he pop upon, but this very Gentlewoman at the Bar, Madam Blewit, or Dickinson, or
Bowler, or what you please to call her for she was Wife to them all Three at the same
Time, and the two First of ’em are now a hanging in Chains in St. Georges-Fields.
Whether he wanted a Whore, or she a Rogue, is neither here nor there, but they
presently laid fast hold of one another and grew woundy loving. I found my Master was
in Danger, and did all I could to get him away. Hussy, says I, You saucy Brimstone Toad you,
what Business have ye with my Master, let him go, or I’ll call by Brother Watchman, and have ye to the
Round-House directly. And, Ah Master, says I, my dear Master, come away from that Hang-in-
Chains Bitch. Yes, I did call her Bitch, that I did, my Lord, and I can’t deny it. She’ll cer-
tainly pick your Pocket, says I, or serve you a worse Trick. Come, come don’t expose yourself, but all
signify’d nothing, he swore she was a Girl for his Fancy, and he would go with her, and
so they went together, but it had been better for him if he had taken his poor Watch-
man’s advice.^112
Other watchmen spoke about ‘my inhabitants’, and, like John Sylvester,
some reported helping people get home, lighting their way, often for a tip of six
pence or a shilling.^113 One watchman talked in court about the loss of ‘his’ iron
and lead after a rash of thefts on his beat, explaining ‘not that it was my own, but
my inhabitants’.^114 Watchmen revealed in court detailed knowledge of the lives
of people in the communities they served. In a case in which a woman was ac-
cused of killing her husband—or her pretended husband—watchmen gave evi-
dence about their relationship, one of them telling the court that he did not
think they could have been married ‘for they lived an abominable Life to-
gether’.^115 No doubt such knowledge of the community varied a great deal from
one precinct to another, depending on how large and how settled they were. But
it may well have been the norm in the small wards of the inner City that watch-
men knew their communities well—that they knew their street life, who could
be trusted, and who could not. A watchmen followed a man at midnight who,
he said in court, he knew ‘to be a loose chap’ who was not going in the direction
of his own house. With his ‘Brother Watchman’ he followed him at a distance,
eventually saw him come out of a house of which the window had been forced,
and caught him after sending for the constable who commanded their watch
that evening. The man was tried and sentenced to death. John Sylvester, who
got into the slanging match with Mary Blewit, had also acquired enough local
knowledge as a watchman to know her reputation and to warn the man she had
picked up; another similarly warned a man he saw going off with a prostitute to
‘take Care’—too late as it turned out; and in yet another case in which a prosti-
tute and her bully robbed a man at midnight, the victim’s description of the
women to a watchman led quickly to her arrest and conviction.^116
Policing the Night Streets 203(^112) OBSP,July 1726 , p. 4 (Blewit).
(^113) OBSP,January 1717 , p. 4 (Burdet and Winchurst); OBSP, October 1724 , p. 7 (Slade); OBSP,
January 1725 , p. 2 (Hewlet)
(^114) OBSP, April 1733 , p. 105 (No. 15 , Raven). (^115) OBSP,July 1726 , p. 1 (Roberts).
(^116) OBSP, April 1724 , p. 7 ( Jones); OBSP, October 1724 , p. 7 (Smith).