complaining that the low pay they could offer prevented them from hiring the
kinds of men they would have preferred.^40
Another common complaint in the 1690 s was that watchmen were inad-
equately armed. This was another aspect of the watch in the process of being
transformed. The Common Council acts required watchmen to carry hal-
berds—essentially, a pike with an axe-blade attached—and some were still
doing so in the late seventeenth century. But it seems clear that few did, perhaps
because the halberd was no longer suitable for the work they were increasingly
being called upon to do. The man who was anxious to become the governor of
the City’s watch in 1679 said, as part of his criticism of its condition, that their
halberds were ‘weak and rusty and not fit for offence nor defence’—an am-
biguous comment at best.^41 It was more often observed that watchmen failed to
carry them, and it is surely the case that the halberd was no longer a useful
weapon for a watch that was supposed to be mobile. It had been suitable, per-
haps, for a man standing guard at a gate or at some other fixed position, but not
for men walking a beat, men who were expected to be able to arrest nightwalk-
ers, to stop and if necessary chase suspicious men on the streets late at night. The
occasional repetition of the ancient orders about halberds were gestures with-
out substance. That is suggested by the occasions on which the appearance of
weapons was most frequently insisted on: on festival days or holidays, when the
City authorities anticipated some lively crowd activity and ordered that a
double watch be kept—that is, twice as many men as usual were to be drawn
from the pool ‘warned’ to be available for that day. Invariably that double watch
was ordered to be ‘well weaponed’, that is, to carry halberds. It seems likely that
this was more for ceremony than use, that on these days the watch would be ex-
pected to stand at fixed locations, guarding, but little else.^42 For ordinary duty,
the halberd was on its way out. By the second quarter of the eighteenth century,
watchmen were equipped with a staff, along with their lantern.
Perhaps the most persistent concern about the watch by the 1690 s was that its
protection was not available long enough, that the constables in charge went
home after a few hours and allowed the watchmen to do so too, leaving burglars
to plunder at will. The City grand jury complained about this in its presentment
in December 1699 , at a time when street crime was thought to be particularly
serious.^43 In the following October the aldermen ordered constables to ensure
that the watch remained on duty at least until 6 a.m. through the winter months
because of the reports they were receiving of the ‘many Felonies Roberyes and
Policing the Night Streets 181(^40) See below, p. 198. A precept of 1704 required aldermen to cause the watches in their wards to be in-
spected—complaints having been made, the lord mayor said, about the number of watchmen on duty,
their ‘ability’, and their weapons. The deputies and common councilmen were to ensure that the num-
ber of watchmen laid down in the act of 1663 were on duty—an order they all must have known was un-
realistic, given the change in the character of the watch—and that the watchmen ‘be all fit and able men
well weaponed with halberts or Spears’ ( Jor 54 , p. 137 ).
(^41) CLRO, Misc. MSS 10.13. (^42) Jor 51 , fos. 16, 22, 102.
(^43) CLRO: London Sess. Papers, December 1699.