114 Before the Bobbieswhich policed four districts, each district patrolled by 22 men, two sub-
inspectors, and ~one inspector. They covered an area of up to five miles~
from Bow Street, leaving the more distant parts of the main highways to
the mounted Horse Patrol.^62 The 1821 Act 'for the more effectual
Administration of the Office of a Justice of the Peace in and near the
Metropolis' renewed the provisions of the original 1792 act, closing the
police office in Shadwell and opening one in Marylebone. Its provisions
included John Longley's suggestion that magistrates be given the authority
to suspend or dismiss any incompetent or corrupt parish watchman or patrol.
No one over the age of forty could be appointed as watchman or patro1.^63
This act aroused little attention except from St Marylebone and St George,
Hanover Square, which petitioned for amendments to allow for easier pro-
secution of street hawkers as nuisances.^64
The provisions of the act regarding the watch could be seen as an attempt
to centralize police authority and/or an effort to create a certain degree of
minimal uniformity in regard to the quality of watchmen. It certainly illus-
trates the increasing involvement of the central government in the super-
vision of local government functions. What the Act did, in reality, however,
was merely to confuse the situation. It in no way changed the authority of
vestries and watch commissioners to hire, discipline and fire their men. Nor
did the act give the magistrates any positive authority to recommend or
appoint who should be hired; it merely gave them a veto power.
From parish records, it appears that this new magisterial authority was
either not used much or was used with the cooperation and agreement of
vestries. Watch committees and vestries on the whole agreed with magisterial
requests to discipline or fire the inefficient and unfit. Almost all evidence
points to cooperation between magistrates and watch authorities in the
dismissal and sometimes prosecution of idle or corrupt watchmen. But in a
few telling instances, watch authorities and police magistrates did collide.
The police magistrates at the newly established office in Marylebone ran
afoul of the influential vestry in their first year in the parish. When the office
opened in Marylebone High Street in the summer of 1821, the vestry
welcomed the magistrates by ordering that they be given copies of all the
parochial acts of Parliament and a framed map of the parish. About a year
after this auspicious beginning, however, the vestry refused to dismiss a
watchman named White after the magistrates had requested his removal.
The magistrates charged that the man had not prevented the robbery of the
house of an Admiral Lake in Baker Street. The vestry investigated and
concluded the watchman could not be held responsible for a robbery that
appeared to have been committed with the help of the Admiral's servant.
Besides, White had worked diligently for the parish as a watchman for five
years. The vestry thus did not feel White deserved to be dismissed and
refused the magistrates' request.