reforms of the 1830 s the City marshal was confined to purely ceremonial
duties—leading the lord mayor’s procession, and helping to stage other moments
of civic celebration. These were forms of policing, but not the kind of policing
that might have developed from this seed of a uniformed and paid City-wide
force that had been established under the control of the mayor and aldermen
more than two centuries earlier.
Beadles
Unlike the marshals, beadles were long-established ward officers, and their in-
volvement in the developing policing practices over the late seventeenth and
early eighteenth centuries was enlarged as a result. Beadles were salaried be-
cause they were expected to be engaged full-time in policing and other activ-
ities—to move around the ward during the day and to help supervise the watch
at night. If the beadle was doing his job properly, the assumption must have
been, he would not be able to earn his living at a trade. He was the one official
who could be assumed to be always available to carry out orders from above;
and they were called upon often enough that, especially in the larger wards, they
frequently had assistants, known as warders. Indeed, the very large wards in the
eighteenth century had more than one beadle: Farringdon Within and
Cripplegate Without each had two; Farringdon Without had four.
Beadles were elected annually. Until 1663 they had been chosen by the ward-
mote, but in an act of Common Council of that year (passed in conjunction with
a parliamentary statute dealing with the watch) the choice of beadle had been
placed firmly in the hands of the aldermen—that is to say, in practice, in the
hands of the deputy alderman and a majority of the common councilmen of
each ward who were empowered to place the names of two candidates before
the wardmote, one of whom would have to be elected. The Common Council
made their purpose clear. ‘The place of Beadle’, the act declared,
is an ancient Office in every Ward of the Citty and very usefull to the Alderman for the
Common busines and affaires of the ward when the same is served by an honest and dis-
creet person as it ought to bee, but oflate tymes divers very unfitt persons have by favour
and sinister endeavours procured themselves to be elected to the said Place by whose in-
sufficiencies and evill execucon thereof much trouble and disservice hath ensewed to the
Alderman; and the watches and other common businesse and affaires of the ward,
which depend much upon that Officer, have been neglected and hindered^153
The beadle was in essence the executive assistant of the ward managers, who
needed someone they could trust to carry out their orders or the orders they re-
ceived from the mayor and aldermen. They were perhaps principally valued for
the role they played in organizing the night watch. The beadles were respon-
sible, for example, for keeping lists of inhabitants and establishing who in the
Constables and Other Officers 163(^153) Jor 45 , fo. 427. For the Watch Act of 1663 , see below, Ch. 4.