Jonathan Wild was 'thief taker General' and ironically the most infamous criminal in London in th 18th century. He was hnged at Tyburn in 1725. As sentence was passed he felt terrified and asked for a reprieve but was refused. He could not eat or go to church, and suffered from insanity and gout. On the morning of his execution, in fear of death, he attempted suicide by drinking a large dose of laudanum, but because he was weakened by fasting, he vomited violently and sank into a coma that he would not awaken from.
When Wild was taken to the gallows at Tyburn on 24 May 1725, Daniel Defoe said that the crowd was far larger than any they had seen before and that, instead of any celebration or commiseration with the condemned;
"wherever he came, there was nothing but hollowing and huzzas,
as if it had been upon a triumph."
Wild's hanging was a great event, and tickets were sold in advance for the best vantage points (see the reproduction of the gallows ticket above). Even in a year with a great many macabre spectacles, Wild drew an especially large and boisterous crowd. Eighteen-year-old Henry Fielding was in attendance. Wild was accompanied by William Sperry and the two Roberts Sanford and Harpham, three of the four prisoners who had been condemned to die with Wild a few days before.[34] Because he was heavily drugged, he was the last to die after the three of them. The hangman, Richard Arnet, had been a guest at Wild's wedding.
