400 Crime and the State
It is a revealing comment on grand jury practice that they made general
charges in their presentment and named names in the course of presenting it, as
is confirmed by the response of the Court of Aldermen. In ordering that a copy
of the presentment be sent to aldermen Billers and Brocas, the court disclosed
that they did so because ‘the Grand Jury declared Several instances of the Com-
plaints within the presentment... appeared to them to be fomented and en-
couraged’ by their clerks, ‘who were named on the back of the presentment as
Mr Bird and Mr Bayly’, and charged along with ‘Mr Bretland of Long Lane’
and ‘Mr Ferris of Half Moon Ally’.^103
The grand jury did not include thief-taking among the practices they com-
plained about. But in naming ‘a Set of People calling themselves informing con-
stables’ as part of the problem, they surely intended to condemn the corrupt
activities of men who prosecuted for money, perhaps especially constables who
associated with thief-takers. The grand jury included them in a ‘confederacy’ of
clerks and solicitors who encouraged poor people to enter into prosecutions in
order to extract fees—‘getting that Money from them which they stand in Need
of for the Support of themselves and poor Familys’. More ominously, what the
grand jury was complaining about was that this confederacy of actors, includ-
ing thief-takers, had concocted charges, and maliciously prosecuted innocent
men and women for the sake of rewards. This certainly was the view of the Sep-
tember 1733 session presented to the public by the Gentleman’s Magazine. In its
brief account it reported that
When the Trials were over, the Grand Jury presented 4 noted Solicitors for infamous
Practices, in fomenting and carrying on Prosecutions against innocent Persons for the
sake of Rewards, &c, whereupon the Court returned Thanks to the Grand Jury, and
assured them that the Offenders should be rigorously prosecuted.^104
The first thought of the aldermen was to keep an eye on them as much as pos-
sible. On the outside of the presentment, following the names of the four men
named by the jury, the following was at first inscribed, but afterwards crossed
out:
That for the future whatever Sollicitors and Informing Constables should come to the
Clerk of the peace’s office to give any Instructions for or on the behalf of any poor
People to indict, or otherwise sollicit, carry on, prosecute or Defend in any People’s
Affairs; the Clerk of the peace to represent those Persons to my Lord Mayor [i.e. point
them out] at the next Ensuing Sessions.^105
(^103) Appended to a copy of the presentment (CLRO: London Sess. Papers, September 1733 ).
(^104) Gentleman’s Magazine, 3 ( 1733 ), 493 (discussed in Langbein, ‘Prosecutorial Origins of Defense
Counsel’, 352 , n. 193 ). The grand jury turned back more than a quarter of the bills they dealt with at that
September 1733 session (SF 717 ). The bills thrown out were not, however, for offences that promised large
rewards for successful prosecution. All but one were for simple larceny, in which no state reward was
available; and the exception was a case of shoplifting for which the reward—a Tyburn Ticket—was
hardly worth organizing a prosecution conspiracy.
(^105) CLRO: London Sess. Papers, September 1733.