been useful—let alone possible—to create a larger, better paid, and centrally or-
ganized force. Ward autonomy in the raising of resources and in the organiza-
tion of their own policing remained paramount. None the less, the act, and
others like it in Westminster parishes, marked a significant moment in the trans-
formation of conceptions oflocal government in that it translated the obligation
to serve in person into an obligation, easily enforced, to pay in support of a
service performed by waged officials.
‘A few weak and feeble men’: how effective were watchmen?
The watch system confirmed by the 1737 act required watchmen to be at their
posts every night through the year. They were supposed to assemble at their
watchhouse at 9 p.m. in the winter and 10 p.m. in the summer, to be met by the
man taking his turn to be the ‘constable of the night’, who would be in charge
until the watch was dismissed the next morning. The ward beadle was also sup-
posed to be present as the watch assembled to enter each man’s name in a book,
to see that they had their lanterns and candles and were armed with their staffs,
and to ensure that they took up their positions at their stands or watch-boxes be-
fore leaving for the night.^93 The watchmen worked in pairs, as in the Cornhill
arrangement we saw in the 1690 s, alternating an hour each in the watch-house
to be ready to respond to trouble, and an hour of watch duty, during which they
were to beat their rounds twice, once calling the time, the other silently.
The 1737 act required the constable to remain on duty until the watch was
raised in the morning, making a tour of the whole ward twice a night. Con-
stables and watchmen were all, of course, supposed to be on the look-out for ser-
ious offenders, or merely suspicious people; and they were expected to arrest
prostitutes and vagrants. Anyone apprehended by the watchmen or the con-
stable was to be taken to the watch-house and then by the constable to a magis-
trate in the morning or to one of the compters to await examination.^94 The
watch-houses seem to have become more elaborate, more like lock-ups, in the
course of this period. By the second quarter of the eighteenth century some
were being referred to as ‘round-houses’, buildings that were likely to have been
more secure than the temporary arrangements that had served in some wards a
few decades earlier.
How well all of this worked in practice is another matter. Given the fact that
watching was full-time work for modest pay, it must have been difficult to attract
good recruits—that is, strong, able-bodied, reasonably young, men. It is difficult
to know if the increase in the wages to thirteen pounds a year helped in the
Policing the Night Streets 197(^93) If ward watch-books were in fact kept immediately after 1737 , they have disappeared. The earliest
such book for a City ward begins in 1799 and a handful of others survives from the early decades of the
nineteenth century.
(^94) CLRO: P.D. 10.194(printed rules and orders to be observed by the constables, beadles, and watch-
men in pursuance of the Act of 10 George II, c. 22 ).