as a felony (crime) in common law until 1691, when fences became potential targets of charges as accessories to theft. This meant that in order to judge a suspected receiver, it was necessary to condemn the related thief first. Later laws further focused on receivers, especially the 1718 Transportation Act, which, together with other measures, made fences main felons and not simply accessories to other felonies. Nonetheless, it was not easy to prove that a dealer knowingly accepted stolen goods, especially without the related theft event being fully cleared out. There are 5,664 proceedings stored in the Old Bailey Online archive where the offence category is receiving. Of these, 1,973 have a verdict category of guilty. The 1718 Transportation Act also criminalised returning goods for a fee, which reveals that by then, receiving had already been taken to the next stage: returning goods to their owner, for a fee, instead of selling them in the second-hand market. Thieves could in this way act as go-betweens themselves, but go-betweens could raise some suspicions, whereas relying on receivers added a safety layer against effective prosecution. A victim of theft was often willing to pay in order to get their goods back, in order to spare themselve further troubles and/or if the items taken had the potential to reveal unflattering details about their personal affairs. In addition to that, for many centuries, prosecution in England was entirely at the expense (of personal money, time, and effort) of the prosecutor. Therefore, given the difficulty of actually proving receiving in courts, common people, especially shopkeepers, often preferred compounding, feeling that prosecuting was not worth it. This gave a considerable advantage to receivers. In order to effectively act as go-betweens for compounding, or brokerage, fences needed to personally know thieves or have ways to easily interact and bargain with them for a common benefit about compounding: nobody was in a better position to do so than thief-takers. Thief-takers grew increasingly notorious in England as a reward was introduced by the Crown for each successfully condemned criminal. Some of them, such as Anthony Dunn, publicly referred to as "pretended Thiefe-taker" in a 1707 document, used their social power as thief-takers as an advantage for receiving. Thief-takers were usually so involved with thieves and gangs of thieves that they could easily condemn them for the reward, or use this power to intimidate and command thieves to do their