emerging as crucial City authorities over a very long period by then, and who
assumed a position of critical leadership in the second quarter of the eighteenth
century. They emerged as the dominant force in local governance in part be-
cause of the falling away of other centres of authority, the aldermen and the
wardmote in particular, but also because the problems to be dealt with required
responses that only those close to the scene could provide.
The committee’s recommendations became the basis for the successful ap-
plication to parliament for an act that would give them authority to raise the rate
and to deal with defaulters.^87 Henceforth, the Common Council was autho-
rized to publish an annual Watch Act which set out the number of watchmen
and beadles to be hired in each ward. The immediate effect, in the first year of
its implementation, was an increase to 672 men (about 20 per cent over the 1705
level) and what at least appears to have been a considerable infusion of extra
money into the system—though, in the absence of estimates of the cost of the
watch under the 1705 act, that cannot be known with certainty (Table 4. 2 ). What
is clear is that the fundamentally local nature of the watch system was con-
firmed. There was to be no City-wide sharing of funds; no drawing from the
rich to support better policing of the poor. The act of 1737 increased the number
of watchmen in nineteen wards and decreased it in one. The changes came in
both the largest and poorest wards and the smallest and richest: a 58 per cent in-
crease in Bishopsgate was matched by the same proportional increase in Broad
Street.
The result ensured that the wards that could afford it continued to receive the
most intensive night-policing. As part of its discussion of the problems of street
lighting in April 1735 , the subcommittee that was also considering the issue of
the night watch was asked to calculate from the land tax records the number of
houses in each ward with an annual value of ten pounds and upwards and those
under ten pounds—the point at which settlement could be gained in the City,
and a broad guide, presumably, to each ward’s ability to support an expanded
lighting system. It served the same purpose for the committee’s discussions
about the watch.^88 The evidence provided by the report (which was signed by
John Smart, deputy alderman of Aldersgate Within) confirms that the City
watch would continue under the 1737 act to differ sharply from one ward to an-
other. The number of watchmen authorized under the act varied across the
City—from the 10 houses per watchman in Cornhill to the 69. 5 of Cripplegate
Without, and an average of 32. 2. As in the case of constables, the ‘coverage’ that
this suggests, the intensity of policing in each ward, would be revealed as much
wider than those figures suggest if the number of people living in those houses,
not merely the number ofhouses themselves, could be calculated. None the less,
194 Policing the Night Streets
(^87) Jor 58 , fo. 34 ; and see the draft petitions in Alchin MSS, Box S, no. CXXVI. The bill was passed as
10 Geo II, c. 22 ( 1737 ).
(^88) CLRO, Misc. MSS 291.1.