Crime and the State 391the lord mayor and the recorder. Middlesex and Westminster had not in the past
had such a prominent leading magistrate. The emergence in the second quar-
ter of the eighteenth century of a justice to whom the government could turn in
a crisis is a measure of the way the centre of crime was shifting. In the 1720 s
Townshend and Delafaye corresponded frequently with the Westminster magis-
trate Nathaniel Blackerby about criminal and public order matters. Blackerby
was active in the prosecution of highwaymen and receivers in the early years of
the decade, as well as people suspected of Jacobite activities and the ballad
singers who were accused of spreading seditious songs and publications.^71 De-
lafaye received advice from him about preventing street robbery and burglary
and (in 1725 ) how to deal with the problem of transported felons who were re-
turning to England before the expiration of their seven- or fourteen-year term.^72
Blackerby also played a leading role in the examination of Edward Burnworth
in Newgate when that gang leader had been arrested on a charge of killing a
thief-taker and made it clear he was willing to implicate other members of his
gang in about fifty burglaries and robberies, along with the five female receivers
who had helped to dispose of the goods.^73 Blackerby did not establish the kind of
relationship with the central government that Thomas De Veil and particularly
Henry and John Fielding were to construct by the middle of the century. He did
not establish an institutional base, or become known, as they did, as the ‘court
justice’, the man to whom the government could turn for advice and who could
be relied upon to act vigorously when magisterial initiative was required.^74 But
one can sense in the correspondence that grew in the 1720 s between the secre-
taries’ office and the Westminster and Middlesex benches, and with Blackerby
most prominently, the recognition that the centre of the crime problem in the
metropolis had clearly shifted outside the City.^75
Serious levels of violence in the metropolis in the 1720 s help to explain why
the national government was drawn into supporting the improvement of night
policing and the more effective prosecution of felonies. It is worth underlining
one of the consequences of this public support of prosecutions—both prosecu-
tions of crimes against the state and of those, like murder, rape, and robbery, that
involved violence of a more private kind: that is, the likelihood that some of the
money made available by the government would support the engagement of
lawyers. In some cases that was made explicit; in others, it was understood to be
(^71) SP 44 / 79 A, 414 – 15 , 463. Blackerby was also asked to investigate possible Jacobite threats in Mid-
dlesex. He was able to assure the secretary’s office, for example, that ‘the unusual number of strangers’
at Hendon were ‘people ofbusiness’ who had gone out of town to take advantage of the ‘pleasantness of
the Season’. SP 35 / 33 / 117.
(^72) SP 35 / 61 / 121 – 2. (^73) SP 35 / 61 / 46.
(^74) For the ‘court justice’, see John H. Langbein, ‘Shaping the Eighteenth-Century Criminal Trial: A
View from the Ryder Sources’, University of Chicago Law Review, 50 ( 1983 ), 60.
(^75) Other correspondence between the secretaries’ office and Blackerby and/or the Middlesex and
Westminster magistrates can be found at SP 44 / 79 A, pp. 42 , 414 – 15 , 463 ; SP 44 / 81 , pp. 77 , 530 – 3 , 540 ,
545 ; SP 44 / 283 , 30 August, 3 September, 20 September 1720.