pardoned in London between 1704 and 1712 , from Middlesex as well as the City,
were saved from the gallows on that condition.^125 The disbandment of the army
at the end of the war removed that option.^126
The army had served as a useful place to dump convicts during the war, but
of course men only. In the case of women, and men who could not be sent to a
regiment because of age or infirmity, an alternative punishment became avail-
able in 1706 , when the composite criminal statute passed in that year made it
legal for the judges to sentence clergied offenders to a period of six months to
two years at hard labour in a house of correction or a workhouse. That statute
clearly suggested the possibility that such a sentence could also serve as a condi-
tion of pardon for those who could neither be transported nor sent to the army,
for beginning in that year the cabinet began to impose such a condition on
women pardoned from hanging, and by 1709 on a few men. Over the next six
years, two-thirds of the women pardoned from London and Middlesex were
sentenced to terms of hard labour for periods ranging from six months to three
years.^127 In short, Bridewell and the workhouse functioned for women as the
army did for men: the institutions were available; the sentence seemed appro-
priate and was authorized by statute in a broad if not specific way; incarceration
was better than simply letting pardoned offenders go unpunished; and there
was no realistic possibility of insisting on transportation.
Our Sample of City of London cases over the period reveals the effects of
these innovations: ten men were forced into the army and ten women and two
men were sent to the London workhouse in Anne’s reign as a condition of par-
don from capital punishment for property offences (Table 7. 7 ). Such conditional
punishments, however, fell away as the war ended, almost certainly because
those who ran the houses of correction and workhouses objected to having men
and women who had been convicted of capital offences dumped into their care
without any compensation being offered. By 1713 only two men and two women
were punished in this way following their pardon, and in the following year
none.^128
The end of the war brought an end to the two stop-gap punishments that had
been imposed as pardon conditions. The cabinet reverted to transportation as
the main condition imposed on men pardoned from hanging, thereby returning
to the penal confusion that had existed a decade earlier. Since those ordered to
be transported could not easily be found ships, the London gaols once again
filled up, and once again the City authorities had to snatch at ad hocsolutions.
The Revolution, Crime, and Punishment in London 367being fully carried out. Service in the forces until disbandment was in itself apparently sufficient to
satisfy the pardon condition.
(^125) PRO, C 82 / 2842 , 2865 , 2875 , 2909 , 2927 , 2948.
(^126) In a pardon issued for Newgate in June 1712 , when the option of service in Europe had all but dis-
appeared, sixteen men were pardoned on condition that they serve in the army in the West Indies. That
was altered in the following year, and most of them were granted an absolute discharge (PRO,
C 82 / 2948 ).
(^127) PRO, C 82 / 2865 , 2875 , 2909 , 2927 , 2948 , 2963. (^128) PRO, C 82 / 2963.