Being devoid of his employees' assistance, Hitchen was rendered to seek his resources to continue his "trade". At that time Jonathan Wild, a prisoner himself in the Wood street Compter for a debt (from 1709 to 16 December 1712, the exact date Hitchen's "Answer" was presented to the committee), was running his business in Cock Alley and was serving the public in a similar way to Hitchen. Wild, an under-keeper, while in the Compter, to the prisoners waiting for appearing before the magistrate, was well-acquainted with the prototypes of the personae of his further real life drama full of prostitutes and thieves (one of them, Marry Milliner, mentioned above). During these years he had already been practicing taking fees for recovering stolen letters and diaries, and only later developed into a thief-maker and a mastermind of organised crimes. There was virtually no type of crime he was not involved in; coining, forging, smuggling or protection rackets. It is obvious that a handicapped under-marshal would make a good use of such a scoundrel. It was actually him who ushered Wild from making his living with proceeds of prostitution and as a bailiff's assistant to the fully fledged thief-taker. In his account of 1713–14, written as an answer to Hitchen's "Regulator", Wild describes how the marshal approached him: