38 Before the BobbiesRules of the King's Bench Prison, an area that included two-thirds of the
parish of St George-the-Martyr. Some debtors and criminals came to the
Borough by choice, hoping to avoid arrest in the rookeries and slums of the
south bank parishes that had inherited the medieval tradition of sanctuary
associated with church property. Acts of Parliament in 1697 and 17'13 ended
these quasi-legal sanctuaries but this did not mean an end to the rookeries or
to Southwark's reputation as a home for the morally dubious or criminal.^62
Those who took on the responsibilities of local government in Southwark
had a unique set of difficulties. These stemmed from the Borough's unusual
relationship with the City of London. For centuries, Southwark had had
loose official ties to the City of London. But Southwark never elected
councilmen to the Court of Common Council and, by the seventeenth
century, the Court of Aldermen nominated and elected the Alderman for
Bridge Ward Without, as Southwark was designated, amongst themselves.
Southwark thus did not enjoy the representation that every other ward in the
City possessed.^63 A significant privilege belonging to the City was the right to
hold sessions of the peace in Southwark. In all wards of the City, the Lord
Mayor and alderman served as magistrates for the City, and thus for South-
wark. With the declining interest in Southwark on the part of the aldermen,
however, these sessions were held less regularly. The residents of the Bor-
ough still needed magistrates, however, and the Surrey Justices of the Peace
stepped into the gap. Thus began a long-drawn-out jurisdictional conflict
between the City of London and the magistrates of Surrey, a fight that
dragged on into the nineteenth century.^64
The inhabitants of Southwark complained frequently of the difficulty and
inconvenience of answering to two sets of magistrates. In 1693, for example,
a grand jury for Southwark petitioned the Lord Mayor, complaining that
their constables were forced to attend eight quarter sessions a year.^65 Surrey
quarter sessions were not always held in Southwark but were moved to other
places in the county such as Guildford or Croydon. Those bound to appear
from Southwark-constables, overseers of the poor, prosecutors-had to pay
the expense of travel and absorb lost wages and the usual legal fees. Some-
one could be bound to appear at City sessions in Southwark and county
sessions in Guildford on the same day.
These kinds of annoyance made parochial office in Southwark even more
burdensome than it was in other parts of London. If Southwark had been
like other wards in the City, law enforcement would have been administered
through the wardmote, under the supervision of the alderman and his
deputies.^66 If the parishes of Southwark had been like others in Surrey,
vestries, supervised by the county bench, would have shouldered these
tasks. But Southwark was neither fish nor fowl and parish vestries were not
very energetic when it came to initiating changes in local administration
compared to other parts of the metropolis.