1739 that broadened into a wider European conflict, when evidence of begging
and vagrancy and other disorders in the streets and when violent offences com-
mitted by gangs caused anxiety and occasionally a sense of panic.
The main response of the aldermen and Common Council of the City to
problems in the streets at night during the quarter century following the new
legislation and to complaints about the ineffectiveness of the watch was (pre-
dictably) to urge ward authorities to put the provisions of the 1705 act into effect.
They blamed the constables for failing to do their duty when complaints arose
in the winter of 1712 – 13 about the number of ‘Night Walkers and Malefactors
who wander and misbehave themselves in the Night time within the Streets and
Passages of this City’, and this remained a familiar theme into the 1720 s and be-
yond.^63 The aldermen called for an examination of the watch in 1728 , for ex-
ample, to ensure that the act of 1705 was being observed, ‘it being of the greatest
Concern for the preservation of His Majesties peace for the prevention of Rob-
beries and for the Good Government of the City that good and Substantial
Watches should be kept within the same’.^64 The act was reprinted and redis-
tributed to the constables in that year and again in 1736.
But in fact the system set up in 1705 was too flawed to be effective, not merely
because it required every watchman always to be available for duty, but also be-
cause of the weakness of the legal and financial base upon which it had been
raised. A hired watch depended on the regular financial contributions ofhouse-
holders. Payments in lieu of service might have provided an adequate basis for
a paid watch if everyone agreed to contribute. But, perhaps as memory of the
connection between the payment and the obligation to serve began to fade, it
became increasingly difficult to collect the required money. Inhabitants who
might once have served or at least paid for a substitute were losing sight of that
customary communal duty—withdrawing, one might think, from that civic role
just as, in their own ways, the aldermen were withdrawing from engagement in
criminal administration and men of middling station who could afford it were
opting not to take on the active role of constable.
The particular problem of the watch was that it was difficult to enforce pay-
ments that were based on an obligation to serve in person. If men refused to
pay—as increasing numbers appeared to do in the early decades of the eight-
eenth century, especially perhaps in the poorest wards—the only available
means of forcing them to do so were too elaborate and too expensive to be
usable on a large scale. To collect a few shillings, the City was obliged to prove
that each delinquent had an obligation to pay, and that could only be established
by means of an expensive and time-consuming prosecution before the sessions
of the peace—an action that might require the City solicitor to draw a brief as
well as a constable to prosecute.^65
188 Policing the Night Streets
(^63) CLRO, Misc. MSS 38.25; Jor 57 , fo. 177 ; Rep 137 , pp. 199 – 200. (^64) Rep 132 , pp. 421 – 2.
(^65) Discussion of these difficulties, and orders issued to beadles and constables concerning the en-
forcement of the rules and orders about particular cases, can be found in the minutes of the Court of