But things got worse. While Wild was still under attack for orchestrating the riot, the first mate flipped on both the captain and Wild in an act of revenge (via Murderers, Robbers, and Highwaymen). Critically, the first mate had information on the location of Wild’s warehouses, and a search found hundreds of stolen items on his property.
Understandably, the British public was outraged that a man they had seen as a moral crusader had been a criminal mastermind all along, and there was little hope for mercy at Wild’s trial. Daniel Defoe, a British journalist and spy, even wrote a pamphlet about the case (via Reynolds News).
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“How infatuate were the people of this nation all this while! Did they consider, that at the very time that they treated this person with such a confidence, as if he had been appointed to the trade, he had, perhaps, the very goods in his keeping, waiting the advertisement for the reward, and that, perhaps, they had been stolen with that very intention?”
Wild’s trial was a huge topic of interest; Defoe noted it was the largest audience he had ever seen at the Old Bailey. Moreover, the overwhelming evidence and public disdain led to a death sentence (per Head Stuff). Wild was hanged on May 24, 1725, ending the life of the man who created one of the world’s first major modern criminal networks.
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