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The Scheme to Hook Up a King With the Wasp Woman and Other Wild Plans

Khalid Elhassan August 31, 2020 34 min

Susan Cabot - Hussein of Jordan — Susan Cabot and King Hussein. Veja

15. The Eighteenth Century Criminal Kingpin

Eighteenth-century English master criminal Jonathan Wilde (1682 – 1725) reigned over an underground kingdom of thieves and highwaymen. He ran far-flung extortion racked, and was Britain’s biggest fence for stolen goods. After he feigned reform, the authorities turned to Wilde, gave him the title “Thief-Taker”, and set him loose on the criminals running amok and terrorizing London at the time.

Wilde took to his new job and title with a passion. He formed highly effective teams of thief catchers who fell upon crooks with a will, breaking up gangs and sending criminals to the gallows by the dozen. During Wilde’s thief-catching career, at least 120 people were hanged based on his testimony and information that he furnished the authorities. What the authorities did not know was that Wilde had not reformed. Instead, he was using them as part of a cynical scheme to make himself an even bigger criminal kingpin.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.