94 Before the Bobbiescent increase for watchmen.^71 At the end of its report, the committee
explained that they recommended this so that 'steady·able and proper Men
may be procured which has been found impracticable under the present
system'. With only one set of watchmen, but better paid, the estimated
annual cost was £4016.12s.Od. The 1809 watch committee report added: ~
Rate at Eight Pence in the Pound will produce about the above sum at the
least.'^72 Forced to choose between a smaller force of better paid watchmen
and a night watch twice as large (the double shift) but more poorly paid, this
vestry chose quality over quantity.
During the war, a wider gap developed between those parishes able to
maintain and even expand their policing and those finding it difficult to keep
up the watch they had. The financial burdens made the uneven quality of
London's policing more evident. If we consider the night watch of 49 major
metropolitan parishes in 1811, there were four groups.
At the bottom of the scale were the parishes that still relied on amateur
constables (or their paid substitutes) and had only irregular funding for
watchmen, if there were any. These parishes did not have a local watch or
improvement act allowing a watch rate. Included in this category were St
Leonard, Bromley; St Mary, Bow; St Mary, Battersea; St Mary, Rotherhithe;
and Greenwich, on the outskirts of greater London. Portions of some main
roads in these parishes were watched by turnpike authorities but as a whole
they were only covered by medieval statutes.
Next were those parishes with a basic system of night watch, including a
local act that provided funding, established a watch authority, and set up a
minimal force of paid watchmen, but little more. The majority of these
parishes were in the East End or south of the Thames: Bethnal Green;
Limehouse; Spitalfields; St George-in-the-East; Wapping; Whitechapel;
Shadwell; Lambeth; Christchurch, Surrey; Deptford. Also a part of this
group are Oerkenwell and Islington. Oerkenwell was an established urban
area, with a mix of lower-middle-class and labouring poor residents. These
were the regions where property values, and thus rate revenues, were falling
and overcrowding was increasing. Islington was a more suburban district;
many of its many roads were guarded by turnpike watch forces.
The largest group includes the parishes that enjoyed improved night watch
systems. They had moved beyond the mandate of their initial local Act and
employed professional supervisors and used patrols, as well as constables
and watchmen. A number were the parishes which reformed their watch only
to have to cut back in the face of wartime inflation. Most were parishes that
had been urbanized since the early eighteenth century: all of Westminster
(with two exceptions); the paving commissions of Southwark; St Giles and St
George, Bloomsbury; St Andrew, Holbom and St George-the-Martyr; Ely
Place Liberty; Norton Falgate; St Luke, Old Street; Shoreditch; and Hack-
ney. In socio-economic terms, this group represents a mixture - some