street lighting in the City was being debated at the same time.^80 A committee of
the Common Council had been established in October 1735 to give advice on
that issue—replacing the City Lands Committee that had had this matter of the
street lamps within its purview since the early years of the century. It obviously
made sense to charge a committee already dealing with the dangers of the City
streets at night with the problem ofhow to sustain an effective watch. Similar so-
lutions were sought in each case because the issues were the same—the fact that
the old basis of personal service and its financial substitutes were providing an
inadequate foundation for what were thought to be the essential services. The
structural problems in the old system reached a crisis point in the middle years
of the 1730 s, and the men who were confronted with the day-to-day conse-
quences of those failures forced through a solution that promised an answer.^81
The committee of the Common Council set up in October 1735 to deal with
street lighting was given the parallel problem of the watch in December. By
then, despite continuing conflict between the vestries and the burgesses, two of
the wealthy parishes of Westminster had recently managed to obtain an act of
parliament to authorize the collection of a watch rate, and five others did so in
the early months of 1736.^82 The City followed suit. The Common Council com-
mittee drafted petitions to parliament asking for the authority to establish local
rates for the support of watch and lighting services and a simple mechanism that
could compel payment from the intransigent.^83 Like all Common Council com-
mittees, this body consisted of four aldermen and eight commoners. It was dom-
inated by the latter. The subcommittees that put forward the crucial proposals
with respect to the street lights and the watch (made up of those members of the
main committee who chose to attend its meetings) consisted almost entirely of
common councillors, among whom several deputy aldermen were particularly
active. With respect to the watch bill, the subcommittee meetings—at which the
petition to parliament was drafted and other crucial issues were decided—were
mainly attended by deputies. Only one alderman, Sir Robert Godschall,
showed a particular and consistent interest in the problems surrounding the
night watch, whereas something in the order of seventeen common councillors
192 Policing the Night Streets
(^80) See below, pp. 219 – 21.
(^81) Another shift towards a broadening conception of the public and public duty emerged in the mid-
1730 s in the City in the debates about the provision of essential services. It was clearly in the interests of
the poorer wards that empty houses should be taxed for watching and lighting and that such buildings as
churches and company halls and commercial properties should also contribute to a service from which
they benefited. This was a new view of civic duty. Previously, when rates had been raised to pave and
cleanse the City streets and sewers under the authority of an act of parliament in 1671 ( 22 & 23 Chas II,
c. 17 ), only individual citizens had been obliged to contribute. In 1737 a clause of the Watch Act gave the
City the authority to pave before empty houses at the charge of the landlords on the same basis of watch-
ing and lighting (CLRO, Misc. MSS 141.9; Jor 58 , fos. 28 – 30 ).
(^82) Reynolds, Before the Bobbies, 17 – 20.
(^83) The following account of the passage and implementation of the Watch Act of 1737 is based on the
journals of the Common Council ( Jor 57 , fos. 360, 367; Jor 58 , fos. 28, 33–4, 59– 64 ) and on several bun-
dles of related papers in CLRO, principally Misc. MSS 141.9, Misc. MSS 245.1, Misc. MSS 245.2.