24 Facts About Charles Hitchen

Alongside his former assistant and then a major rival Jonathan Wild, against whom he later published a pamphlet and contributed to his sentencing to death, Charles Hitchen blackmailed and bribed people and establishments irrespective of their reputation, suspicious or respectable.

Widely known for his homosexual activities and considerably nicknamed as Madam or Your Ladyship, Charles Hitchen publicly condemned this crime and even raided so called Molly houses being a member of Societies for the Reformation of Manners.

Charles Hitchen was born in poverty to a family in Wolverhampton, Staffordshire, presumably in about 1675.

Charles Hitchen was apprenticed as a cabinet maker before he married Elizabeth, the daughter of one John Wells of King's Walden, Hertfordshire, in 1703.

Charles Hitchen had probably acted as a middleman or receiver between thieves and victims several years before taking the post, otherwise it would be difficult to explain his familiarity with London's underworld.

Charles Hitchen made full use of his authority as a leverage to build or extend his thief-taking business and stayed as a middleman in it.

Charles Hitchen managed to regulate about 2000 thieves and organise for them to steal and fence the stolen merchandise through him, a practice pickpockets would find more profitable or less dangerous than going to a pawnbroker, since most desperate victims of the theft were ready to pay a fee negotiated by the "finder" for the return of their stolen items.

Charles Hitchen learnt how valuable these notices were to their owners and started the trade of returning them for a reward.

Charles Hitchen extorted bribes from tradesmen in exchange for immunity from being robbed; brothels and Molly houses made quarterly payments to him.

Charles Hitchen remembered having arrested six pickpockets in one of the taverns above and causing marshal's rage, who upon showing a notice declared the county within his jurisdiction and took the thieves with him to the City letting them free.

The document is a record of the names of all those places mentioned above, where Charles Hitchen met the thieves and organised crimes with them.

Charles Hitchen was verbose, though, in his "promises of protection" to female visitors of those establishments:.

Charles Hitchen took her to Cheapside and made her wait till he dined and paid for his meal.

Charles Hitchen, having information on a stolen book, saw the reason of their hiding.

Charles Hitchen caught and arrested one, whose name was James Jones, the same juvenile who stole Lord Barnard's bills.

The boy gave the address of his friends next morning before the justice and Charles Hitchen took Wild to Barbican to attack their house during the night.

Charles Hitchen left him and literally settled in the Little Old Bailey to employ his Intelligence Agency for Lost Goods to safely continue his business as a middleman and receiver.

Charles Hitchen began to cut down on Hitchen's own gangs and gave a start to a so-called paper war between Hitchen and him.

The tract shows Charles Hitchen disguised as a social reformer and moralist giving his recommendations for rooting out the iniquities by imprisoning all the thief-takers and receivers.

Charles Hitchen did not directly name Wild in his first pamphlet but made an obvious allusion when talking about "the regulator" and "the thief-taker".

Charles Hitchen described how Hitchen and Williamson moved from Royal Oak in the Strand to Rummer Tavern and came to the Talbot Inn, where the under-marshal ordered a bedroom.

Along the way in each bar Charles Hitchen offered either beer or wine and showed disgraceful manners.

Charles Hitchen died about a month later, probably as a result of complications from injuries received in the pillory.

Charles Hitchen's widow petitioned the courts for relief and received a 20-pound annuity.