would install and maintain. The City ofLondon clearly provided an attractive
opportunity for such enterprises, since it contained a large and relatively pros-
perous population, and miles of streets—all under a single, centralized, govern-
ment, so that one negotiation and one contract might provide opportunities to
deploy large numbers of lights and earn significant profits.^135
The City was an attractive target in another, and more negative way that for-
tuitously provided the occasion and the opportunity for lighting experiments:
by the late seventeenth century it was in a parlous financial state and looking for
ways to raise money. Indeed, the City had been essentially bankrupt since the
1670 s in that its annual revenues were insufficient to cover its expenses.^136 What
was of particular concern, and in the end required the problem to be publicly
acknowledged, was that by the last decade of the century the City treasury was
unable to repay the very large sums of money it held in trust for the children of
deceased freemen—the so-called Orphans’ Fund. The City’s inability to repay
the funds committed to its care required appeals to parliament in 1691 and sub-
sequent years until assistance was granted in the so-called Orphans’ Act of
1694.^137
What is important from the point of view of those with projects to propose
was that the City’s bankruptcy required the Court of Aldermen and the Com-
mon Council to balance the accounts by reducing expenditures on the one hand
and finding new sources of revenue on the other. From the 1670 s, when the fi-
nancial problems were first acknowledged, a range of ideas was floated—some
by the Corporation itself, others by projectors—to raise money for the City.
Some of these were grand business ventures, including, for example, an annuity
scheme and a fire insurance office—neither of which in the end was realized.
But they also included, as Kellett has said, proposals that ‘offered the Corpor-
ation a large sum in return for the monopoly privilege of performing a public
service’.^138 Among these were schemes to manage the City’s markets, to arrange
sewage disposal, to provide water, and—what is of importance to us—to take
over the lighting of the principal streets. It was by this means that a group of in-
vestors in one of the oil lamp schemes was allowed to take over householders’
obligations to keep a light outside their houses on certain nights during the
winter.
The City awarded a lighting contract in 1694 as an aspect of the Orphans’
Act. Its main point was to raise money for the impoverished chamber, the City
treasury. But, as we have seen, there were other reasons why the work of
Policing the Night Streets 211(^135) William Robert Scott, The Constitution and Finance of English, Scottish and Irish Joint-Stock Companies to
1720 , 3 vols. (Cambridge, 1910 – 12 ), iii. 52 – 60 ; De Beer, ‘Early History’, 315 – 17 ; Falkus, ‘Lighting’, 254 – 5.
(^136) For the following, see John R. Kellett, ‘Some Late Seventeenth-Century Schemes for the Im-
provement of the Corporation of London’s Revenues’, The Guildhall Miscellany, 1 ( 9 July 1958 ), 27 – 34 ;
idem, ‘The Financial Crisis of the Corporation of London and the Orphans’ Act, 1694 ’, The Guildhall
Miscellany, 2 ( 5 October 1963 ), 220 – 7.
(^1375) & 6 Wm and Mary, c. 10. (^138) Kellett, ‘Some Late Seventeenth-Century Schemes’, 34.