Crime and the State 401There was clearly a sense by the early 1730 s among those most closely in-
volved in the administration of the criminal law in the City that the various en-
couragements to the effective prosecution and management of cases pursued by
the central government over the previous decade—the large rewards and the
involvement oflawyers—had had a significant downside. Some of the negative
effects were perhaps more irritating than deeply serious—the intrusion of
lawyers into various aspects of trial procedure was almost certainly perceived in
that way, for example. But the more direct effects of the large proclamation
rewards were recognized by the early 1730 s as much more damaging and cor-
rosive because of the encouragement they gave to false, malicious, and corrupt
prosecutions. That raises for us the issue of thief-taking in the years following the
downfall ofJonathan Wild, and—with the emphasis given to the enigmatic
figure of the ‘informing constable’—the possible influence of the massive
proclamation rewards on some elements of the policing forces of the City.
Rewards and thief-taking, 1730‒1750
Anxieties about the deleterious effects of large rewards surfaced soon after
the renewal of the proclamation, in 1728. Within a year of its reissue the lords of
the treasury ordered that rewards be distributed by the judges in court—the in-
tention almost certainly being to discourage malicious and corrupt prosecu-
tions by making payments public. At the same time the treasury solicitor was
authorized to pay rewards directly to each claimant from the money issued to
him for public prosecutions without further reference to the treasury—a more
simplified process than that developed under the original proclamation, and
one designed presumably to reduce delays in the payment of rewards and thus
to encourage prosecutions.^106
That practice had the incidental advantage for us of producing evidence in
the treasury solicitor’s accounts and in the court records of the number of re-
wards paid out and the names of the recipients. Payments reverted to the treas-
ury within a few years, but sufficient evidence remains from the early 1730 s to
reveal the level of payments and the way the one-hundred pound supplemen-
tary reward was being distributed then. The treasury solicitor’s declared ac-
counts, for example, show that he paid a total of ten thousand two hundred
pounds in proclamation rewards over the four and a half years following the
treasury order of February 1729.^107 With the addition of the parliamentary re-
ward of forty pounds for each convicted offender, the government paid more
than fourteen thousand pounds over these years for the successful prosecution
of London robbers. Those accounts give us the total paid, but do not identify all
the recipients, since for accounting purposes only one of those sharing each
(^106) PRO, T 1 / 279 / 66.
(^107) Based on the treasury solicitor’s declared account in the Audit Office records: PRO, AO
1 / 2322 – 3.