An Expanding Watch, 1748-76 37turnpike trust.^55 Thus turnpike trusts can be added to the mix of local
authorities that took responsibility for street policing in the eighteenth
century, especially in some suburban regions.
In some places the introduction of watchmen on the turnpike roads
inspired parochial officials. Hackney is a case in point - the parish estab-
lished its watch in 1764 at the urging of the turnpike trustees. In August
1763, two watchmen on the Hackney Thrnpike 'apprehended a Person who
was rioting and misbehaving himself in Mare Street'. The watchmen took
their prisoner to John Bones, a Hackney headborough, because they did not
have the authority to charge the man before a magistrate. Bones, however,
refused to take the suspect into custody.^56 As a result of this incident, the
turnpike trustees communicated to a Hackney parish meeting their fears
about what might happen if a large number of similar offenders had to be
arrested. 57 They also pointed out that the watchmen employed by the turn-
pike trust had no authority to leave their stations on the road, not even to
assist someone in need or to stop a burglary. The trustees thus recom-
mended that a committee be formed, with members representing both the
trust and the parish, 'to consult with them what is most proper to be done
therein for establishing a publick Watch in this Parish .. .'.^58 On the recom-
mendation of the joint committee, the parish obtained a watch act from
Parliament. On 26 March 1764 the trustees for employing the poor, lighting
the streets, and watching the parish of StJohn, Hackney, met and took up
their duties.^59 Extra-parochial authorities, like the Hackney turnpike trust,
were also key players in the process by which more formal, bureaucratic
forms of street policing spread across greater London.
Another region touched by this round of night watch legislation passed
after the Seven Years' War, in the 1760s and 1770s, was Southwark. The
Borough of Southwark included the parishes of St George-the-Martyr,
St Olave, St John, Horselydown, St Thomas, and part of St Saviour. For
most of the eighteenth century the population of the Borough as a whole
remained fairly stable at around 100000 inhabitants.^60 Uke the City, South-
wark saw its property increasingly converted to commercial, not residential,
use as merchants and traders moved to the suburbs. Also like the East End,
Southwark's parishes were home to those who worked the river trades and in
noxious industries, such as tanning and brewing, forbidden in the City. In
addition, Southwark supported a thriving hospitality industry, supplying
those travelling up to London from the southern counties and coast.^61
However, south of the river was a different county with some unique legal
and administrative jurisdictions. These differences created new twists in the
familiar problems of urban government.
Southwark had a reputation as a home for vice and crime, enhanced by the
presence of three prisons - the Borough Compter, the Marshalsea Prison,
and the King's Bench Prison. Added to this were debtors confined to the