Westminster, 1720-39 21London Daily Post complained in 1735 that in spirit shops: ' ... Robbers drink
themselves up to a proper Pitch, become desperate, and so capable of any
Mischief'?^9 It took 30 years to bring the gin trade under effective control.
Gin and the wider problem of alcohol abuse undoubtedly heightened the
apprehension of men like the Westminster justices and the vestrymen of the
West End about crime and property crime in particular.^80
Peacetime, Jonathan Wild, the rising population, and the gin craze suggest
that there was a rising crime rate, proportionally and absolutely, especially
for property crime. These factors combined to heighten the fears of local
authorities to the point where they felt the need to change their policing.
Robert Shoemaker notes that those parishes with the highest rates of pro-
secution for petty crime were in the West End. In parishes where the shifting
social character of neighbourhoods made for increased social tension, mid-
dle- and upper-class residents were increasingly making use of the formal
procedures of the law to deal with vice and petty crime. These included St
Martin-in-the-Fields and St Paul's, Covent Garden. Magistrates and the
property-owning classes of the West End were more interested in controlling
crime and vice among the poor than mediating between neighbours. Thus it
makes sense that they would support the establishment of an improved night
watch. A regular force of men on the streets, paid to watch and inform on
the activities of all residents, under specific rules and regulations, account-
able to parish authorities, could be expected to apprehend petty offenders,
the 'loose, idle, and disorderly', and prevent more serious felonies. A night
watch system was certainly less flexible and allowed for less individual dis-
cretion than relying on neighbours to police each other.^81
What is not evident is any concern about crowds. Nicholas Rogers and
Robert Shoemaker have both examined the context and content of the riots
that erupted in London in the early eighteenth century - the Sacheverall riots
of 1710, the anti-calico riots in 1719-20, and the demonstrations in opposi-
tion to the Excise Bill of 1735, to name the most significant.^82 While both
these scholars make effective arguments about the plebeian presence in early
eighteenth-century political culture, they also concede that the extent to
which the ruling classes and the emerging middling ranks interpreted that
presence as threatening is not clearly evident. Rogers states: 'The plebeian
crowd was not intrinsically oppositionist or anti-establishment, even if it
showed a hearty disrespect for the polite world and its immediate local
rulers.'^83 There was not necessarily a connection between crowds and crime
for local or national leaders in this period. The night watch, however, was
clearly intended to combat what seemed to be a rising tide of property crime.
1\vo other areas followed the pattern set in Westminster -Saffron Hill in
1737 and Spitalfields in 1738. A very small extra-parochial area sandwiched
between St Andrew's, Holborn, to the west, St James's, Clerkenwell, to the
east and the City to the south, the Liberties of Saffron Hill, Hatton Garden,