inadequate, given the emerging demands for improved lighting and public
safety. There were renewed complaints about the shadow cast by the solid bot-
toms of the convex lamps and the way their bull’s eye glass produced a beam of
light that was likely to dazzle passers-by as light their way. Defoe complained in
1728 about the way they ‘blind the Eyes’ and cause pedestrians to ‘stumble upon
one another, even under these very Lamps.. .’. Even worse, he thought, the way
they blinded people encouraged ‘rather than prevent Robberies’.^159 As in the case
of the night watch—in which a similar transition was underway in this period,
a second stage in the emergence of a paid watch—the push for improved service
led to an alteration in the quantity and quality of the lighting provided, and in
the basis of provision when the City authorities were persuaded that only a pub-
licly funded system would be capable of meeting their requirements.
What those requirements were became clear in the course of a few years from
the late 1720 s. They stemmed from what the Convex Lights proprietors heard in
November 1728 were the intentions of the Court of Aldermen to improve the
‘security of passengers in the streets by night’—ideas that were in the air per-
haps as a result of the discussions then in progress concerning the night
watch.^160 The company’s response was to declare their willingness to join in this
effort to make the streets safer, and, in return, the aldermen asked them to send
in samples of lamps to be tested (with an eye obviously to getting away from the
convex lamps and their problems), to calculate the cost of adding two months to
the lighting season, and to make any other proposals that might provide ‘more
effectual lighting of the streets’.^161
The determination on the part of some people in the City to expand and im-
prove the street lighting can be seen in the activity of the City Lands Commit-
tee. In 1731 , five years ahead of the expiry of the agreement then in force, the
committee requested authority from the Common Council to begin the process
of negotiating a new lease since ‘the manner and the method of well lighting this
City is a Matter of great concern to all the Inhabitants’. They used the time to
test out a variety of alternative lamps and chose one that future contractors
would have to use.^162 By 1735 they were advertising in the Gazetteand the Daily
Post Boy, inviting proposals from lessees who would agree to light the City streets
using the form of ‘globular glass lamps’ the committee had decided were super-
ior to other lamps—a pattern and specimen of which they kept at the Guildhall
for public inspection. As further requirements to be met by any future contrac-
tor, they specified that the lamps were to be lit in the future every night (whether
moonlit or not) between sunset and now 1 a.m. and from 10 August to 10 April,
and that on the ‘great or high streets’ they were to be placed thirty yards from
each other on each side of the street and even with the ‘posts of the foot passage’,
and thirty-five yards apart on lesser streets.^163
Policing the Night Streets 219(^159) Augusta Triumphans, 54 – 5. (^160) Rep 133 , p. 3. (^161) Rep 133 , pp. 3, 23, 61.
(^162) Jor 57 , fo. 236. (^163) Jor 57 , fos. 348 – 9.