trading on Sundays, to search out the immoral, to deal with vagrants and beg-
gars, to report unlicensed drinking places, to send in monthly lists of offenders
to be prosecuted, and so on.^29 The message is clear: as a reformation of manners
pamphlet said in 1701 , the ‘Constables have great Power for the suppressing of
Prophaneness and Debauchery’ if only they would trouble to exercise it.^30 In the
middle of the eighteenth century Saunders Welch continued to remind con-
stables that it was their duty to suppress a range of immoral behaviours that
could lead the unwary into trouble, waste the time and money of young men in
particular, and result in their falling into crime.^31
Constables were also expected to regulate many other forms of disreputable
or dangerous or simply inconvenient behaviour in the streets of the City. Such
problems varied from ward to ward and time to time, but difficulties surround-
ing traffic in the streets was common to many parts of the City, especially where
concentrations of pedestrians met heavy concentrations of coaches and wagons.
The regulation of street traffic had been of concern to the governors of the City
for a very long time; certainly in the sixteenth century efforts were being made
to regulate cart and other traffic in the central wards of the City.^32 But the prob-
lems on the streets of London had become particularly difficult with the expan-
sion of the metropolis in the seventeenth century, with the growth of commerce
and the increasing numbers of wheeled vehicles and horses—hackney cabs and
private coaches, large wagons for transporting goods, carts of all kinds and
sizes—and, along with all the traffic, the increasing crowds of pedestrians at-
tracted to the principal streets as shops and places of entertainment multiplied.
Rudimentary ways of separating foot traffic from horses, carts, and coaches—
by bollards, to mark one space off from the other and, in some places, raised
sidewalks—helped to make the streets safer for pedestrians by the beginning of
the eighteenth century. But, as every visitor testified, London streets remained
crowded and often chaotic, even dangerous.
All of this put pressure on those who were primarily responsible for keeping
order, particularly the constables. The Common Council issued orders to regu-
late cart traffic or to limit the number of coaches in 1654 , and again after the
124 Constables and Other Officers
(^29) Jor 51 , fo. 105 ; Rep 95 , fo. 310 ; CLRO: London Sess. Papers, December 1692 (grand jury present-
ment); Rep 97 , pp. 153 – 61 ; CLRO: P.A.R. Book 5 , fo. 5 (printed order of the magistrates of the City at
the sessions of the peace, 10 January 1700 / 1 ). Copies of a precept issued by the lord mayor on this subject
were distributed to the houses of all constables in 1687 (Rep 92 , p. 165 ).
(^30) The Oath of a Constable, so far as it relates to his Apprehending Night-Walkers, and Idle Persons, and his Present-
ing Offenses contrary to the Statutes made against unlawful Gaming, Tipling, and Drunkenness, and for the Suppressing of
them( 1701 ). See Shoemaker, Prosecution and Punishment, ch. 9 ; and Faramerz Dhabiowala, ‘Prostitution and
Police in London, c. 1660 – c. 1760 ’, D.Phil. thesis (Oxford, 1996 ), on the enforcement of the vice laws and
the role of constables, some of whom took up the cause of reform seriously, out of conviction and perhaps
financial self-interest.
(^31) Welch, Observations on the Office of Constable, 23 , 27.
(^32) Ian W. Archer, The Pursuit of Stability: Social Relations in Elizabethan London(Cambridge, 1991 ), 52 ;
Mark Jenner, ‘Early Modern English Conceptions of “Cleanliness” and “Dirt” as Reflected in the
Environmental Regulation of London, c. 1530 – c. 1700 ’, D.Phil. thesis (Oxford, 1991 ), 168 – 70.