Thief-taker

In English legal history, a thief-taker was a private individual hired to capture criminals. The widespread establishment of professional police in England did not occur until the 19th century. With the rising crime rate and newspapers to bring this to the attention of the public, thief-takers arose to partially fill the void in bringing criminals to justice. These were private individuals much like bounty hunters. However, thief-takers were usually hired by crime victims, while bounty hunters were paid by bail bondsmen to catch fugitives who skipped their court appearances and hence forfeited their bail. Both types also collected bounties offered by the authorities. Sometimes, thief-takers would act as go-betweens, negotiating the return of stolen goods for a fee. However, they were often corrupt themselves, for example extorting protection money from the crooks they were supposed to catch. Government-funded rewards for the capture of criminals were a corrupting influence, leading directly to the Macdaniel scandal.

England in the seventeenth and eighteenth century suffered a great deal of political and economic disorders that brought violence into its streets. This was particularly evident in the capital and its neighbourhoods, where the population almost corresponded to that of England and Wales together. In fact London was expanding at a fast pace, so that there were no precise division between wealthy and poor areas, the rich living next to the poor. A major cause was immigration: an impressive number of different cultural groups invaded the big city in search of fortune and social mobility, contributing to saturate jobs availability and making cohabitation a difficult matter.

Streets in the metropolis were dark at night, and poorly lit,which allowed the proliferation of criminal activities, since lawbreakers were difficult to spot in the dark.Night watchmen patrolling the streets at night were not a guarantee of security, but inefficient, not joining efforts with other figures for maintaining the peace, and sometimes corrupt themselves.

The English judicial system was not very developed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as it was based on the Statute of Winchester of 1285, which created a basic organisation for keeping the peace prescribing the contribution of all citizens for: patrolling the streets at night in turns, hurrying to the “hue and cry”, serving as a parish constable for a period of time, and being armed with suitable objects for intervention in case of necessity.

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