‘whereupon these Informants brought the said Edward Tunkes to the Con-
stables house, and left him in the Constables Custody with the money and Tools
for Clipping’.^77
Inevitably, some constables were more active, or more available, than others,
and were called upon regularly. Some were active enough to have been hardly
distinguishable from the thief-takers. James Cooper, a barber surgeon and a
constable of Bread Street ward, was an extremely active prosecuting constable.
Between 1694 and 1697 he worked regularly with Rewse and Jenkins, with
Dunn, and with several other frequent prosecutors, especially on coining and
clipping cases. He collaborated with Nathaniel Whitebread, a London gold-
smith whom Cooper had arrested and charged with clipping in December
1694 , and who subsequently used his knowledge of coiners and clippers to turn
prosecutor himself.^78 Cooper also joined with other active constables, including
Thomas Udall and Christopher Priddeth (or Pritty), to carry out searches and
make arrests. With John Woodcock, he executed a search warrant in April 1695
and deposed before a magistrate that they found clippings and clipping tools.
He gave evidence before Lovell in 1695 that reveals that he and Priddith, acting
on information, went at 8 a.m. one day to a house in Cripplegate where they
found Charles Bellett in the cellar with the door locked. Having ‘forst the same
with a sledg’ (which they had presumably brought for the purpose), they
arrested Bellett, and seized tools, clipped money, and clippings. Bellett for his
part told the recorder he had gone to his cellar to feed his rabbits and locked the
door to prevent their escaping.^79
Apart from his engagement in the prosecution of clippers and other felons,
Cooper profited from the rewards offered by the reformation societies. In the
summer months of 1694 he committed at least eighteen women to the Bridewell
as prostitutes and ‘nightwalkers’ and brought several others before the lord
mayor on similar charges. Many of these women had been perhaps picked up
initially by the watchmen of his ward, but Cooper had arrested several of them
himself. He apprehended one woman, he deposed before the Bridewell court,
for having taken a man
Detection and Prosecution 245(^77) CLRO: London Sess. Papers, April 1693.
(^78) CLRO: SF 406 , December 1694 , Gaol Delivery, calendar. Within a few months of this threatened
prosecution, Whitebread laid a series of informations before Alderman Ashhurst, in which he named
five men as clippers, including two goldsmiths, with whom he had had dealings. He said of John
Brighton, a cobbler, that he was a man ‘who both clipt and facilitated clipping’, that he had seen him
receiving clipt money from clippers at the Queen’s Arms in St Martin’s to carry to others, that he (White-
bread) had himself given Brighton clippings to keep for him, and had bought clippings from him. He
claimed to have received ‘large parcells of broad money’ from one of the goldsmiths—that is, coins suit-
able to be clipped—as much as £ 50 at a time, and for which he paid him a guinea for each 20 s. in broad
money (CLRO: London Sess. Papers, May 1695 ). He also joined with Cooper and Dunn in that same
month to prosecute ‘a notorious clipper’ (CLRO: London Sess. Papers, April 1696. Deposition against
James Raymond). With Cooper he prosecuted another man for a coining offence (CLRO, SF 410 , May
1695 , sessions of the peace, recog. 8 ).
(^79) LMA: MJ/SP/ 1695 /July/ 26.