like Charles Hitchen, who bought the office of under-marshal in 1712 for 700
pounds (with his wife’s inheritance) and used it to build a thief-taking business in
which he acted as a middleman between pickpockets and their victims—his
authority giving him leverage with young pickpockets and other thieves.^141 But,
along with what may have been the loss of prestige as the centre of policing
shifted to the wards, that direct loss of revenue may have contributed to the
broadening corruption associated with the office.
The powers of the office clearly provided opportunities for corrupt behav-
iour. It had long been part of the marshal’s duty to prosecute violations of
licensing and of the City’s trading regulations—serving drink or trading without
a licence, for example, or breaking any of the numerous rules that applied to
those doing business in the City. Further powers were added in the eighteenth
century, when the marshal was given the task of investigating and suppressing
gambling houses.^142 The whole array provided marshals with numerous oppor-
tunities to negotiate pay-offs for agreeing not to prosecute—practices that had
become sufficiently common by 1738 to lead the Court of Aldermen to com-
plain about the ‘connivance’ of the marshals in the illegalities of unlicensed
street traders, of those who conducted business on Sundays, and a range of
other law-breakers.^143 Investigations into the corrupt practices and neglect of
duty of the marshal took place in 1747 ,^144 and in the following year a major scan-
dal involving the under-marshal—including, among others things, the charge
that he had illegally arrested a black man and attempted to have him sent
abroad into slavery—dragged on for two years before he was discharged.^145 Ten
years later another marshal was discharged for extorting money from a vict-
ualler—at which point the City Lands Committee, which had the authority to
sell the office—issued a public announcement (broadcast in the form of an ad-
vertisement in the newspapers) that the ‘upper marshals of the City’ had no
right to extract money ‘from brewers distillers vintners keepers of coffee houses
victuallers bakers and others dealing in a public way under a pretence of excus-
ing or conniving at illegal practices and misdemeanours’.^146
In the event, neither this serious reputation for corrupt dealing nor the con-
centration of governance in the wards removed the marshals from all aspects of
the City’s policing.^147 Indeed, there are signs towards the middle of the century
Constables and Other Officers 161(^141) By outdoing him in ambition, skill, and viciousness, his one-time assistant, Jonathan
Wild, was to demonstrate that the office was not, however, essential to the success of such a
business. For Hitchen and Wild, see below, Ch. 8.
(^142) Rep 149 , p. 371. (^143) Rep 142 , pp. 174 – 7. (^144) Rep. 151 , pp. 365 , 377 , 396.
(^145) Rep. 152 , pp. 323 , 331 , 372 , 443 ; Rep. 153 , pp. 88 , 111 , 134 , 329 , 354 , 399 – 400 , 426 , 493 ;
Rep. 154 , pp. 117 – 26 , 179 – 81. Rumbelow, I Spy Blue, 86 – 8.
(^146) Jor 66 , fo. 224 ; CLRO, Misc. MSS 326. 16.
(^147) Though it seemed to the recorder and the common serjeant in a report on the office in
1775 that the marshal had ceased to have a role in the administration of justice ( Jor 66 ,
fo. 229 ).