Before the Bobbies. The Night Watch and Police Reform in Metropolitan London, 1720-1830

4 Before the Bobbies

awaiting the reforms of the nineteenth century.'^9 It follows, then, that tracing

how the relationship of central and local government changed over the eight-

eenth century will also provide a basis for understanding the emergence of the

nineteenth-century bureaucratic state, something previously dated to the

1830s and the so-called 'revolution in government'.^10

This study focuses on the pre-1829 policing of London and develops
themes suggested by these recent historiographical trends. First is the devel-
opment of professional policing at the local level, from its beginnings in key
West End parishes in 1735 to the establishment of the Metropolitan Police.^11
The first night watch acts allowing for paid watchmen were obtained by the
parishes of StJames, Piccadilly, and StGeorge, Hanover Square. As Map 1.
illustrates, most parochial night watch acts were passed before 1790. These
reformed parochial night watches were tantamount to professional law
enforcement agencies, so the origins of professional policing pre-date the
rise of Bentharnite pressures of the early nineteenth century. Eighteenth-
century London was not so unpoliced as has been thought. Granted, London
was not uniformly or centrally policed over the entire metropolitan region,
but London was far more extensively policed in 1828 than it had been in
1728.
Second, this work examines the way in which police reform was accom-
plished. The process of reform was not vertical, from the top down, but
characterized by diffusion. The list of agents who carried out the improve-
ment of the police of the metropolis needs to be widened beyond magistrates
and reformers in Westminster and Whitehall to include parish vestrymen,
watch committee members, and even the officers and men of the pre-
watch system who patrolled the streets. Ideas and experiments crossed parish
boundaries as well as that between central and local government.
This work will also focus on the motivations behind law enforcement
reform. Local and national leaders sought change for a variety of reasons:
a desire to control agencies of local government, concerns about controlling
the vices of the working poor, and fear of politically motivated disorder.
There is sufficient evidence, however to privilege a growing concern about
property crime as the primary motivating force behind police reform in
metropolitan London. Police reform was undertaken by a wide range of
local officials. That some of these were political radicals shows that fears
about more ordinary crimes against persons and property were more import-
ant than fear of radical politics. Even radicals who championed the rights of
the poor did not condone theft. Some leaders, like the Duke of Wellington,
were more concerned about popular protest and radicalism than crime but
successful police reform needed the cooperation of local officials. These men
consistently responded much more readily to reforms that were presented as
effective solutions to the problem of rising crime. This was especially true in