THE OLD ROGUES

Evening Post, Volume CIII, Issue 134, 9 June 1922, Page 5

THE OLD ROGUES

AN ENTERPRISING "FENCE."

Among those whose fame London will | never let die are its old rogues, remarks ■ the London Daily Telegraph in & leading article. The Southwark Council is about to take over the garden attached to tho Red Cross Hall in the borough. Though the inhabitants of those crowded streots value the garden most as an oasis of leaves and flowers, there will be many more whoso chief interest in it is that there stood 'ihe famous tavern of the Duke's Head. For it was to the Duke's Plead that Jonathan Wild repaired, and there he stabled hia horses, when he canio to visit tho highwaymen and thieves and coiners who lurked in tho purlieus of the Mint. The Southwark Hal), where now tho frescoes of Walter Crane celebrate ,the heroes of humble life, and its garden, should be a place of pilgrimage to all amateurs of crime. There certainly Jonathan Wild has trodden, thero probably he met Jack Sheppard. Wild is certainly among tho immortals of iniquity, not so much as tho hero of that masterpiece of irony of Fielding's, but as the first and most magnificent example oE that character, beloved of novelists, a Napoleon of crime. Nono of the detective stories has imagined a more multifarious villain. The reader who knows Jonathan only from Fielding must bo warned that though, art has mado tho fellow more interesting, it has not presented tho full variety of his achievements. Jonathan was made a criminal by a sojourn >n a debtors' prison, but wo shall not be unjust iv ascribing to him a- natural aptitude for villainy. Ho emerged from prison- to tarn a living by blackmailing thieves and keeping a house of ill-fame. He built up a business of buying stolen property. For his benefit a statuto was passed bringing tho "fence" within the grasp of the criminal law. Still Jonathan throve,' and hia business opened branches. Ho organised theft and offered to secure the recovery o£ "lost" property for a commission. He became the managing director of a society of thieves distributed in parties of specialists. One gang worked each of the high roads, ono churches; one -theatres, one households. A staff of mechanics, transformed the stolen goods and jewellery. And Jonathan oven bought and worked a paokofcboat to carry to tho Continent the plunder which could not be disposed of at home. The genius of the man was. seen in tho method by which he protected himself. /To the authorities ho was a detective. Baffled justice used him to hunt down and capture- thieves. And naturally in tho arrest of rogues who were not working for him ho was active. Ho laid hands on Jack Shoppard and his friend Blueskin when ho resigned from his staff. Ho used to advertise in the newspapers as "thief-taker general." He- petitioned tho Corporation for a grant of the freedom of the city "in recognition of h'iß services as thief-catcher." But on this occasion impudence was not rewarded. What destroyed him was that packet-boat. Its captain was arrested. Wild organised a riot to cover his escape, which was effected, but Wild himself was taken in his place 'ami after a vain attempt to poison liim-solf! was hanged at Tyburn, go, not altogether without a lurid glamour of fidelity to the rogues who were faithful ferhim, ended as pestilent a ra?c»l as London ever knew.