As no person in this collection ever made so much noise as the person we are now speaking of, so never any man, perhaps, in any condition of life whatever had so many romantic stories fathered upon him in his life, or so many fictitious legendary accounts published of him after his death. It may seem a low kind of affectation to say that the memoirs we are now giving of Jonathan Wild are founded on certainty and fact; and that though they are so founded, they are yet more extraordinary than any of those fabulous relations pushed into the world to get a penny, at the time of his death, when it was a proper season for vending such forgeries, the public looking with so much attention on his catastrophe, and greedily catching up whatever pretended to the giving an account of his actions. But to go on with the history in its proper order. Jonathan Wild[61] was the son of persons in a mean and low state of life, yet for all that I have ever heard of them, both honest and industrious. Their family consisted of three sons and two daughters, whom their father and mother maintained and educated in the best manner they could from their joint labours, he as carpenter, and she by selling fruit in Wolverhampton market, in Staffordshire, which in future ages may perhaps become famous as the birth place of the celebrated Mr. Jonathan Wild. He was the eldest of the sons, and received as good an education as his father's circumstances would allow him, being bred at the free-school to read and write, to both of which having attained to a tolerable degree, he was put out an apprentice to a buckle-maker in Birmingham. He served his time with much fidelity, and came up to town in the service of a gentleman of the long robe, about the year 1704, or perhaps a little later. But not liking his service, or his master being not altogether so well pleased with him, he quitted it and retired to his old employment in the country, where he continued to work diligently for some time. But at last growing sick of labour, and still entertaining a desire to taste the pleasures of London, up hither he came a second time, and worked journey-work at the trade to which he was bred. But this not producing money enough to support those expenses Jonathan's love of pleasure threw him into, he got pretty deeply in debt; and some of his creditors not being endued with altogether as much patience as his circumstances required, he was suddenly arrested, and thrown into Wood-street Compter.