The world knew him for a robber, yet could not refuse his brilliant service.  At the Poultry Counter, you are told, he laid the foundations of his future greatness, and to the Poultry Counter he was committed for some trifling debt ere he had fully served his apprenticeship to the art and mystery of buckle-making.  There he learned his craft, and at his enlargement he was able forthwith to commence thief-catcher.  His plan was conceived with an effrontery that was nothing less than genius.  On the one side he was the factor, or rather the tyrant, of the cross-coves:  on the other he was the trusted agent of justice, the benefactor of the outraged and the plundered.  Among his earliest exploits was the recovery of the Countess of G—­d—­n’s chair, impudently carried off when her ladyship had but just alighted; and the courage wherewith he brought to justice the murderers of one Mrs. Knap, who had been slain for some trifling booty, established his reputation as upon a rock.  He at once advertised himself in the public prints as Thief-Catcher General of Great Britain and Ireland, and proceeded to send to the gallows every scoundrel that dared dispute his position.

His opportunities of gain were infinite.  Even if he did not organise the robbery which his cunning was presently to discover, he had spies in every hole and corner to set him on the felon’s track.  Nor did he leave a single enterprise to chance:  ’He divided the city and suburbs into wards or divisions, and appointed the persons who were to attend each ward, and kept them strictly to their duty.’  If a subordinate dared to disobey or to shrink from murder, Jonathan hanged him at the next assize, and happily for him he had not a single confederate whose neck he might not put in the halter when he chose.  Thus he preserved the union and the fidelity of his gang, punishing by judicial murder the smallest insubordination, the faintest suspicion of rivalry.  Even when he had shut his victim up in Newgate, he did not leave him so long as there was a chance of blackmail.  He would make the most generous offers of evidence and defence to every thief that had a stiver left him.  But whether or not he kept his bargain—­that depended upon policy and inclination.  On one occasion, when he had brought a friend to the Old Bailey, and relented at the last moment, he kept the prosecutor drunk from the noble motive of self-interest, until the case was over.  And so esteemed was he of the officers of the law that even this interference did but procure a reprimand.

His meanest action marked him out from his fellows, but it was not until he habitually pillaged the treasures he afterwards restored to their grateful owners for a handsome consideration, that his art reached the highest point of excellence.  The event was managed by him with amazing adroitness from beginning to end.