192 Notes
R.G. Thome, The House of Commons, 1790-1820 (Seeker and Warburg, 1986),
pp. 353-5.
Of the eight men who spoke against the bill in this debate in July, four had
been on the Nightly Watch Committee. Cobbett's Parl Debates, vol. XXIII, cols.
950-51. See CJ, vol. LXVII, pp. 33-4 for a list of the members of the commit-
tee, which included all the MPs for the greater London region. One member of
the House of Commons who apparently did not speak up on these issues at this
point but who one wishes had was Robert Peel. For other petitions against the
bill, see Clink Liberty, PCM, 11 July 1812; St Anne, Soho, VM, 8 July 1812; St
7
1.2.3.
4.
5.
6.7.8.
9.
10.11.
12.13.14.Mary, Rotherhithe, VM, 13 July 1812.
John Prince Smith acknowledged : 'The watch that could arrest this man's hand
must have the powers of omnipotence, and the attribute of ubiquity'. J.P Smith,
An Accqunt of a Successful Experiment for an Effectual Nightly Watch, Recently
Made in the Liberty of the Rolls, London (Richard Phillips, 1812), p. 12.
Radzinowicz, History, vol. Ill, p. 330. Even Patrick Colquhoun confined himself
to suggestions for improving the watch. Radzinowicz explains his failure to push
for a more radical 'system' by speculating that Colquhoun was 'probably disheart-
ened by the abandonment of the reform advocated by him .. .'. See p. 332.
PRO, H.O. 42/119/ff. 338-9, Colquhoun to Ryder, 14 Jan. 1812.
See Beattie, Crime and the Courts, Fig. 5.4, p. 214.NIGHT WATCH TO POUCE, 1811-28Smith, Successful Experiment, pp. 22-3, 59, 71-2. Since Smith is our source, it is
possible that he biased his account to support a more Benthamite view of what
policing was.
Smith, Successful Experiment, p. 30. The first meeting was held 27 December,
the second 30 December. This was, of course, in the aftermath of the Ratcliffe
Highway murders.
Smith, Successful Experiment, pp. 33-4.
Smith, Successful Experiment, pp. 44-53.
Beattie, Crime and the Courts, pp. 213-35.
Cobbett's Pari. Debates, vol. XXI, col. 199. See also Beattie, Crime and the
Courts, p. 226.
N. Gash, Aristocracy and People: Britain 1815-1865 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1979) pp. 76-7.
Beattie, Crime and the Courts, p. 235.
Emsley, Crime and Society, p. 29.
Thompson, Working Class, Part Three. For a different opinion about the extent
to which these fears were realistic, see M.l. Thomis and P. Holt, Threats of
Revolution in Britain, 1789-1848 (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1977).
Wright, Popular R/Jdicalism, pp. 49-52.
Thompson, Worlcing Class, pp. 634-5. See also Royle and Walvin, R/Jdicals and
Reformers, pp. 112-13, 118-19.
J. Stevenson, 'The Queen Caroline Affair', in London in the Age of Reform, ed.
J. Stevenson (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1977), pp. 117-48. See also S. Palmer,
'Before the Bobbies: the Caroline Riots, 1821', History Today 21 (1977), pp.
637-44.
See, for example, Palmer, Police and Protest, pp. 190-91, 293; Critchley, History
of Police, p. 47 and Radzinowicz, History, vol. III, p. 348.