"St Clements' Danes—Past 3: no constable on duty: found a watchman there at a great distance from his beat: from thence went to the night-cellar facing Arundel Street in the Strand, which is in the Duchy, and there found 4 of St Clements' watchmen drinking. St Mary-le-Strand no attendance, having only two constables, which only attend every other night, 3 watchmen, Duchy included, at one shilling each. A very disorderly cellar near the new church for selling saloop, etc., to very loose and suspected persons: St Clements' watchmen 32 at one shilling."

After hearing much evidence of this description, the committee passed thirteen resolutions, none of which, however, were of a very vigorous character. They recommended an increase in the number of watchmen, higher pay and a better method of appointing them; they suggested that the name "beadle" should no longer be used, that ballad-singers should be suppressed, and that steps should be taken to put a stop to the custom of granting wine and spirit licences indiscriminately to all who applied for them, adding by way of a conclusion to the whole matter, that the Roundhouses, as the constables' lockups were called, should not be used for the sale of intoxicants, and should be large enough to accommodate the prisoners arrested by the watch; it having frequently been found necessary to release disturbers of the peace and other minor offenders to make room for more serious cases!

In consequence of the report of the Parliamentary Committee, a bill was introduced into the House of Commons to provide an improved watch system for the "City of Westminster and parts adjacent ... uniformly ordered and regulated throughout the whole district." This Act,[153] passed in 1773, directs that trustees shall meet annually to appoint "what number of watchmen they shall judge necessary to be kept and employed" for the ensuing year, specifying how many are to be apportioned to "beats" and "stands" respectively, and how many are to be told off for patrols. The local authorities are not, however, given a free hand in the administration of the interior economy of their trust: the minimum establishment that must be kept up by each parish is fixed by law, and varies from sixty watchmen on the beats and stands, and eight on patrol for St George's Hanover Square, down to the single watchman required for the "purlieus of the Savoy." Watch-houses must be substantially built, and watchmen are to be armed with staff and rattle, provided at parish expense, as well as with lanterns paid for out of their own pockets; the minimum wage must not fall below one shilling and threepence per night unless a man is employed by the year, in which case his nightly remuneration need not exceed one shilling: the hours are from 10 P.M. until 5, 6, or 7 A.M. according to the season of the year.

The duties of the watch comprise the apprehending of disorderly and suspected persons and handing them over to the constable; testing the fastenings of houses, shops and warehouses, and warning the occupier when necessary; twice every hour the watchmen must patrol his beat, and "as loudly and audibly as he can, proclaim the time of the night or morning." On coming off duty, the watchman has to submit his staff, rattle and lantern for the inspection of the constable; neglect of duty entails a fine of ten shillings, and any person who assaults a watchman in the execution of his office renders himself liable to a £5 penalty; watchmen are forbidden to frequent alehouses during their tour of duty, and provision is made for the punishment of those publicans who harbour them.

There is much that is good in this Act, but it applied only to Westminster, and half of its provisions were never carried out. Instead of the uniform order that was to be established, the old confusion continued, the fine of five pounds was insufficient to protect the watchmen from assault, and the peace officers still tippled in alehouses, whilst thieves were comfortably carrying home the booty they had so easily secured.

The utter inadequacy of the whole system of defence against civil tumults, and the complete helplessness of London to protect itself against mob violence, was brought home to its inhabitants in a startlingly convincing manner in the course of those six terrible days during which their city was within an ace of being destroyed at the hands of the rabble let loose upon her streets by the crackbrained fanatic, Lord George Gordon.

The events that took place in the first week of June 1780, and which are to some extent familiar to us through the pages of "Barnaby Rudge," would never have happened if, in the earlier stages of the outbreak, the rioters had had opposed to them even a couple of hundred resolute constables, accustomed to deal with mobs, and working under the direction of officers experienced in the tactics of street-fighting. At no time is an efficient civil force of such inestimable value as it is at the first appearance of great popular ferment; for in accordance with the strength or weakness of the police at that moment, is the course of after events decided. A crowd is like a great volume of water, harmless as long as its embankments are kept in repair and, if necessary, strengthened, but capable of an infinite amount of mischief if once allowed to break its barriers.

Anything like a full description of the Gordon riots lies outside the scope of this book; but a brief account of the principal features of the outbreak will very properly find a place here, in order to illustrate the degree of violence that an English mob is capable of, when allowed to get out of hand, and for the purpose of comparing these riots with others that took place on subsequent occasions after our modern police had been established. London is the mother-city of the English-speaking races, all of which have modelled their police forces on the metropolitan pattern; and the Gordon riots, which were the most violent ever experienced in this country, have therefore served as a lesson to cities as distant from us and from each other as Sydney and New York, forewarning those responsible for the maintenance of the peace in those places of the extent of the danger that threatens when proper precautions are neglected.

The disturbances in question arose out of an agitation directed against the Roman Catholics, whose position had been much improved by a recent Act of Parliament, the agitation culminating in a demand for the repeal of the unpopular concessions. A monster petition was prepared, and it was decided to present it to Parliament, with such a display of force that a refusal would be unlikely. Accordingly, at 10 o'clock on the morning of the 2nd of June, as many as 60,000 people assembled in St George's Fields to accompany Lord George Gordon in his attempt to intimidate the legislature. Marching to Westminster by different routes, the crowd closed all the avenues to both Houses, stopped peers and commoners on their way thither, and treated those who fell into their hands with insult and personal violence, smashing their carriages, tearing their clothes and in some cases removing their wigs; many members of Parliament were forced to put blue cockades in their hats and shout "No Popery" before they were released, others only regained their freedom on promising to vote for the repeal of the obnoxious act.

Whilst these proceedings were taking place, a squadron of horse arrived; but on being hooted and threatened, the troopers declared that their sympathies were altogether with the people, and then trotted off amidst the cheers of the crowd, who soon afterwards began to disperse, to riot in other parts of the town. That evening the Roman Catholic chapels attached to the Sardinian and Bavarian embassies were looted and burned.

Rioting continued during the three days that followed, the paralysed executive submitting in helpless impotence, and it was not until the fifth day that the climax was reached. The mob now suddenly broke out into an almost inconceivable state of fury, and overran the whole of London, pillaging and burning as they went, and spreading terror in every direction: all business was suspended and most of the houses were barricaded; many persons, hoping to pacify the destroying furies, hung blue flags out of their windows and chalked the words "No Popery" on their shutters. An organized attack was made on Newgate, and when the old prison walls successfully withstood all the efforts of the mob to injure them, the furniture from the governor's house was thrown out of the windows and piled up for a bonfire, with the idea of consuming the great wooden gates; when these at length gave way, the rabble poured into the gaol through the smoking gateway, shortly to return bringing with them three hundred liberated prisoners, many of whom were under sentence of death already, and over-ripe for any atrocity. Matters now grew worse than ever, distilleries were broken open, and the raw spirits poured down the gutters to be lapped up by a crowd that was already mad. An attempt to break into the Bank of England was prevented by the guard stationed there, but many houses, including Lord Mansfield's and Sir John Fielding's, were burnt to the ground, and all books and documents destroyed.

When thirty-six incendiary fires were raging simultaneously, and when the King's Bench and Fleet prisons had shared the fate of Newgate, the troops and militia, who were employed with vigour only at the eleventh hour, began to get the upper hand of the rioters, and then only by dint of firing volleys into the mass. Gradually through the next two days some semblance of order was restored, and by the third morning the riots were at an end. The official return handed in to the Secretary of State showed that 210 people had been killed by the troops and 248 wounded, several of whom subsequently died; but the bill was not complete: the public hangman claimed 21 more victims, and a much larger number were transported for life. The Lord Mayor of London was tried for his faulty arrangements and for his alleged supineness, but was let off with a fine of a thousand pounds. Lord George Gordon's insanity saved him from the consequences of his misdeeds.

These fatal riots should have taught the lesson that soldiers are ill-suited to the task of putting down civil tumult, and that their use entails an unnecessary amount of bloodshed, especially when their action is so long delayed that an increased severity becomes necessary. Unfortunately the lesson, if learnt, was not taken to heart: at any rate no adequate remedy was proposed at the time. On one point only was any light immediately thrown. Hitherto some doubt had existed as to the legality of employing the military to put down riots, but on this occasion the King sought the advice of the Attorney-General,[154] who gave it as his opinion, that, as soldiers were also citizens, they could constitutionally be used to prevent felony, even without the Riot Act being read. It was well that this point was cleared up, because circumstances will occasionally arise when troops must be sent for as a last resource; but it is remarkable that, after the failure of the soldier to keep the peace had just been demonstrated in so signal a manner, no one should have supplied the obvious rider, and suggested the substitution of a more satisfactory agent. Half a century slipped by before the necessary change began in England; but on the principle of applying the remedy to any limb except the diseased one, Dublin was quickly provided with what London lacked, and in 1786 was passed the "Dublin Police[155] Act,"[156] under which three Commissioners were appointed, and given the command of a paid and well-organised constabulary. In the course of the following year the whole of Ireland came under the protection of the new guardians of the peace, who, developing as time went on, eventually reached that state of efficiency that is now invariably associated with the name of the Royal Irish Constabulary.

The magistrates of the period set the worst possible example to their subordinate officers, and there were but few of them who did not deserve the name of "Trading Justices," that was so commonly applied. Those who did not actually accept bribes were usually ready to make a little extra money by the improper and wholesale bailing, not only of offenders who ought to have been kept in confinement, but of innocent persons also, who ought to have been immediately and unconditionally set at liberty. The system was to issue warrants against helpless people for imaginary crimes, and then to let them out on bail, the magistrate netting the sum of two shillings and fourpence every time he repeated the trick. James Townsend, a Bow Street runner, who gave evidence on this subject before a parliamentary commission in 1816, explained how lucrative this practice used to be, "and taking up a hundred girls, that would make at two shillings and fourpence, £11, 13s. 4d. They sent none to gaol, for the bailing them was so much better."

There is much to be said for the plan of employing country gentlemen to administer justice, without stipend, in the neighbourhood of their own estates; but in London, where all the criminal talent of the three kingdoms was collected, and where the duties of magistrates became both difficult and onerous in consequence, only inferior men could be induced to undertake the office, and then only for the sake of the patronage they could control, and for the perquisites they were able to pick up. They were distinguished neither for social position, nor for legal knowledge, and readily succumbed to every temptation that offered. As long as the magistracy was corrupt, Acts of Parliament were powerless to purify the police: the duty of the Government was plain if not easy; the Commission of the Peace for Middlesex had to be immediately purged of the Trading Justices, and a scheme had to be introduced under which capable and upright men would be secured to take their place: the hands of the new magistrates, when appointed, had to be strengthened and sufficiently enlarged to enable them to grapple with the problem of keeping order in London, a city which besides being the most populous in Europe, had the reputation of being the most difficult to manage, its inhabitants quickly resenting any action of the executive that threatened to interfere, in the smallest particular, with their liberties or their customs. At the same time it was necessary to devise a check upon the magistrates, powerful enough to prevent a recurrence of the old abuses.

The Middlesex Justices Bill, which was laid before the House of Commons in March 1792, was an attempt to satisfy the above-mentioned conditions, and was framed on the model of the stipendiary establishment already existing at Bow Street, where satisfactory results had been obtained. It was proposed to create five new police offices (shortly afterwards increased to seven), and to appoint three Justices to each, at a remuneration of £300 a year apiece. This salary was only to be paid on the explicit understanding that they were neither directly nor indirectly to apply to their own benefit any of the fees received by them, from whatever source arising, all such fees to be devoted in future to reducing the expenses of the office. The courts were to be open daily for the transaction of business, one magistrate always to be in attendance, empowered to dispose summarily of the cases brought before him without the assistance of a jury. Provision was also made for the appointment of six constables to each office, at a wage not exceeding twelve shillings a week, invested with authority to apprehend any person suspected of malpractices who was unable to give a satisfactory account of himself. Finally, the constables were to be under the control of the magistrates, and the magistrates were to be answerable to the Secretary of State, in whom was to be vested the power of dismissal, as well as that of appointment.

When introduced, the Bill was severely criticised, Fox and Sheridan, who were two of its strongest opponents, both declaring that the principle of a magistrate punishing without the intervention of a jury was barbarous and unconstitutional, and that the proposal to set up constables with increased powers was an unwarrantable attempt to oppress the poor, already ground down under the heels of the rich. It was advanced that the influence exerted by the Ministry of the day over the magistracy was already excessive, and that the real object of the bill was to still further increase this influence, by adding the power of conferring salaries to that of making appointments.

The framers of the Bill, whilst denying the truth of these statements, and confident of the ultimate triumph of the principles they advocated, were willing that the measure should at first become law for a limited period only, and were content that Parliament should have the opportunity of amending, or even annulling its provisions, if on trial they should prove unsatisfactory.

The Middlesex Justices Act first came into operation, therefore, as an experiment. The seven public offices were established in different parts of the Metropolis at convenient distances from each other, the twenty-one Justices were appointed, and the forty-two constables were sworn in, an insignificant force indeed with which to contend against the whole criminal array of London, but of great historical interest as a development of the Bow Street system, the two together forming the first regularly organized and paid force ever established in England. The acknowledgement of the desirability of employing stipendiary magistrates in crowded centres was no less important, and gradually led up to the system that is found so valuable to-day, not only at the metropolitan police courts, but also in those great towns where the principle has, in recent years, been adopted.

The reform of the magistracy that was taken in hand in 1792 was not so thorough as it might have been, and the opportunity that then offered of removing once and for all every unworthy taint from the administration of justice in the metropolis was only partly taken advantage of.

The Middlesex Justices Bill was conceived in too parsimonious a spirit, and the right sort of men did not come forward to fill the important posts of police justices, many of the new magistrates, in fact, being recruited from the ranks of the old discredited class, which it was one of the principal objects of the Bill to displace. Neither the justices nor the constables received a salary large enough to make them independent of improper sources of income, the latter being openly permitted to engage in various lucrative transactions that had nothing to do with their office. It is said that constables attached to the public offices would not infrequently fill the role of counsel for the prisoner, as well as holding a brief for the prosecution.

The small force called into being by the Act of 1792, and which, including the Bow Street officers, amounted to about fifty men, was designed only against individual criminals; the idea of preventing or repressing riots by means of a civil police force was hardly considered to fall within the range of practical politics. At the moment when the success of the revolutionary leaders had achieved the overthrow of the French Monarchy, and had culminated in the execution of Louis the Sixteenth, established authority all the world over was in danger of subversion. The violent utterances of certain Radical Societies shewed that there were many in England who violently sympathised with the Revolution, and the riots that took place in many of our towns proved that the excesses which had turned the streets of Paris into shambles, were finding an echo amongst the discontented and disorderly on this side of the Channel.

Considering the urgency of the matter, the attitude assumed by the Government then in office seems altogether incomprehensible. The political horizon was assuredly dark enough to warn the most heedless; and the signal manner in which the military had failed to keep order during the Gordon Riots conclusively demonstrated how unreliable was that arm for the purposes of peace maintenance. Yet the only steps taken by the responsible authorities were to embody the Militia, and to pass an ill-considered measure called "The Alien Act,"[157] which required that all foreigners resident in England (unless duly naturalized), should provide themselves with passports, or forthwith leave the country.

That we survived the crisis without having to face a similar conflagration was hardly due to the foresight of our rulers, who, though well aware that our preventive appliances were rusty and out-of-date, neglected to replace them by others, or even to modernize them.

CHAPTER IX
PAROCHIAL POLICE OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

Before proceeding to a narration of the successive steps that culminated in the radical reorganization authorized in 1829, it is necessary to describe the nature and extent of the various police establishments as they existed at the close of the eighteenth century.

Exclusive of Special Constables, who, though legally available, were but rarely if ever employed, there were, at this time, five distinct classes of Peace Officers:

It will be noticed that of these five classes, numbers i. and ii. were common to the whole of England, whilst numbers iii. iv. and v. were peculiar to London and its immediate neighbourhood, but, for our present purpose, it will be more convenient to consider the provincial constabulary as altogether distinct from the various Metropolitan Police bodies. Theoretically and constitutionally, there should have been little or no difference between the policing of London and that of any rural district, but the stage of development reached in the Metropolis already foreshadowed the impending changes, whilst in the country the standard of police had as yet deviated hardly at all from the mediæval pattern.

Leaving the London police establishments, therefore, for future consideration, we find that in rural districts, and in provincial towns, High Constables and Parish Constables, acting under the direction of the Justices of the Peace, continued to exercise the time-honoured powers which had been handed down to them from forgotten generations. To get a clear idea of how the old-time system adapted itself, more or less, to the changed conditions that prevailed in the nineteenth century, the best way is to turn to what we may call the police text-books of the period such as the "Treatise on the Functions and Duties of the Constable," by Colquhoun (1803), or "The Churchwardens' and Overseers' Guide," by Ashdowne, published at about the same time. "The High Constable," says Colquhoun, "has the superintendence and direction of the petty constables, headboroughs, and other peace officers in his hundred or division. It is his duty to take cognisance of, and to present, all offences within his hundred or division which lead to the corruption of morals, breaches of the Lord's Day, Drunkenness, Cursing and Swearing. To bring forward sufficient number of constables to maintain decency and good order during the execution of malefactors or the punishment of offenders, and to attend in person to see that the peace officers do their duty. To summon petty constables to keep order in the Courts of Justice &c...." With regard to tumults and riots, "to do all in his power to arrest offenders, and so to dispose of his constables as to suppress the disorders in question, also to give assistance to neighbouring divisions ... to present all persons exposing for sale unwholesome meat ... and to take cognisance of false or deficient weights and measures." In another place he declares that petty constables should regularly perambulate their districts once at least in every twenty-four hours, and visit all alehouses once a week "to see that no unlawful games are permitted, and that labouring people are not suffered to lounge and tipple until they are intoxicated." The duty of petty constables when riots are threatened is thus described. "The instant a constable hears of any unlawful assembly, mob, or concourse of people likely to produce danger or mischief within or near his constablewick or district (he must) give notice to the nearest Justice, and repair instantly to the spot with his long or short stave, and there put himself under the direction of such magistrate or magistrates as may be in attendance."

"The Churchwardens' and Overseers' Guide and Director" is arranged in the form of a vocabulary, and in alphabetical order gives explanations of the principal matters with which Parish Officers are chiefly concerned. "Constables," we learn, "are to make a Hue and Cry after the offenders where a robbery or felony is committed, to call upon the parishioners to assist in the pursuit: and if the criminal be not found in the liberty of the first constable, he is to give notice to the next, and thus continue the pursuit from town to town, and from county to county; and where offenders are not taken, constables are to levy the Tax to satisfy an execution on recovery against a Hundred, and pay the same to the Sheriff &c...."

"Hundreds or Wapentakes," according to Ashdowne, "are generally governed by a High Constable, under whom a Tythingman or Borsholder is generally appointed for each Borough or District within the Hundred. Hundreds are liable to penalties on exportation of wool, liable also for damages sustained by violently pulling down buildings; by killing cattle; cutting down trees, ... by destroying turnpikes, or works on navigable rivers; by cutting hopbines; by destroying corn to prevent exportation; by wounding officers of the Customs; by destroying woods &c.... Hundreds are also bound to raise Hue and Cry when any robbery is committed within the Hundred; and if the offender is not taken, an action may be maintained against the Hundred to recover damages."[158] Under the heading of "Swearing" is arranged the following information:—"Persons guilty of profane swearing, and convicted thereof, to forfeit to the Poor of the Parish. Day-Labourers, common soldiers, or common seamen, 1/-. Persons under the degree of gentlemen, 2/-. Gentlemen or persons above the degree of gentlemen, 5/-. The above penalties to be doubled for a second offence, and trebled after a second conviction."

Of Tythingmen the same author writes:—"There is frequently a Tythingman in the same town with a constable, who is, as it were, a deputy to exercise the office in the constable's absence; but there are some things which the constable has power to do that tythingmen cannot intermeddle with. When there happens to be no constable of a parish, the office and authority of a Tythingman seems to be the same under another name."

If anyone should be inclined to doubt the remarkable stability of the Constable's office, and all that pertains to it, he may find it instructive to look back a few hundred years, and refer to what Lambard and others have to say about Tythingmen and Constables, part of which is quoted in the third chapter of this book.

To the scope and intention of the functions exercised by parish officers as stated by Colquhoun and Ashdowne, if somewhat old-fashioned, no exception need be taken. The trouble was, however, that the office-holders did not live up to the standard inculcated by their teachers. The commonsense and reasonableness of the whole system fell to the ground whenever ignorant and unworthy agents were entrusted with its administration, and such, unfortunately, was the character of the large majority of the police personnel. The parish constable was incompetent, and the duties imposed on him were either evaded, or performed in a purely perfunctory manner. Under the circumstances such a tendency was perhaps inevitable, for it is not to be expected that unpaid services will be well performed by the poorer classes without constant supervision. Struggling men, who have to work hard to provide for themselves, and for their families, are not likely to overtax their energies in the service of the State without reward, and those substitutes who received a few shillings a year from their principals were only careful not to exceed the minimum amount of labour which could be exacted from them compulsorily.

Further consideration of the Rural Constabulary must be postponed until we come to deal with the reorganization which was set on foot in 1839. For the present we must return to the Metropolis, where the doomed parochial system was now tottering to its fall, and where the need for reform was more pressing than elsewhere. At the time we are considering, London boasted a variety of police establishments, all more or less disconnected. The City had one organization, Westminster another, the public offices distributed justice after a fashion in their respective districts, and Bow Street prided itself upon holding a position of complete isolation and independence. Nor was this all—the whole of the metropolis was split up into parishes, and each parish made its own arrangements for keeping the peace, or dispensed with police altogether, as it saw fit. Twelve London parishes were thus entirely unprotected: St James' and Marylebone employed Chelsea pensioners, the City supported 765 watchmen, Edgeware had no policeman and no patrol, Camberwell armed its night watchmen with blunderbusses, whilst St Pancras had no less than eighteen distinct Watch Trusts, a source of weakness rather than of strength, because they never co-operated with each other. In Kensington the police force consisted only of three headboroughs, excellent men perhaps; but as Peel remarked, "if they had been angels, it would have been utterly impossible for them to fulfil the duties required from their situation." Deptford, being without a single professional watchman, was at one time patrolled by the inhabitants, who enrolled themselves into companies twenty strong for that purpose, quickly disbanding, however, as soon as the robbers moved into another district. In some parishes, again, there were patrols and no beats, and in others there were beats and stands but no patrols, despite the recommendations of Special Commissions and the provisions of Acts of Parliament.

The degree of security extended to the ratepayers by the local authorities was thus a very variable quantity; but it is not too much to say that without exception the constitution of all the parochial police bodies was antiquated and radically unsound, and that Watch and Ward was at this time more indifferently kept than had previously been the case throughout the whole history of the Metropolis.

In the year 1800 Parish Constables were generally permanent deputies and of inferior origin; nor was any trouble taken to secure officers of the right stamp. The wages paid to Parish Watchmen were miserable, and the men usually engaged were those whose antecedents and qualifications precluded them from obtaining more lucrative or reputable employment. These "Charlies" (as they were popularly called, after their predecessors the Bell-men, instituted in the reign of Charles the Second) were for the most part infirm from age and starvation, drunken, the creatures of street-walkers and publicans rather than servants of the public, and altogether contemptible. Dressed in heavy capes, muffled up to the ears, provided with long staves and dim lanterns, they issued from their watchboxes twice an hour for a minute or two to call the time and the state of the weather. As clocks and barometers they may have been of some service; or, as somebody once put it, to wake a man up after his house has been robbed to tell him the bad news; but for the prevention of crime, they were worse than useless. Striking their staves on the pavement, and shewing their lanterns, they gave timely warning of their approach; and if the thieves thought it worth while to take any notice at all of such a trivial interruption, they had only to remove themselves temporarily into the next parish to be secure from pursuit.

As an object for practical joking, and as a theme for ridicule, the Charlies provided some amusement to the Jerry Hawthorns and Corinthian Toms of the period, but this was the extent of their usefulness. Quite a considerable literature hinged on their grotesque incompetency, but in their praise not a syllable was uttered; everyone made fun of them. They were humorously described as "persons hired by the parish to sleep in the open air," and another topical saying was to the effect that "Shiver and Shake" ought to be substituted for "Watch and Ward," because they spent half the night shivering with cold and the other half shaking with fright. It was a popular amusement amongst young men of the town to imprison watchmen by upsetting their watchboxes on top of them as they dozed within; and the young blood who could exhibit to his friends a collection of trophies such as lanterns, staves, and rattles, was much accounted of in smart society. The newspapers were never tired of skits at the expense of the parochial watch: the following extract from The Morning Herald of October 30th, 1802, will serve as an example:—

The watchhouses here referred to were dirty and insecure hovels, with an underground cellar secured by a grating, behind which prisoners were confined, sometimes for forty-eight hours, but in the case of minor offences a tip of half-a-crown to the constable was generally sufficient to secure release.

In 1804 there were 2044 parochial constables and watchmen in the Metropolis, including the 765 employed by the City, that is to say, about one watchman to every seventy or eighty houses.

The City of London was much better policed than the rest of the Metropolis. It was said that so superior were the arrangements eastward of Temple Bar to those of the more westerly districts, that a pickpocket was easily recognised when he came to the City boundary, because he always walked so fast, and so often looked over his shoulder, as if he suspected that someone was after him. The watchmen appointed by the Lord Mayor and Aldermen were selected from a better class of men than were those who held office in Westminster and other parishes; they were also better paid and more carefully superintended. In 1815 the Lord Mayor himself, on more than one occasion, visited the watch by night and had the men mustered, discharging on the spot those whom he considered unfit. Briefly the organisation was as follows—the City was divided into four divisions with three day patrols to each division, in all twelve patrolmen at one and a half guineas a week each. By night, whilst the constables and watchmen were on duty, the patrols were reduced to eight, two to a division; their duties were, to visit the watchhouses at least twice a night, to see that the constable of the night was not absent from his post, signing their names at every visit in a book kept for the purpose at the several watchhouses. The Constables of the Night were paid no salary, but were generally in receipt of fees from the elected householders whose deputies they were. They were bound to be present with the watch all night long, and were held responsible that the watchmen did their duty. In time of riot, or when disturbances were apprehended, the Lord Mayor had power to summon them, together with the watch, at any hour—by day as well as by night, for the maintenance of the peace. The task of supervising the City police was entrusted, not to a High Constable, but to the two City Marshals, whose duty it was to pay surprise visits to the watchhouses at uncertain hours, to certify that the patrolmen's books were duly signed up, and to report every morning to the Lord Mayor concerning the "internal quiet of the City of London." They also bound themselves on oath to proceed against no man through malice, and to screen no man through favour or affection.

Both in the city and in other parts of London, the management of the traffic was in the hands of special officials called Street-keepers; but beyond the regulation of vehicular traffic within the limits of the parishes where they were employed, they had no general police duties to perform, and were not under the control of the magistrates, nor subject to the police authorities.

The Burgesses of Westminster still suffered their police administration to be bound by the ecclesiastical traditions of bygone centuries; and if we make an exception in favour of the "Jury of Annoyances," established in 1755, we may say that little evidence of progress was discoverable within the Liberties of the Western City. The Act creating the Annoyance Jury was passed in the twenty-ninth year of George II., and two years later was amended and enlarged. The Court of Burgesses was now empowered to maintain forty-eight inhabitants of Westminster for the suppression of public nuisances: members of this jury had authority to enter any shop or house, and if they found any unlawful or defective weight or measure therein, to destroy the same, and to amerce the offender a sum not exceeding forty shillings for each offence. In 1764 the Jury was divided into three divisions, called St Margaret's Division, the St James' Division, and the St Martin's Division, each containing sixteen members; at the same time it was ordained, that all presentments had to be in writing under the hands and seals of at least twelve jurymen. In 1800 the Annoyance Jury was still nominally responsible for the cleanliness, sightliness, and sanitary condition of Westminster, but, as a matter of experience, the removal and prevention of nuisances was left almost entirely to the discretion and taste of the more fastidious householders.

As has already been said, the Middlesex Justices Act was at first an experimental measure; in 1801 it was repealed, but most of its provisions were at once re-enacted by a statute[159] which placed the public offices on a more permanent basis, and raised the salary of the magistrates and the wages of the police officers. There were now ten of these offices, viz., Mansion House, Guildhall, Hatton Garden, Worship Street, Whitechapel, Shadwell, Southwark, Queen Street Westminster; Great Marlborough Street, and Wapping. Mansion House and Guildhall belonged to the City proper, and Wapping was the headquarters of the River Police. To each office were apportioned three magistrates, eight constables, and a clerk or two. The magistrates sat in rotation, and, within the limited areas of their respective jurisdictions, acted independently of their colleagues. There was little uniformity or co-operation. Each office had a general duty of apprehending and punishing any criminals found within its boundaries, but had no connection with the Nightly Watch. The different parishes concerned had transferred to the public offices the duties connected with Hue and Cry, whilst retaining in their own hands the responsibilities of Watch and Ward. The relations existing between the parochial and stipendiary authorities were not cordial, in fact there was frequently a pronounced enmity between the parish constable and the police constable, whilst the amateur peace officer not infrequently set at defiance the professional magistrate. The impossibility of controlling the local watchmen conduced to a very unsatisfactory state of affairs, as is seen by the following evidence given before the 1816 Committee by Mr Robert Raynsford, the magistrate of Hatton Garden. "At present, as the law now stands," he said, "we have no power at all over the parish watchmen: but when this question was agitated on a former occasion, the parishes had so rooted an aversion to the interference of the magistracy, that I believe there were petitions from most of the parishes: at the same time there are offences committed in the streets, close by a watch-box, and we are told that the watchman was fast asleep, or would give no assistance: we have no power of sending for the watchman, or if we did, we have no power of punishing him. I think it would be an improvement if they were put under the direction of the Police."

It will be remembered that the Middlesex Justices Act had placed the police offices under the control of the Home Office, which had the power of appointing and dismissing the magistrates: this was right and proper, but it would have been far better if any further supervision exercised by the Secretary of State had been confined to the larger and more general issues connected with the police establishments, and had stopped short of the injudicious meddling that went on. The magistrates might surely have been trusted with the selection of their own constables, but, for some occult reason, successive ministers seem to have thought it their duty to diminish the authority of the magistrates by actively interfering with the nomination and election of the rank and file. Under these circumstances it is strange that the magistrates were as well served by their subordinate officers as they seem to have been, yet, everything considered, the stipendiary policeman proved so superior to the amateur constable that Maurice Swabey, the magistrate at Union Street, declared, that he would rather have six additional officers than fifty parish constables.

From the list of the Public Offices above enumerated, the most interesting has intentionally been omitted, because its unique position calls for separate and more detailed notice. Besides being of earlier date than the other offices, Bow Street exceeded them also in importance, and was distinguished as the centre of the police activities of the time. From Henry Fielding, who presided in 1753, to Sir Franklin Lushington, who recently succeeded Sir John Bridge, the Chief Magistrate at Bow Street has nearly always been a man of mark amongst his brother stipendiaries, and in their day the Bow Street Runners (as the officers attached to this Court used to be called) were of quite a different type from their comrades employed in the junior offices.

Though only eight in number (afterwards increased to twelve) these runners exerted a preponderating influence, which largely altered the aspect of the contest between the professional thieves and the helpless public on whom they preyed. The Bow Street policemen were the first peace officers to make a serious study of the art of detecting and running down criminals: they were experts whereas all their predecessors had been amateurs; no longer dull officials performing routine duties in perfunctory fashion when "not otherwise engaged"; but keen hunters with all their faculties stimulated by the prospect of the blood money and other rewards they hoped to earn. When they appeared on the scene the professional depredator no longer had things all his own way; instead of the parish constable who could be outwitted and bamboozled at every turn, the cracksman or forger found himself confronted by a wary adversary, well armed, and up to every move on the board. That the Bow Street Runners achieved much good in breaking up predatory gangs, and in bringing notorious offenders to trial, is not to be denied, but it is no less certain that they were the source of much evil. Actuated by the hope of gain rather than by any sense of duty, their motives were as ignoble as their methods were shady. They played only for their own hand, and all their best endeavours were bent towards the arrest of the particular criminal whose conviction would bring the greatest profit to themselves, and not to the pursuit of the fugitive from justice whose capture was chiefly desirable on public grounds. Prevention did not enter at all into their conception of police duty, and their services were of course only at the disposal of those who were rich enough to pay handsomely for the privilege. The extent to which this system of feeing was carried may be guessed from the fact that Townsend left £20,000 behind him, and that Sayer's heirs divided no less than £30,000 at the death of their benefactor.

In order to obtain information, the runners made it a rule to frequent low "flash-houses," as the resorts of thieves were called, and to associate with the vicious and desperate characters to be found there. When examined before a Parliamentary Commission, several of these officers freely admitted that it was by the employment of such tactics that they expected to obtain the most valuable information, and gave it as their opinion that flash-houses ought to be encouraged rather than suppressed, on account of the facilities they afforded the runner in his search for a man who was "wanted."

There were, no doubt, many honest men amongst the Bow Street Officers doing their duty to the best of their ability after their lights, and although their methods would not be tolerated for a moment at the present day, they were much in advance of their predecessors. Certain of them attained a wide celebrity. Such men as Lavender, Nelson and others—unique characters in their way—made it their business to go everywhere and know everybody: they carried a small baton surmounted by a gilt crown, and this badge of office admitted them not only to such unsavoury dens as "The Dog and Duck" and "The Temple of Flora," but even into the Royal Palaces, where two officers, we learn, were constantly stationed "on account of the King being frequently teased of lunatics." Runners were often specialists, occupying themselves in one line of business to the neglect of others: thus, whilst that well-known gossip Townsend chiefly confined himself to safeguarding the property of his wealthy clients, and to capturing noble duellists, Keys devoted himself to circumventing coiners and forgers of bank notes, and a third was principally engaged in the detection and apprehension of "Resurrectionists."

There is no doubt that more than one of the Bow Street policemen were actually in league with the depredators they were paid to catch, though they were generally too alert to be found out; but the confidence of the public in their thief-takers received a rude shock when Vaughan, of the Horse Patrol, was proved to have arranged a burglary for the sake of the reward that would have come to him on the conviction of the felons. "Set a thief to catch a thief" may sometimes be good policy, but it is nearly always bad police.

The Patrols, Horse and Foot, which were attached to the Bow Street Office, had been in existence some fifty years or so, but had only consisted of a handful of men quite insufficient for the amount of work that was expected of them. In 1805 Sir Richard Ford, the Chief Magistrate, obtained permission to extend the system of mounted police so as to provide patrols for all the main roads to a distance of about twenty miles from Bow Street. The strength of this new force was fifty-two patrols, two inspectors, and a clerk: they were recruited almost exclusively from retired cavalrymen, and were familiarly known as Robin Redbreasts on account of the red waistcoat that was a conspicuous part of their uniform. They were better paid than their predecessors, the wages of a "patrol" being twenty-eight shillings a week, with allowance for horse keep, and the salary of a "conductor" standing at £100 a-year and a guinea a-week for forage and shoeing. Their energies were principally directed against highwaymen, and they quickly cleared Hounslow Heath and other infested localities from this class of plunderer. The Horse Patrol cost the Government £8000 a year, not a high price to pay for the suppression of those impudent robbers "the gentlemen of the road." The foot patrol policed the inner circle within a radius of about four miles.

The legal powers of Bow Street were never very strictly defined, but it was generally understood that the jurisdiction of the Office was confined to the County of Middlesex (the City of London excepted), and to the main roads in the neighbourhood of the metropolis which were patrolled by Bow Street Officers. Under the direction of the Home Secretary, the Chief Magistrate had, in fact, the control of a small and independent force applicable to the general police requirements of the capital and its environment.

CHAPTER X
POLICE AT THE DAWN OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

In the year 1801, the population of London and Middlesex hardly exceeded a million, but how many of the individual units that went to make up this total were engaged in criminal pursuits, it is of course impossible to estimate with any degree of accuracy, because the bulk of the crime was undetected and consequently unrecorded. From such data as we possess, however, it is certain that the proportion of thieves and other delinquents to honest men must have been alarmingly high. Between 1801 and 1811 the population increased some sixteen per cent., and during the same period the number of commitments rose nearly fifty per cent.[160] This increase in the number of rogues whose careers were cut short by capture, speaks well for the Bow Street Runners from one point of view; but it also indicates no less surely that these officers were making no progress at all in the art of preventing crime, which instead of diminishing as time went on, continued to grow in volume year by year. Indeed the state of the metropolis was such, that social reformers might well have despaired of ever seeing an improvement; every corrupting influence, and every criminal tendency seemed to flourish unchecked and unrebuked in the congenial atmosphere of the London slums: children, neglected by their parents and uncared for by the State, got their only schooling in the gutter, where they educated themselves, and each other, in all the tricks of vice and dishonesty. Night after night, undisturbed by watchmen or other peace-officers, hundreds of urchins of both sexes huddled together for shelter and company under the fruit-stalls and barrows of Covent Garden Market. Day after day, these homeless and unhealthy vagabonds quartered the town, street by street, and alley by alley, in search of any prey that they might be able to lay their hands on. Their pickings and stealings were turned into money with fatal ease at the shop of any one of the eight thousand receivers of stolen property, who were supposed to ply their trade in London; and however meagre might be the income realised by the juvenile criminal, drink in plenty, with gin at tenpence a pint, was within the reach of all. Such licensing laws as existed, were seldom enforced, and even after the scandalous public lotteries had been suppressed, public-houses continued to hold minor lotteries, called "little-goes," for all comers, men, women and children.

Mondays and Fridays were the great days for bullock-hunting, an inhuman and brutal sport that throve in the neighbourhoods of Hackney and Bethnal Green, with the sanction, if not with the connivance, of the peace officers of those parishes. The procedure of the bullock-hunters was as follows. A fee having been paid to a cattle drover, an animal was selected from his herd, peas were put into its ears, sticks pointed with iron were driven into its body, and the poor beast, when mad with rage and pain, was hunted through the streets with a yelling mob of men, women, and dogs behind it; the weavers left their looms to join in the pursuit, and passers-by continually augmented the crowd, until the exhausted victim could no longer be goaded into any shew of resistance or movement, when it was left to die where it fell, or when sufficiently recovered, to be removed to some butcher's slaughter-house.

On Sundays the favourite resort was a field adjoining Bethnal Green Church, and here some hundreds of men and boys assembled during the hours of divine service, to indulge in less exciting games, such as dog-fighting and duck-hunting. On holidays and fair-days these Saturnalian proceedings grew more outrageous than ever. In a letter descriptive of the occurrences that used to take place at an annual fair held in the West-end of London, which the Receiver of the Metropolitan Police wrote to Lord Rosslyn in 1831, occurs the following passage: "It will hardly be credited that within five or seven years ... people were robbed in open day ... and women, stripped of their clothes, were tied to gates by the roadside; the existing police being set at defiance."

John Sayer, the Bow Street officer, stated before a Parliamentary Committee, that there were streets in Westminster, especially Duck Lane, Gravel Lane, and Cock Lane, infested by a gang of desperate men, and so dangerous that no policeman dared venture there, unless accompanied by five or six of his comrades, for fear of being cut to pieces. These are not highly coloured fairy-tales, but actual facts as recounted in the Blue-books of the period, recounted moreover without exciting any particular notice at the time. In 1812, the crime of murder was so common, and so much on the increase, that a Parliamentary Committee was appointed to hold an inquiry as to the best means of combating the savage tendencies of the people. Offences against property were even more prevalent than crimes of violence. Spurious coin and counterfeit banknotes deluged the country.[161] In the parish of Kensington alone there were sixteen successful, and three unsuccessful, attempts at burglary in six weeks, and John Vickery, an experienced Bow Street officer, calculated that in one month property to the value of £15,000 was stolen in the City of London, without one of the guilty parties being either known or apprehended.

Thieves and receivers, drivers of hackney coaches, and sometimes toll-gate keepers, conspired together to rob the travelling public. Their favourite modus operandi was as follows—the thief climbed on the back of the conveyance, unfastened the ropes that secured the luggage, and with the assistance of an accomplice, removed the trunk or other booty when close to the house of the confederate receiver. As soon as the loss was discovered, the coachman repudiated all knowledge of the affair, and having at the first opportunity put away the false and resumed his registered number, became to all appearance an honest cabman, against whom the police could prove nothing. The transformation was not difficult, because numbers were not then painted on the coach as on hackney carriages they now have to be, but were displayed on a removable iron label.

Still more serious were the conspiracies in which solicitors and police officers were concerned, which had for their object the levying of blackmail from bankers and others. In this organized system of fraud the following method was usually adopted—a man of education, with money behind him, would plan a bank robbery, purchase the necessary information, and hire expert thieves to do the actual work. The robbery having been duly effected, some time would be allowed to elapse, and then the prime mover in the affair, through his agent the police officer, would notify to the manager of the bank that the stolen notes or securities had been traced, and might be recovered, if a large enough reward was forthcoming. This offer was invariably coupled with the proviso that, in the event of the proposed restitution being carried out, no further questions should be asked, nor further proceedings taken.

The trick seldom failed, because the parties who had been robbed knew, that in the absence of any detective police agency worthy of the name, acceptance of the terms offered them was the only chance they had of recovering their property. Under the circumstances, they could hardly be expected to be public-spirited enough to incur the heavier loss, and at the same time, through advertising the affair, suffer some diminution of credit, for the sake of the principles involved.

The Committee which sat in 1828, and which investigated the whole question, considered it advisable not to publish the evidence brought before them, but stated that they had abundant proof that frauds of this description had for years been carried through with almost uniform success, and to an extent altogether unsuspected by the public. They were satisfied "that more than sixteen banks had been forced to pay blackmail, and that more than £200,000 worth of property had, in a short space of time, been the subject of negotiation or compromise," and stated that about £1200 had been paid to blackmailers by bankers alone, "accompanied by a clearance from every risk, and perfect impunity for their crimes."

Between 1805 and 1818 there were more than two hundred executions for forgery alone, that is to say at the rate of one execution in every three weeks. When one considers that only a few of the forgers were caught, that of these not all were convicted, and that of the convicted but a moderate percentage were hanged, we get some idea of the prevalence of this particular offence. The alarming frequency with which mobs began to appeal to violence to compel attention to their grievances, real or supposed, by force of arms, was one of the most dangerous symptoms of the age. The Food Riots of 1800, the Luddite disturbances of 1811-1816, Spafield (1816), Manchester (1817), Peterloo (1819),[162] and the riots throughout the manufacturing districts in 1828-9, were all cases in point which convinced the thoughtful that, unless something better than the shoddy defence, which was all that the civil power could then muster, was quickly forthcoming, the mob would soon obtain a complete mastery, to the destruction of all law and order, just as had recently happened in France.

The mania for duelling, again, which was now at its height, was an indication that the prevailing spirit of lawlessness was not confined to the masses. When hereditary lawgivers, and even Cabinet ministers, could find no better way of settling their differences than by calling each other out, little wonder that the rank and file followed suit, and took the law into their own hands. It is no valid argument to say that duelling was merely a passing fashion; by the Law of England any duel is a gross breach of the peace; and that such deliberate infractions should have become fashionable only proves that the law was held in contempt, and that the police system which failed to compel people to keep the peace was totally inadequate to the requirements of the times. There was a period when the vendetta was the natural defence adopted by semi-civilised communities to diminish the frequency of murder, and to protect the honour of their women: in time blood feuds gradually died out, not because any great change had overtaken human nature, but because there was no longer any need for the individual or the family to perform duties which could be executed with greater discrimination, impartiality, and thoroughness by judges and policemen. After the disappearance of the vendetta the custom of duelling remained. It was felt that personal honour was too delicate a matter to be delegated to any outsiders, and that questions in which honour was concerned must continue to be settled by the principals themselves. Eventually however, the same influences that rendered blood feuds unnecessary removed the excuse for the practice of duelling; under modern conditions, a man can usually vindicate his honour by an appeal to public opinion, or, in the last resort, by an action for slander, without having to submit his cause to the uncertain arbitrament of the rapier or the pistol.

On the whole, there is no exaggeration in saying that, at the dawn of the nineteenth century, England was passing through an epoch of criminality darker than any other in her annals; the resurrectionist atrocities of Burke and Hare, the more inhuman villanies of Williams and Bishop the cold-blooded depravity of Vaughan and his accomplices, and the other lurid crimes which belong to this age, surpass in enormity anything before or since.

Such then was the desperate state of society at the dawn of the century. What arrangements did the country make to protect itself against the consequences of this accumulation of crime? What organization was provided for the enforcement of order, and for the protection of life and property? For its first line of defence England trusted to the supposed deterrent effect of a rigorous penal code; the more humane and effectual method, prevention, being lost sight of in the mistaken belief that it was possible to extirpate crime by the severity with which it was punished, a belief that survived in face of the fact, that as punishment increased in bitterness, so did offences grow in frequency and in violence.

The penal laws were written in blood. Colquhoun estimated that there were 160 different offences which were punishable by death, without benefit of clergy: a man could be hanged for larceny from the person if the value of the article stolen was more than one shilling: Townsend stated before the parliamentary commission of 1816, that he had known as many as forty people hanged in one day: on another occasion seven persons, four men and three women, were convicted at Kingston of being concerned in robbing a pedlar, "they were all hanged in Kent Street, opposite the door." Such indiscriminate infliction of the extreme penalty of the law could serve no useful purpose,[163] on the contrary it undoubtedly aggravated the very offences it was intended to check. The punishment for a trivial theft being identical with that meted out for the most heinous crime, all sense of proportion in the different degrees of moral guilt was lost. "As well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb" represented a point of view not unnatural under the circumstances, and expressed the actual mental attitude of the average criminal.

It can easily be demonstrated that an inverse ratio exists between the efficiency of police and the severity of sentences.[164] The more difficult the commission of crime is made, the less necessity will there be for deterrent measures that savour of vindictiveness. The intimate knowledge that an effective police have of the habitual criminal class is not only a safeguard against the conviction of the innocent, but renders it possible to deal leniently with the juvenile, and with the casual, offender. Within reasonable limits, the fear of almost certain detection is a far stronger deterrent than the distant prospect of severe punishment. Sir Samuel Romilly speaking in the House of Commons in 1810 said, "if it were possible that punishment, as a consequence of guilt, could be reduced to an absolute certainty, a very slight penalty would be sufficient to prevent almost every species of crime, except those which arise from sudden gusts of ungovernable passion. If the restoration of the property stolen, and only a few weeks, or even but a few days imprisonment, were the unavoidable consequence of theft, no theft would ever be committed. No man would steal what he was sure he could not keep."

Romilly made strenuous efforts to persuade the government to reduce the number of offences punishable by death, but without immediate success. Sir James Mackintosh followed in his footsteps, and in 1822 proposed to the House that measures should be adopted "for increasing the efficiency of the Criminal Law by mitigating its vigour." It is worthy of remark that, at this time, Peel opposed the principles advocated by Mackintosh and Romilly, though seven years afterwards he was the author of the Act that gave effect to a part of Romilly's ideal, "a vigilant and enlightened police, and punishments proportioned to the offender's guilt."

The savage rigour of the penal code defeated its own ends in many ways. People would not give evidence that might condemn a man to such barbarous treatment; juries would not always convict, even when the evidence was perfectly clear.

Consequently the law often became a dead letter, and the prospective criminal had many inducements to tempt him to break it; for, in the first place, he probably would never be caught; and in the second place, the chances were, that the jury would evade the responsibility of giving a verdict, that might lead to a sentence, that would be an outrage to their humanity.

With crime so increasingly prevalent, there might have been some justification for great severity of punishment, if it had been found by experience that strong repressive measures had invariably been followed by a permanent reduction in the number of criminals; but this is not the lesson that history has taught. It is true that exceptional cases have arisen from time to time in which signal severity meted out to a prominent offender has proved the safest and best course. Prompt and exemplary punishment, even in excess of his deserts, inflicted on a ringleader, has often been the only way to enforce discipline or to prevent the spread of dangerous mutiny; but such cases are rare, and owe their success as deterrents to their rarity, and to the attention that they excite at the time; whereas a consistent course of excessive severity has never been a lasting success, unless combined with powerful preventive measures,[165] and then such a course is no longer necessary. Highway robbery and sheep-stealing were common when they were capital offences, now they are seldom heard of, and the thieving that invariably went on at the foot of the gallows was sufficient proof that the popular belief in the deterrent value of public executions was a popular fallacy.[166]

The futile cruelty of the frequency with which capital punishment was inflicted was equalled if not exceeded by the manner in which the secondary punishments were administered. Transportation was introduced[167] in the reign of Charles II., but at first was not, strictly speaking, a legal punishment, but rather an exercise of the royal clemency towards those in "the King's Mercy"; and it may be said to have taken the place in the social scheme of the old system of outlawry which, in former times, enabled a capital felon to save his life by abjuring the realm.

Labourers were required to develop the resources of America and the West Indies, and to this end criminals under sentence of death were often pardoned on the understanding that they transported themselves to those colonies. Several convicts, however, were clever enough to secure the pardon and yet avoid fulfilment of the condition on which it was granted. By 1717 so many of these persons were at large, that arrangements were made[168] by which felons were to be kept in prison until they could be handed over to agents, who were required to give security that the undesirables in question were really deported. Fifty years later the practice of transportation was common, and had come to be esteemed as an easy and profitable means of getting rid, once and for all, of offenders caught transgressing the laws made by society for its protection. Though called transportation the system really amounted to perpetual slavery; it could nominally be inflicted for fourteen years, but was almost invariably for life. The convicts were handed over to contractors at so much a head, and shipped off to America to work on the plantations: many died on the voyage, thus reducing the profits of the traffic; in fact a Bristol contractor complained that if another plague broke out on his ship he would have to give up the business. To prevent this waste, an Act was passed in 1767[169] which provided that, for the future, contractors should take the convicts immediately they were sentenced, for fear that they should deteriorate during their sojourn in prison, and consequently fetch less money.