more turbulent wards) can be found prosecuting nuisances, arresting and pros-
ecuting prostitutes, and occasionally taking men and women on more serious
charges, including thefts and serious assaults, before the Bridewell court, the
lord mayor, and the criminal courts.
Beadles thus shared some of the constables’ duties, and on occasion those in
the large wards were constituted as ‘supernumerary’ constables to give them the
authority to do their work effectively.^165 But even more of them were also made
constables for a different reason. As we have seen, fifteen of the beadles serving in
the year 1701 were also constables during that year or in the year or two before or
after, having taken on that office as a substitute for a man elected at the wardmote
who opted to fine rather than serve. Similarly in 1742 : sixteen of the beadles were
also deputy constables, and it is even clearer then (because of the completeness of
the records) that many of them served as beadles and constables of their wards
over a considerable period.^166 The authority that was thereby conferred upon the
beadle was no doubt valued. But the usefulness of having a man available to act
as a substitute—and a man who was known—may have been the principal rea-
son so many beadles can be found serving as constables. Certainly, many of them
took on the constableship irregularly—serving one year, not the next, again the
year after, apparently making themselves available as substitutes if needed, but
without being necessarily called upon every year. The Court of Aldermen pro-
fessed not to approve of beadles taking up one of the constable’s places because it
reduced the number of effective peace officers; a beadle who was also a con-
stable would not necessarily always be available to respond to calls for help, or be
available to serve through the night as the constable of the watch. But it was
clearly an arrangement that the ward authorities were willing to accept much of
the time because it solved an immediate problem of finding a substitute con-
stable—and a man who was at least experienced, if not necessarily active. Beadles
were presumably willing to fill in because of the extra income the post provided.
How often beadles—whether constables or not—were actually called upon
to become engaged in the range of tasks that might fall to them must have de-
pended on their temperament and the ward in which they lived and worked.
The records disclose little about individual beadles’ work—about how well or
badly they did what they were supposed to do. Like other officers, they had con-
siderable opportunities to profit illicitly by threatening charges or other forms of
extortion of the kind some of the marshals were practising by the middle of the
eighteenth century. It would be surprising if beadles did not collect protection
money and other favours from prostitutes (as watchmen were clearly doing at
least later in the century).^167 Evidence of such corruption surfaces from time to
Constables and Other Officers 167(^165) See the letter from the deputy of the ward of Cripplegate Without to the town clerk,
7 January 1723 in CLRO, Misc. MSS 64. 4.
(^166) CLRO, Wardmote Presentments ( 1701 ); Rep 146 , pp. 57 – 61 ( 1741 ).
(^167) Henderson, Disorderly Women in Eighteenth-Century London, 115 – 19.