40 Before the Bobbies
The Southwark Paving Commissions were empowered to pave, light, and
clean the streets; Borough High Street was to be paved first. The act contained
routine provisions for night watch acts. The commissioners were to hire what-
ever number of watchmen and beadles they deemed sufficient and to establish
rules and regulations for their good order and discipline. The beadles were
charged to keep watch and ward, subject to a 20-shilling fine if they neglected
to do so. While the act specifically stated that watchmen were to have power to
arrest and detain any suspects and to take them before a magistrate, it judi-
ciously did not specify if the magistrate should be a City or county justice.
What was missing in the act for Southwark, however, was constables.
There was no mention of the attendance of constables to keep watch and
ward or to oversee the operation of the night watch, a standard feature of
virtually all other night watch acts. This did not mean that Southwark was
without constables. However, because of the concurrent jurisdictions in the
Borough, the courts leet of the various manors retained a strength and
vigour that such courts had lost in most other regions, where parochial
government was stronger. In Southwark, though, the five courts leet contin-
ued to appoint petty constables for their IllaiJOrs, for an approximate total of
24 constables and headboroughs.^72
What also made the Southwark paving commissions unique was the nature
and scope of their jurisdictions. The Act of 1766, to a degree, centralized the
policing of Southwark's streets, including Bermondsey and Newington. In
other places, such as Hanover Square and Piccadilly or the riverside parishes
of the East End, parishes combined efforts in order to obtain acts of Parlia-
ment as a pragmatic measure to spread out the costs of obtaining the needed
legislation.^73 In those instances, however, the statutes created separate
structures for each parish. In the case of Southwark, parishes were combined
for police purposes and the authority of the commissioners extended across
parochial boundaries. The Borough's unique position between the City of
London and the county of Surrey thus had an impact on the way in which
police reform was initiated and carried out there.
Also in the 1760s and 1770s, the parishes, turnpike trusts, and villages in
Surrey and Kent that bordered on Southwark established systems of night
watch on a statutory basis. The trustees of the Surrey New Road Thmpike
Trust set up a night watch in 1763.^74 In 1766, the trustees of the Surrey, Kent,
and Sussex Thmpikes received the authority to establish 'a regular Nightly
Watch ... to a certain Distance from the said Borough of Southwark .. .'. The
'Gentlemen, Oergy, and Freeholders' of Kingston-upon-Thames petitioned
to have the road from Southwark to Kingston included under the watching
provisions of the bill. In their opinion
Putney Heath and Gallows Hill [were] ... the most dangerous Part of the
Road from London to Kingston, in respect to robbing; yet, by the Bill now