trials were
conducted at the Old Bailey.^32
It is impossible to gauge the success of these efforts to encourage prosecutions
and to diminish the unlawful return of stolen goods for a fee and no questions
asked. Judging by the activities ofJonathan Wild, the initial effect of the pro-
clamation initiative may have been to embolden some men to engage even more
actively than before in prosecution. This might help to explain why Wild be-
came so prominent a figure in the first half of the 1720 s and the best-known thief-
taker of the century. He had begun his career early in George I’s reign as a rival
to Charles Hitchen in the business of mediating the return stolen goods for a fee.
Unlike Hitchen, he was willing to prosecute some offenders even then. But the
reward system may have encouraged him to combine prosecution even more ac-
tively with receiving. Certainly, the all too plausible threat of prosecution may
(^32) Radzinowicz very helpfully lists seven proclamations issued between 1720 and 1750 , but does not
stress the differences among them (Radzinowicz, History, ii. 96 , n. 63 ). They were dated 20 January
1719 / 20 , 12 February 1725 / 6 , 29 February 1727 / 8 , 9 July 1735 , 7 November 1744 , 1 February 1748 / 9 , and
20 December 1750. They were printed in the London Gazetteof the appropriate dates, and are included in
a list of proclamations at SP 37 / 15 / 497. The proclamations of 1720 and 1728 (the second renewing the
first, following the death of George I) established and maintained the policy of the £ 100 reward without
term. Those of 1726 and 1735 were issued for particular purposes: the proclamation of 1726 included a
reminder of the £ 100 reward for prosecutors ofLondon robbers, but its more specific purpose was to
offer rewards of £ 300 for the arrest and conviction ofWilliam Blewet, Edward Burnworth, two other
named men, and four others unknown for the murder of Thomas Ball, a Southwark thief-taker (London
Gazette, 12 – 15 February 1725 / 6 ); the proclamation of 1735 was issued because of the ‘frequent murders
and robberies in the streets of London and Westminster’ and more specifically because a statute of the
previous year ( 7 Geo. II, c. 21 ) had established assault with an offensive weapon with intent to rob as a
felony liable to transportation for seven years, and the purpose of the proclamation was to include con-
victions under this act within the terms of the £ 100 and £ 40 rewards. In 1744 , as we shall see, the reward
was renewed by proclamation with the purpose of terminating it, since it was given a term of six months.
The proclamations of 1749 and 1750 renewed the offer of £ 100 , but in each case for one year only. The
proclamation of 1728 is reprinted by Radzinowicz, History, ii. 444 – 5.