CHAPTER TENConclusion
Numerous changes took place in the way the City of London dealt with crimes
against property in the years between the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660
and the middle of the eighteenth century, some of them planned, others more
the outcome of changing practice or the consequences of broader developments
in the social and cultural character of the metropolis. The changes in policing
and punishment we have discussed can be summarized under four heads that
express their intentions—or at least their effects, whether intended or not: meas-
ures to improve the prevention of crime; to encourage detection and the prose-
cution of offenders; to ensure the conviction of guilty offenders; and to make
punishments more effective. The chronology of change was shaped by political
events that brought external sources of authority to bear on the issue of crime in
London: the Revolution of 1689 , and the regular meeting of parliament that was
one of its indirect consquences; and the accession of the Hanoverian monarchs
in 1714 , which brought whig politicians to power who were willing to use the in-
creasing resources of the state to deal with domestic issues, including what they
took to be the threat to the security of the new regime from violence and crime.
Some of the principal changes in the system of criminal administration over
the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries were embodied in statutes.
Of particular importance was the legislation that extended the range of capital
punishment to include several relatively minor forms of theft, and that intro-
duced the major transformations in the penal regime represented by incarcera-
tion at hard labour and transportation. Parliament also introduced the practice
of paying rewards for the conviction of men and women who committed what
were regarded as serious offences; and of offering both rewards and pardons to
the accomplices of such offenders in return for the information that led to their
arrest and the evidence that convicted them. The reconstitutions of the watch
and lighting systems in the City were also effected by parliamentary legislation.
Other changes were introduced at the initiative of the central government: fi-
nancial support for the prosecution of a number of defendants in the 1720 s, for
example, and the offer of the huge supplementary sum of one hundred pounds
for the conviction of highway and street robbers in and around the metropolis—
both of which had important long-term consequences for policing and the con-
duct of criminal trials.ch10.y5 11/6/01 12:05 PM Page 463