involved. In a significant number of cases in the lord mayor’s Charge Book, the
accused appears to have been the servant or apprentice of the prosecutor, and
employers might have welcomed an opportunity to punish servants who per-
sisted in stealing in a way that would make it possible to take them back. Con-
viction at the Old Bailey, with the thumb branded with the mark of a felon that
would follow as a minimum consequence, would have so diminished the char-
acter of a servant that his or her future employment would have been very much
in doubt—at any event a more permanently tainting experience than a few days
in the Bridewell, even if under the lash.^82 Some apprentices and servants may
have been brought to the magistrate with the intention of having them sub-
jected to such a short, sharp, shock, but not to the debilitating experience of the
common ward of Newgate. Anne Blunt seemed to explain her prosecution of a
servant in these terms when she claimed that her maid persisted in pilfering
small sums of money and ‘will not be reclaimed by good admonition’.^83 That
servants and apprentices were prominent among those dealt with by a Bridewell
term also suggests that many of the accused were young. There is little direct evi-
dence of the ages of those brought before magistrates. But much of the language
used about them strongly suggests a youthful population being kept out of the
courts. The discretionary diversion of minor offenders away from the courts
points to the underlying limitations of a criminal justice system that could call
upon only the narrowest range of penal options. And it is clear that by the
second half of the seventeenth century this was emerging as a serious issue in
London.
If significant numbers of offenders were being shunted away from the courts,
who was being sent to Newgate to face trial for non-capital thefts? As we have
seen, about 40 per cent of defendants facing property charges in London in the
late seventeenth century were indicted for an offence that could lead to execu-
tion at Tyburn. The remainder were accused of a clergyable theft for which in
the late seventeenth century they were likely to suffer a serious penalty only if
the judges went out of their way to make an example of them. These clergyable
offences could obviously vary hugely in character, both in the value of the prop-
erty involved and in the seriousness with which they were regarded. They cer-
tainly must have represented only a fraction of the offences committed. Large
numbers of thefts or alleged thefts went unreported because the offence was
compounded, or the identity of the offender was unknown and could not be dis-
covered, or because victims decided that the costs in time and money that a
prosecution would entail made it not worth the bother.^84 And, as we have seen,
32 Introduction: The Crime Problem
would have been much cheaper for the victim than a trial at the sessions or Old Bailey (Prosecution and
Punishment, 167 ). In the City, however, there was the additional complication that the complainant would
have had to appear before the Bridewell court if the accused had not been discharged before it met, a
complication that would cost him or her time if not money.
(^82) For servants in the Middlesex house of correction, see Shoemaker, Prosecution and Punishment, 184 – 5.
(^83) Bridewell Court Book, 1689 – 95 , 348 (Anne Lomer).
(^84) For the costs involved in mounting a prosecution, see Beattie, Crime and the Courts, 41 – 8.