An Expanding Watch, 1748-76 41under Consideration, that Part of the Road is not to be watched or lighted;
and that, by watching and lighting only Six Miles of that Road, it will be
the means of driving the Robbers to Putney Heath and Gallows Hill,
whereby the Inhabitants of Kingston ... will be in continual Danger in
travelling to and from London ....^75In 1776, the inhabitants of the portion of St Mary, Newington, that was not
policed by either the Surrey, Sussex and Kent Thmpike 1hlst or the West
Division Paving Commission complained about the heavy night-time traffic
through their neighbourhood. Concerned about the 'Robberies and other
Offenses' they were granted the power to light and watch the streets in
1777?^6
Coming full circle in the 1760s and 1770s, back north of the Thames, a
process of 'filling in' ensued, as parishes without formal night-watch systems
acquired them sometimes only after all their neighbours had done so. St
Clement Danes, the only Westminster parish not to jump on the bandwagon
in 1735-36, got a night watch Act in 1764.^77 St Andrew, Holbom, and
St George-the-Martyr petitioned for and received their act in 1766. In the
1770s, prior to the American Revolution, the parishes that bordered the City
to the north, St John and St James, Oerkenwell, St Mary, Islington, and the
united parishes of St Giles-in-the-Fields and St George, Bloomsbury in their
turns obtained watch acts. The large and increasingly wealthy parish of St
Marylebone acquired its first night watch act in 1756. But after a select vestry
was instituted in 1768, St Marylebone substantially increased and upgraded
its night watch in 1772.^78 With these statutes, there were few urban areas
north of the river without some legal provision for a professional night
watch.
In StJohn and StJames, Oerkenwell, we glimpse the kind of local conflict
that sometimes lay beneath the conventional language of parliamentary
petitions. In 1771, the rector, churchwardens, and other worthies of StJohn
petitioned to have the two parishes legally and administratively separated
and to establish a night watch. In their counter-petition, the leaders in St
James explained the difference between the two parishes: 'the said Parish of
Saint John chiefly consists of well-built Houses, inhabited by Persons of very
good Circumstances; and that a great Part of the said parish of Saint James
consists of small Houses, inhabited by the lower Sort of People, who are not
of Ability to contribute to the Rates ... .' They argued that if the two parishes
were separated, it would be to the detriment of the poorer half. The bill
passed and three years later we find 'several Inhabitants' of StJames peti-
tioning in 1774 for a bill for paving, cleaning, lighting, watching the streets
and regulating the poor. This too was opposed by the minister and church-
wardens, who called the bill 'oppressive and injurious, and the whole
Application has been carried on in a secret Manner, ... '. Their petition