378 Crime and the State
that once in court they would be convicted and punished. Legislation passed in
1720 to supplement and support the Transportation Act passed two years earlier
was directly related to the efforts being made to reduce violent offences in the
capital.^25 For one thing, the statute of 1720 declared that all streets in London
and in other cities were to be considered as highways under the statute of 1692
that had introduced the forty-pound reward for highway robbery—the inten-
tion being clearly to encourage victims of robberies in the lanes and courts and
secondary streets of the metropolis to make an effort to arrest and prosecute
their assailants and to encourage offenders who had been caught to give
evidence against their accomplices.
At the same time, the act committed the government to paying for the trans-
portation of offenders from the metropolis and the home counties. This was
very much at the urging of William Thomson, the recorder of London, who
was also the solicitor-general, and a very strong proponent of stern measures
against crime.^26 In making the case for treasury intervention, Thomson argued
that an effective transportation system would save the government money in the
long run by reducing the number of reward payments that would have to be
met. The lords of the treasury to whom he made this suggestion must have
accepted that argument since they deferred their decision about funding
transportation until they had received ‘an account of the charge the Crown hath
been at for apprehending felons’. In the event, they agreed to support
transportation as Thomson proposed and the statute was passed.^27
The transportation policy had several targets in view. One was undoubtedly
serious crime. But the government’s most direct and striking response to the
concern about street violence in London was devised at the same time that the
second Transportation Act was being passed and makes it clear just how
anxious, even panicked, the authorities were becoming by 1720. This was the
offer of an enormous supplementary inducement on top of the already hand-
some payment offered under statute. It was announced in a royal proclamation
in January 1720 that offered the princely sum of one hundred pounds over and
above the statutory forty pounds for the conviction of robbers who committed
offences within a 5 -mile radius of Charing Cross (and for murderers, the offence
with which robbery was so closely associated by contemporaries). Rewards had
been offered by royal proclamation after the Restoration: indeed, on no fewer
than eleven occasions between 1660 and 1692 the Crown had promised ten
pounds or twenty pounds to those who apprehended highwaymen who of-
fended within a stated period, generally six months, occasionally a year.^28
Proclamation rewards appeared to have been made redundant by the parlia-
mentary interventions in the 1690 s and in Anne’s reign; apart from anything
(^256) Geo. I, c. 23 ( 1720 ). (^26) For Thomson, see below, Ch. 9.
(^276) Geo. I, c. 23 ( 1720 ); PRO, T 1 / 214 / 50.
(^28) These proclamations have been helpfully traced by Jeremy Pocklington, ‘Highway Robbery’,
64 – 5.