CHAPTER EIGHTCrime and the State, 1714 – 1750
8 CRIME AND THE STATE, 1714–1750
In 1701 the author of that gloomy treatise on the state of crime in London
Hanging Not Punishment Enoughhad no doubt that there had been a sharp increase
in crime in the capital over the previous few years, particularly robberies
and burglaries—a ‘Lamentable Increase’, as he put it, ‘of High-way-Men,
and House-breakers.. .’. Nor had he any doubt about the causes: ‘We need not
go far for Reasons of the great numbers and increase of these Vermin: for
tho’ no times have been without them, yet we may now reasonably believe,
that after so many Thousands of Soldiers disbanded, and Mariners discharged,
many of them are driven upon necessity, and care not to work, and many
(I fear) cannot, if they would.’^1 It might not be entirely their fault, he conceded,
but these ex-soldiers and sailors had been corrupted by the irregular life
they had led in the forces, and when they were discharged some of them turned
inevitably to take by plunder what they could not or would not earn by working.
This notion that the disbandment of the forces would lead to a sharp increase
in crime, and especially in violent crime, was to become a commonplace at the
conclusions of wars over the next century. Certainly, that expectation was plain
at the end of the War of Spanish Succession, in 1713.^2 As peace with France ap-
proached, anxiety grew about its consequences at home. The timing and man-
ner of the making of peace after a decade of bloody and expensive European
war was passionately contested between the whig and tory parties since it
seemed to many to involve serious implications for the national interest. But for
those with a concern for domestic tranquillity, anxiety about the coming of
peace was more narrowly focused on the effects of the demobilization of the
large army that had fought in Europe under Marlborough and the discharge of
thousands of seamen. Anticipation of trouble on the streets of the capital may
explain the panic that appears to have seized London in 1712 over the violence
of the so-called ‘Mohocks’, who were rumoured to be a gang of ruffians—pos-
sibly young aristocrats—who went around at night getting their sport by attack-
ing people randomly, and in particular dealing harshly with the watch and other
(^1) Hanging, not Punishment enough for Murtherers, High-way Men, and House-breakers( 1701 ), 1 , 21.
(^2) For the patterns of prosecutions during and after wars in the eighteenth century see above, Ch. 1.