A broadly similar pattern of election occurred in the even larger and more
turbulent ward of Farringdon Without that sprawled along the western and
north-western edge of the City, bordering the crowded and dangerous world
around Covent Garden. In 1621 Farringdon Without had been said to contain
‘many dangerous and suspected persons’,^77 and in the early eighteenth century
it remained notorious, among other things for the number of its brothels, there
being more there than in the rest of the City together.^78 The ward had a large
population of ratepayers in the 1690 s—something on the order of 3,500— 73
per cent of whom paid at the basic rate of tax, though with Fleet Street and
Holborn both traversing the ward, it also contained substantial clusters of
wealthier citizens. As in Farringdon Within—and in even larger numbers—the
returns suggest that some reasonably substantial men were elected constable in
these years: a coachmaker, haberdasher, two glovers, a confectioner, and a gold-
smith, all of whom paid surtax, and who were no doubt drawn from the corri-
dors of relatively prosperous shopkeepers and tradesmen along Fleet Street,
Holborn, and Temple Bar. But the size and the poverty of the ward was likely to
have discouraged large numbers of such men, as in Farringdon Within, from
allowing their names to be sent forward, or serving if they were elected.^79
Deputy constables
The picture that emerges from this examination of three City wards suggests
that in the last decade of the seventeenth century the body of elected constables
was made up of men from a wide spectrum of society, including—in the small
and more stable wards at the heart of the City especially—a significant propor-
tion of middling, even substantial, citizens. We must remember that we have
been dealing with the constables who were elected, not those necessarily who
served. How many of them escaped service after election, either by paying a fine
or by engaging a deputy is a difficult question to answer for the late seventeenth
century. As we have seen, while fines could be paid at either the precinct meet-
ing or the wardmote, the most common means of escaping the burden of office
in this period was to pay for a deputy after being elected. In Cornhill, for ex-
ample, the replacement of nine men by deputies is noted in the wardmote book
between 1690 and 1706.^80 Unfortunately, precinct and ward records survive so
haphazardly in this period that it is impossible to construct an accurate account
of the proportion of elected constables who opted to buy their way out at
those meetings. In addition, men elected as constables continued to engage
140 Constables and Other Officers
(^77) In an act of Common Council governing constables and beadles (CLRO: P.A.R., vol. 8 , p. 5 ).
(^78) Tony Henderson, Disorderly Women in Eighteenth-Century London: Prostitution and Control in the Metropolis
1730 – 1830 ( 1999 ), 65 , Table 3. 1.
(^79) The evidence for the ward of Farringdon Without is drawn from the same sources as that for
Farringdon Within, above at n. 76.
(^80) GLMD, MS 4069 / 2.