rotas that named magistrates to be present at the opening of the court so that the
business would not be delayed. Such a list had been constructed in 1691.^54 That
proved to be necessary again at the end of the decade, when a committee of
three aldermen was struck to work out such a rota that would oblige every al-
derman who was a magistrate to attend in turn.^55 The system had to be changed
again within two years because business was said to be frequently held up at the
Old Bailey ‘for want of a quorum’, and a new rota set out the City magistrates’
obligations with respect to the sessions, and new orders required the secondaries,
the sheriffs’ officers whose duty it was to summon the jurors, to summon the
justices on the rota too.^56 Further failures of attendance and delays encouraged
the aldermen once again to ask Queen Anne, in 1704 , to increase the number of
magistrates by adding the next four most senior aldermen to the commission.^57
This too clearly failed to solve the problem, for there were to be further efforts to
compel magistrates’ attendance at the sessions early in George I’s reign.^58
Apart from the possible complications of political hostility, it is also possible
that the crowded court calendars in the 1690 s and the early years of the eight-
eenth century led magistrates to become unwilling to engage as actively as they
had earlier in the holding of the preliminary hearings at which victims of of-
fences could bring their complaints to a magistrate, warrants were issued to se-
cure the arrest of those accused, and the machinery was put into motion that
would bring both parties before a judge and jury in a courtroom. The apparent
unwillingness of City magistrates to take an active part in that work by the sec-
ond quarter of the eighteenth century was to bring the system into crisis.^59 For
purposes of comparison over time, and to take into account the uneven survival
of gaol calendars in some years, I have taken as a guide to a magistrate’s will-
ingness to act his committing at least 5 per cent of the defendants sent to gaol to
await trial in any sample period.^60 By that measure, four or more aldermen, in-
cluding the lord mayor, were usually active in this aspect of magisterial work.
That was broadly the case from the Restoration into the third decade of the
eighteenth century (with the exception of a few years around the turn of the cen-
tury when the increase in the number of magistrates enlarged the number will-
ing to act at the preliminary hearing stage). And then, quite suddenly, habits
began to change. By the last years of the 1720 s and into the next decade only
three magistrates were actively at work. The flight of magistrates from the day-
to-day work of the office became a problem and then finally a crisis, when the
City Magistrates and the Process of Prosecution 99(^54) Rep 95 , p. 215.
(^55) Rep 104 , p. 60 (and see pp. 67 – 70 for the rota for the subsequent five sessions).
(^56) Rep 105 , pp. 277 – 9. (^57) Rep 108 , p. 211. (^58) Rep 121 , fo. 309.
(^59) Jessica Warner has pointed out that the Gin Act of 1736 added considerably to the difficulties that
metropolitan magistrates faced in the administration of the criminal law, particularly in Westminster
and Middlesex (‘ “Damn you, you informing bitch.” Vox Populiand the unmaking of the Gin Act of 1736 ’,
Journal of Social History, 33 ( 1999 ), 318.
(^60) The data in this paragraph are based on the gaol calendars that serve as the main wrapper of the
sessions files (CLRO: SF).