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The thief-taker hangings : how Daniel Defoe, Jonathan Wild, and Jack Sheppard captivated London and created the celebrity criminal / Aaron Skirboll

Author
Skirboll, Aaron
Published
Guilford, Connecticut : Lyons Press, an imprint of Globe Pequot Press, [2014]
Physical Description
xvii, 302 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

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Summary
In the early 1700s, lawlessness ruled England. Highwaymen, thieves, and prostitutes thrived. Tawdry tales of fearless criminals proliferated, giving birth to a new medium: the newspaper. When notorious burglar Jack Sheppard finally met the hangman, street singers warbled ballads about the housebreaker whom no prison could hold. But before his execution, he told his life story to a writer who also had seen the inside of Newgate Prison. Daniel Defoe had done hard time for sedition and bankruptcy and saw how jail corrupted the poor. Most came out thieves, but he came out a journalist. Six months later, the author of Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders covered another death at the hanging tree. Jonathan Wild--his body covered in scars from dagger, sword, and gun, his fractured skull patched with silver plates--had all but invented organized crime and the double-cross. He cultivated thieves, took a cut of their loot, and eventually betrayed them for his reward and their deaths. But one man refused to play his game. Jack Sheppard hadn't taken orders from Wild, the self-proclaimed "thief-taker general, " and the two-faced bounty hunter took it personally. But Wild's arrogance got the better of him, and his duplicity soon came to light. He quickly became the most despised man in London. On his way to swing, a raging mob hurled rocks at him, and whatever else they could find. Defoe once again got the scoop, and tabloid journalism as we know it began.--From publisher description.
Chronicles the invention of scandal journalism by Daniel Defoe, Jonathan Wild, and Jack Sheppard.
Subject(s)
ISBN
9780762791484 (hbk.)
0762791489 (hbk.)
Bibliography Note
Includes bibliographical references and index.
View MARC record | catkey: 13602072