The War ~ars, 1793-1815 101every place within the operation of the Bill, whether it be necessary or not'.
The requirement that parishes use two shifts of watchmen was particularly
troubling. Here some local leaders had first-hand experience. These parishes
found shifts were 'of so much inconvenience and unnecessary expense, that it
has been abandoned by them all'.^102
The most strenuous objections were to the expense. The vestry clerks
calculated how many additional men they would have to employ and the
additional annual cost of their salaries. A printed chart compared the present
size and the cost with projected figures. St George-in-the-East was currently
spending £2553 on wages. Under the proposed system, it would have had to
hire 234 additional men at an added annual cost of £3117.12s.Od.^103 It was
obviously in the self-interest of local authorities to plead poverty but parishes
were facing these demands for improved policing with severely limited
resources. Even St Marylebone had a deficit of nearly £900 in its watch
budget in 1811-12.^104 Local resources in most areas were already strained
in the effort to meet the increased cost of poor relief as well as other local
government services. The Shoreditch vestry noted that rates were already
'defrayed with difficulty by many Inhabitants, especially at the present period,
when employment is precarious, and the prices of provisions are excessive'.^105
John Wilks, the vestry clerk for St Luke, pointed out to Lord Sidmouth that
only the week before, 801 residents had been summoned for non-payment of
rates. Wilks, pleading for Shoreditch, Bethnal Green, Spitalfields, Mile End,
Old and New Town, argued that 'those places are inhabited exclusively by the
Poor and ... the inhabitants of at least half the Houses are so necessitous that
none of the present Parochial Rates can be obtained or are even required
from them. Their poverty therefore constitutes their protection and would
render augmented local taxation peculiarly distressfu1.'^106
In 1812, as in 1785, the combination of Whig fears of an over-mighty
executive and local objections proved powerful. In this instance, Sir Samuel
Romilly and Richard Sheridan led the Whig phalanx; vestries, including St
Marylebone and St Luke, Old Street, led the parochial lobby. Samuel Whit-
bread, a Radical Whig, presented the petition from the St Luke, Old Street,
vestry. George Byng, another Whig, was also a vestryman and member of the
watch committee forSt James, Piccadilly.^107 When he presented StJames's
petition against the bill, Byng stated: 'all the parishes in the county of
Middlesex were unanimous in their opposition to this Bill'. No one, it
seems, was inclined to speak out in its defence. The bill was tabled and
died.^108
The Ratcliffe Highway murders were like the Gordon Riots in that noth-
ing like either one occurred again.^109 They were not symptoms or indicators
of some serious chronic condition. That the night watch needed improve-
ment was acknowledged but the need for its wholesale replacement was not
necessarily obvious. This explains why the suggestions for reform sent to the