could have been very little sense of continuity from one mayoral regime to an-
other. With the creation of the rotation system in which the aldermen took turns
to sit every morning, the court acquired a more permanent and more developed
form, a set of practices shaped not by the personal habits of the lord mayor but
the requirements of the work. The furniture and fittings and the routine of the
office were gradually adapted accordingly. The ‘court’ was partitioned off in
1741 and, two years later, the aldermen agreed ‘to beautify and sash’ what was
now referred to as ‘the Justice Room at the end of the Matted Gallery’.^82 Within
a few years, the court’s routine was well established. The business conducted be-
fore ‘the sitting alderman’ was recorded by a clerk, and those minute books were
kept in ‘the closet in the justices’ room’ to enable magistrates who changed every
day to peruse them if necessary.^83
It is this ‘room’ that is illustrated in Plate 10 of Hogarth’s Industry and Idleness,
the scene in which Tom Idle is brought before alderman Goodchild, sitting as
the rotation magistrate. As Langbein has shown, Hogarth’s scene is idealized
architecturally.^84 Some of the activity Hogarth depicted may also have been
similarly constructed for artistic effect—particularly the strong impression we
are given of confusion and disorder in the crowd milling about, some of the at-
tendees perhaps merely curious, others waiting for their cases to be heard by the
magistrate, or, as in the case of the several constables who can be identified by
their staffs of office, waiting to give evidence. The crowd presses against the bar
that separates them from the magistrate, the attorney keeping the record, and
the clerk who administers the oath to Tom’s accomplice (who is about to im-
peach him). There appears to be no arrangement to keep those waiting from
pushing and crowding around while a case is being heard, or from creating what
appears to be a considerable disturbance. We should not perhaps take all of that
too literally. The crowd’s indifference serves to focus our attention on Tom’s
plight and the distress of alderman Goodchild at having to commit his erstwhile
fellow-apprentice to trial. But Hogarth is unlikely to have created such a scene
if the Guildhall magistrates had not conducted their business in public; whether
accurately or not, Tom’s examination confirms the public character that the
preliminary hearing had assumed in the City.
The court pictured by Hogarth was not created ‘to relieve the overburdened
Lord Mayor’, as has been suggested.^85 Indeed, the new rotation system indir-
ectly restored the lord mayor to a leading role among the City magistrates. The
City Magistrates and the Process of Prosecution 109(^82) Ibid. That order was modified when the aldermen decided that it would be enough to whitewash
and clean the room and the Gallery, but not paint them (Rep 147 , fo. 331 ).
(^83) Rep 152 , p. 116.
(^84) ‘Shaping the Eighteenth-Century Criminal Trial’, 78 , where he cites architectural drawings to re-
veal that the gallery had only a thirteen-and-a-half foot ceiling ‘which could not have accommodated the
double gallery’ pictured by Hogarth.
(^85) [P. E. Jones] ‘The City Justices and Justice Rooms’, Transactions of the Guildhall Historical Association,
III (privately printed, 1963 ), 36 [copy in the CLRO]; cited by Langbein, ‘Shaping the Eighteenth-
Century Criminal Trial’, 77 , n. 292.