Crime and the State 407reported that at the end of September Edward Jones, the City marshal, return-
ing from a meeting with Colonel De Veil to co-ordinate the City’s and the West-
minster bench’s responses to the violence, spotted a member of the gang and
attempted to arrest him. The marshal was repulsed, it was reported, when he
and those with him were attacked by ‘twelve Villains, arm’d with Cutlasses, and
two with Pistols, [who] came up, crying, We know what you have been about; but defy
all Power, and directly attacked Mr Thomas, a Constable.. .’.^120
The Court of Aldermen in the City discussed this street violence at virtually
every meeting in September and October 1744. In the face of the threats posed
by what they called the ‘Confederacies and Combinations’ of offenders, they
ordered that the relevant clauses of the 1692 statute that offered a pardon and
reward to any of them who came forward to confess and turn king’s evidence be
posted in public places throughout the City. They also ordered that notice be
published in the ‘publick daily papers’ that not only would anyone who helped
to arrest and convict a street robber be entitled to a share of the one-hundred
pound proclamation reward, but that in addition the City would itself immedi-
ately pay five pounds on the arrest of a suspect—meeting the immediate costs of
prosecution, and in so doing repairing one of the weaknesses of rewards that
were paid only upon conviction—and a similar sum in the event of a guilty
verdict.^121
Early in October, the lord mayor and aldermen of the City went in a body to
St James’s Palace to ask the king to intervene, at least to the extent of promising
that those convicted of such offences could not expect to receive royal pardons
so that ‘a Speedy, rigorous and Exemplary Execution of the Laws... [might]
conduce greatly to the Supressing these Enormities by striking Terror into the
Wicked and Preventing others from entering into such like evil Courses’.^122 For
their part, the secretaries of state instructed the magistrates ofWestminster and
Middlesex to organize privy searches by their constables to uncover the night
houses and cellars and in particular the gaming-houses that were widely be-
lieved to shelter robbers and encourage their offending. The magistrates were
ordered to hold frequent petty sessions and to arm their constables with
another manner’. They were then charged with assault when a constable claimed that they had come to
his house with twelve companions, all of whom had cutlasses or pistols, and said ‘Damn their Eyes and
Blood, we will have him out of his house, for we will have his Head, and this Night his Brains shall be
broiled in Black-Boy-Alley’. The four men were convicted and imprisoned for a year. Ann Duck, the
woman, was not so charged because she had also been indicted for another robbery, of which she was
convicted and sentenced to be hanged (ibid., 231 – 2 , 248 : No. 436 – 9 , No. 459 – 60 ). For the Black Boy
Alley gang, see Paley, ‘Thief-takers in London’, 318 – 19 ; and Peter Linebaugh, The London Hanged. Crime
and Civil Society in the Eighteenth Century( 1991 ), 149 – 50.
(^120) London Evening Post, 25 – 7 September 1744 ; Gentleman’s Magazine, 14 ( 1744 ), 505. The latter report
added that secretary of state Carteret had written to the magistrates of Westminster to encourage their
constables to be vigilant, but that the robbers had gone to ‘the Houses of Peace Officers, making them
beg Pardon for endeavouring to do their Duty, and promise not to molest them’.
(^121) Rep 148 , pp. 411 , 419 – 20 , 425 , 446 – 9.
(^122) Rep 148 , pp. 470 – 6 ; London Evening Post, 13 – 16 October 1744.