particularly as the problems that better lighting addressed only became more
pressing with the ever greater crowding of the streets in the evening and at night.
Better lighting facilitated commerce. But the greatest encouragement to further
improvements in street lighting was always likely to come from anxiety about
crime, particularly the threat of violent offences, and crime was much on
people’s minds when the first contract came to be renegotiated twenty-one
years on, in 1715 , in the aftermath of the War of Spanish Succession.
Several competitors again entered the bidding when the first lease came to an
end in 1715 : the current lessees, who offered to continue their service using the
convex lights; the proprietors of the so-called ‘light-royal’; Anthony Vernatty,
returned from Europe; and a new group that included an active Southwark
magistrate, Sir John Lade, pushing the virtues of the so-called ‘conick light’.
The negotiations were by now not in the hands of the ad hoc‘improvements com-
mittee’, but were taken over on this occasion by the powerful City Lands Com-
mittee.^152 Tests were held and the rival schemes were discussed, but it seems
clear that the existing lessees had the inside track. They may not have had the
best lamp, but they had the most influence, since one of their leading investors,
Sir Samuel Gerrard, was not only now an alderman but also a member of the
committee that would award the contract.^153 Not surprisingly, they were
granted a new lease (at a reduced rent of four hundred pounds a year), and the
system set on foot in 1694 was essentially continued.
The possibility of extending the lighting was also, however, very much on the
agenda of the City Lands Committee, in large part perhaps because of the
growing anxiety in the post-war years about the increase ofburglary and violent
street crime. As well as agreeing to renew the lease, the committee also investi-
gated the possibility of enlarging the area of the City lighted by lamps by forcing
the owners of ‘public buildings’—churches, halls, schools, and the like—and
not just householders to pay for lamps along the streets on which their property
fronted. They also considered further the possibility of extracting some pay-
ment from inhabitants who lived in courts and alleys to support the addition of
lamps at the entrances to their more private domains. These issues had been de-
bated when the first contract was signed, but in the end they had been left in the
1695 lease to be settled by the alderman of each ward who was clearly expected
to negotiate an arrangement between the lighting proprietors and the individ-
uals concerned. The result had been disappointing to the proprietors. They
were already complaining in 1696 about the failure of negotiations in most of
the wards, and not for the last time aldermen were instructed to settle disputes
about lighting around ‘public buildings’ next to streets and to ‘determine the
216 Policing the Night Streets
(^152) For the City Lands Committee, see [ Jones], The Corporation of London, p. 55 ; and for its early history,
N. R. Shipley, ‘The City Lands Committee 1592 – 1642 ’, Guildhall Studies in London History, II ( 1977 ).
(^153) Negotiations over the new lease can be followed in CLRO, Journal of the Committee on City
Lands, vol. 13 ( 1713 – 16 ) and vol. 14 ( 1716 – 18 ); and in Jor 56.