The under-marshal raided taverns and dram-shops on a daily basis, and extracted contributions. At Hatton's, Basinghall Street, he read the advertisements offering rewards. At Woolpack alehouse, Foster Lane, he wrote blackmail letters. At the Cross Keys, Holborn, he lunched with thieves. At the Blue Boar, Barbican, he made plans with them, and at the Clerkenwell Workhouse, his tricorn adorned with gold braid glittered over 12-year-old pickpockets, in whose company he very often visited Moorfields and its infamous "Sodomites' Walk". Blackmail was applied to targets like prostitute Marry Milliner, and later to Jonathan Wild's accomplice, who paid Hitchen for "protection". He extorted bribes from tradesmen in exchange for immunity from being robbed; brothels and Molly houses made quarterly payments to him. So, the practice later called a protection racket was mastered by the marshal.