were members of the various committees involved. Several of them were very
active indeed, most particularly two deputy aldermen: John Dansie, a barber
surgeon, of Bishopsgate Within; and John Child, a cheesemonger, of Farring-
don Without.^84 It is no surprise perhaps that the men who pushed the hardest
for a reform of the watch that would provide it with adequate funds were from
the largest and the poorest wards, the wards that faced the most severe policing
problems and had the fewest resources to draw on. Several other common
councillors from wards with similar problems were almost as active as Dansie
and Child—a packer from Billingsgate (Winterbottom, who was to be deputy
alderman by 1744 ), a wine merchant from Dowgate (Razor), and two men from
Bridge ward (Newland, Sturt). In consequence, perhaps, the watch bill was de-
signed to give the greatest practical authority to the Common Councils of the
wards. As it was being formulated, a summary of the ‘Heads of the Bill’ sent to
the committee that was to draft it and pursue it in parliament included an enu-
meration of ‘The powers by this Act to be given the Ald[erman] Dep[uty] &
C[ommon] C[ouncil] of each ward’—that is, in practice, the powers that would
be assumed by the local leaders of the wards as they took full charge of the
day-to-day management of the watch.^85
With information supplied by the ward leaders with respect to the number of
watchmen currently employed, the number they would like to hire, the total
cost of the watching system in their wards—including the salary of the beadle
and the maintenance of a watch-house—the committee was able to report to
the Common Council in February 1737 the size and shape of a new watch-
force.^86 The committee further reported the resolutions they had come to on the
central issues of the bill: how the watch would be constructed and governed; and
how the money would be raised. They laid out a plan designed by ward leaders
to centre on and be managed in the wards themselves, underlining a central
point about the reforming effort in this period that the Watch Bill exemplifies—
and that explains perhaps why these efforts were not remembered as significant
achievements by later generations: that it was only within this established insti-
tutional framework that change of the magnitude embodied in the Watch Bill
could be contemplated. The watch bill introduced a fundamental alteration in
the way night-time policing was mounted. But it did so in the only way that
would have had any chance of being accepted within the City: it went as far as
possible towards imposing uniformity on the City’s watch-forces, while accept-
ing that the only available machinery under which the money could be raised
and the watch governed was in the wards. Along with the Lighting Act enacted
by parliament in the previous year, the watch legislation underlined the
dominance in London governance of the ward élite—men who had been
Policing the Night Streets 193(^84) Deputies John Dansie and John Child, for example, were members of all the committees that dealt
with the watch issue in the years 1735 – 7 and of the implementation committees that followed the passage
of the act. For membership and the minutes of the committees, see CLRO, Misc. MSS 141.9.
(^85) CLRO, Misc. MSS 141.9. (^86) CLRO, Misc. MSS 245.2; Jor 58 , fo. 29.