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

Notes 171

39. Of the 50 who signed the petition, only 17 could be said to be active supporters
    for the reformation of manners while nine were against the campaign; the rest
    did not apparently take sides. Of the 34 justices Robert Shoemaker knows were
    active reformers, only 14 signed this petition. R. Shoemaker, letter to the
    author, 24 Dec. 1993. See also Shoemaker, Prosecution and Punishment,
    Ch. 10. I am grateful for Professor Shoemaker's assistance on this question.


40. U, vol. XXI, p. 335.


41. Kent, 'Centre and Localities', pp. 367-73; Eastwood, Governing Rural England,
    pp. 133-65.


42. Webb and Webb, Parish and County, pp. 295-7.


43. Webb and Webb, Parish and County, p. 299.


44. Radzinowicz, History, vol. II, p. 335.


45. Joanna Innes has persuasively shown the process by which local and central
    government interacted to create social policy legislation concerning criminal
    punishments and the poor law. See Innes, 'Parliament and the Shaping of
    Eighteenth-century English Social Policy', pp. 63-92. The classic example of
    local concerns leading to changes in national law is the Black Act of 1725, when
    over 50 capital offences were added to the statute book because of an upsurge
    in poaching in Windsor, Hampshire, and Richmond. See E.P. Thompson,
    Whigs and Hunters: The Origin of the Black Act (New York: Pantheon
    Books, 1975). The Municipal Corporations Act of 1835 allowed, but did
    not require, local governments to form watch committees and set up profes-
    sional police forces. See Critchley, History of Police, pp. 62-3 and J. Hart,
    'Reform of the Borough Police, 1835-1856', English Historical Review, 70
    (1955), pp. 411-27.


46. The Compleate Conswble, p. 7.


47. T. Brown, The Midnight Spy, or A Vrew of the Transactions of London and
    Westminster, From the Hours of Ten in the Evening, till Five in the Morning
    (London, 1766), p. 40. For the Country rhetoric, see H.T. Dickinson, The
    Politics of the People in Eighteenth-Century Britain (New York: St Martin's
    Press, 1994), pp. 199-200.


48. Dickinson, Politics of the People, pp. 164-5.


49. For the City of London Police, see D. Rumbelow, I Spy Blue: The Police and
    Crime in the City of London from Elizabeth I to VICtoria (Macmillan, 1971) and
    the forthcoming Stanford University doctoral dissertation by Andrew Harris.


50. Webb and Webb, Manor and Borough, vol. I, pp. 224-5.


51. Applebee's Weekly Jouma~ 3 Sept. 1720, p. 1840.


52. Westminster Court of Burgesses, Minutes, 24 Sept. 1724.


53. See, for example, Westminster Court of Burgesses, Minutes, 18 Nov. 1725.
    Forty-five ratepayers were threatened with fines for non-payment of watch
    rates in 1728, 113 were summoned in 1730. After threatening 94 people in
    1731, the Burgesses appear to have given up. In 1730, they examined the
    delinquent accounts 11 times; by 1731 they did so only three times and by
    1734, only three non-payers were faced with possible fines and the court only
    bothered to inquire once. For fines for neglect of duty, see, Westminster Court
    of Burgesses, Minutes, 11 March 1727.


54. Westminster Court of Burgesses, Minutes, 20 Dec. 1726.


55. Westminster Court of Burgesses, Minutes, 8 June, 1727.


56. Westminster Court of Burgesses, Minutes, 5 Nov. 1728.


57. Westminster Court of Burgesses, Minutes, 31 May 1733.


58. CJ, vol. XXII, p. 272-3. For the full text of the letter, see Westminster Court of
    Burgesses, Minutes, 5 Nov. 1728.