THIEF-TAKER GENERAL, THE RISE AND FALL OF JONATHAN WILD by Gerald Howson. 338 pages. St. Martin's Press. $8.95.
By 1712 it had become "burthensome to the nation" to house bankrupts in London's two debtors' prisons, despite the exaction of stiff entrance fees and rents for all cells better than the most wretched. Accordingly, Parliament voted to turn the debtors loose. One of them was Jonathan Wild, an energetic, 29-year-old bucklemaker and bailiff's nark whose sole distinction before his imprisonment was that he had accumulated debts of 61 £ 6/.
There was a much better fiscal balance to Wild's career over the next...
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