watch every night of the year. There thus needed to be fewer of them. The 1705
act of Common Council accepted that as the basis of the watch and in estab-
lishing the new system, the committee that negotiated the details with the wards
adopted the levels they had been deploying in practice. Only in the larger and
poorer wards were larger numbers of watchmen mandated than the authorities
had been sending out every night—seven more in Billingsgate and Cripplegate
Without, eight in Farringdon Within, ten in Farringdon Without.
The new watch act also assumed that each ward had set up a system of watch-
stands, rather like that of Cornhill in which two watchmen would stand guard
at each watch-point and go on their rounds on a regular ‘beat’ through the
night, spelling each other every hour. The fact that the 1705 act called for watch-
men to be strong and able-bodied men seems further confirmation that the
watch was now expected to be made up of hired hands rather than every male
householder serving in turn. Householders could be counted on to be able-
bodied—or rather those who were not could be excused—but in a system in
which every man was expected to take a turn, it is not likely that strength would
be announced as a crucial requirement.
The act of 1705 laid out the new quotas of watchmen and the disposition of
watch-stands agreed to in each ward. To discourage the corruption that had
been blamed for earlier under-manning, it forbade constables to collect and dis-
burse the money paid in for hired watchmen: that was now supposed to be the
responsibility of the deputy and common councilmen of the ward—that is to
say, presumably, collectors nominated by them. The ward leaders were also to
ensure that the constables took it in turn to supervise the watch every night,
setting out the rota they were to follow, as well as the beats the watchmen were
supposed to patrol.
For the most part, then, the act of 1705 adjusted to the reality of paid watch-
men, but essentially retained the main lines of the old system. Watches contin-
ued to be raised in and for the wards by methods peculiar to each: no attempt at
uniformity of rates or of pay across the City was—or perhaps could have been—
imposed. The act did confirm and further encouraged several changes in the
structure of the watch that had been underway at least since the middle decades
of the seventeenth century and that served to give watchmen more of a presence
on the streets: without using the word, it required the wards to build watch-
houses if they had not already done so to serve as a point of assembly and as a
place where anyone arrested by a watchman could be held until taken before a
magistrate in the morning, or to Bridewell or one of the compters. Watch-houses
had been gradually appearing since the 1650 s, possibly before—there was cer-
tainly some form of watch-house at Holborn Bars in 1660 , for example^59 —but
they only became common in the 1670 s and 1680 s, when the aldermen were
called upon from time to time to give permission for money to be raised for the
186 Policing the Night Streets
(^59) Rep 66 , fo. 3.