The Highwayman's Case: William Wreathocke - Lawyer, Robber, Spy and 'Founder of the Present State of Perjury'

Abstract

Of the six lawyers named as participating in The Highwayman's Case, only Wreathocke has left a significant impression, and the case was not the only unusual event in his life, nor the most important. Contemporary sources represent him as standing at the head of a formidable gang of robbers operating in London in the 1730s, and as developing a strategy by which perjured witnesses would provide alibis for any gang members brought to trial. His life contains many of the features that shaped criminal justice in the early eighteenth century, such as the panic over organised crime in London and the idea that lawyers were corrupting the justice system. A decade after The Highwayman's Case, Wreathocke was convicted of highway robbery and transported to the North American colonies for life. At this time, the allegations about perjured witnesses emerged. By the 1740s, he had returned from North America and was living in France and the Low Countries, where he worked as a merchant. When the Jacobite rebellion broke out in 1745, he saw an opportunity to provide information to the British government on the rebels' activities. Although he does not seem to have realised his objective of obtaining a formal pardon for the robbery, he eventually returned to England, where he rebuilt his fortune and died in 1764.