also pointed towards a solution, when he was urged in 1719 by Charles Delafaye,
an under-secretary of state, to deal with the number of ballad singers, mainly
women, who were spreading anti-Hanoverian tracts on the London streets—a
problem that was increasingly exercising the government, given the rumours
swirling about of the threat of a Jacobite invasion. Lord Mayor Fryer told De-
lafaye that it was difficult to get the constables to do such work: ‘so few officers
will appear to do their Duty in takeing them up’, he wrote. But he went on ‘those
that are willing to do it [are] so poor, that I think you would do very well to send
me 20 [guineas] to dispose off among those that I know will be industrious’.^115 It
seems likely that he had in mind deputy constables who looked upon the post as
a job, rather than a civic duty. What Fryer proposed was an informal and ad hoc
infusion of money, but it heralded a practice that was to be instituted as policy
within a few years, in a period in which vagrancy and begging seemed to the
London authorities to have become a particularly serious problem, or at least a
problem to which the propertied were becoming impatient for a solution. If the
constables would not accept it as part of their duty, then it would have to be
made worth their while. That was clearly the sentiment behind an act of Com-
mon Council in 1738 (passed after some years in which the problem of the City’s
streets had been on its agenda) that established a payment of two shillings per
head for every ‘rogue or vagabond’ taken before a City magistrate—a recogni-
tion that the constabulary was not now made up entirely of men taking up the
post for a year, but in considerable part, of men doing it more permanently as
one source of income.^116
Taking up vagrants was not a new task for constables. But some men did in
fact take on new duties in the second half of the century and in so doing helped
to expand the range of constables’ duties in the City. Men doing their year of
civic service—especially the wealthier men among them—would not likely
have made themselves available for additional work. But a force that included a
significant number of paid men was clearly more flexible on that score. And over
time, as necessity pressed and as the City could better afford it, some constables
came to be paid from the public purse for extra work. Thus in 1752 the City mar-
shals were authorized to pay two constables five shillings a day each to attend at
the Old Bailey. It is unclear what prompted the authorities to bring in constables
154 Constables and Other Officers
(^115) SP 35 / 19 / 48.
(^116) Jor 58 , fo. 71. A printed copy of the act is at CLRO: P.A.R., vol. 7 , p. 119 ; and see the
London Evening Post, 25 – 8 February 1738 , in which the new policy is described as ‘a Scheme for
clearing the streets of Beggars, and ’tis hoped of Ballad Singers, Chairs and other Nuisances
.. .’. In 1704 the governors of the Corporation of the Poor had established a reward of a
shilling a head for all ‘rogues, vagabonds and sturdy beggars’ brought to the workhouse by
constables, beadles, and the marshalsmen to be paid by the keeper (CLRO, Minutes of the
Courts of the President and Governors for the Poor ofLondon, 1702 – 5 , fos. 172 , 185 ). The
two shilling reward in 1738 was, however, the first to be offered by the City government to be
paid out of the City’s revenue.