BOLD, BAD MAN

Wairarapa Times-Age, 6 August 1940, Page 6

BOLD, BAD MAN

THE PRINCE OF ROBBERS. He was bold and certainly he was bad, but somehow one cannot help having a sneaking regard for him. Jonathan Wild was his name, and he was born at Wolverhampton in 1683. He was ugly to look at, having the features of a baboon, and a wrinkled yellow skin that made him repulsive. He had also a double-jointed hip which he used to some purpose in youth, a quack woman doctor pretending to cure him with her medicine. He became London's king of the un-dcr-world. He was the prince of robbers. After being three years in a debtor's prison he ran robbery as big business. He employed minions to do his bidding, and every now and then he handed one or two of them over to the police, just by way of keeping discipline in the ranks. His most lucrative lino was returning stolen property. After stealing money or jewellery—or employing his scallywags for the work—he returned them to the parties concerned, making a handsome profit out of the transaction. In spite of all who haled him. all the chances others had to betray him all the machinal ions of the sordid world in which he lived, and out of which he succeeded in making vast wealth, he flourished long in the land. In the end he was condemned, to death on a charge of felony, and though he wriggled to the end. ho had to niectj his fate. He tried to lake poison, but! the dose was not strong enough, and one May day in 1725 London ran to see him take his last plunge out of this life into eternity.