Policing and Punishment in London, 1660-1750: Urban Crime and the Limits of Terror (review)

During the past three decades, historians have studied the creation of urban public order with great fervor. On the one hand, they have examined government administration, legal structures, and nascent policing systems; on the other, they have looked at evolving social customs, economic factors, and the human dimensions of regulating daily life. This book addresses the first area. Beattie's meticulous study of the Surrey assizes and quarter sessions, Crime and the Courts in England 1660-1800 (Princeton, 1986), showed that by the eighteenth century, the state had begun to reformulate policies concerning punishment, reflecting evolving attitudes toward violence, property, and the value of life. These initial policies laid the groundwork for massive jurisprudential, penal, and policing reforms in the nineteenth century.

Beattie's latest work focuses on the City of London during a century of great entrepreneurial activity and physical challenge. A relatively small area in the heart of London, the "City" evolved into a business center as burgeoning commercial and residential demands pushed populations out. Not surprisingly, Beattie focuses on crimes against property as a barometer of the civic pulse. In the book's first section, he examines policing mechanisms, including the role of magistrates, constables, the night-watch, and private police; in the second section, he looks at the modes of prosecution that the state formulated as new deterrents to property crime.

Using a combination of statistical data (culled from Corporation of London Records, the Guildhall Library, and the Public Record Office), court records, and anecdotal evidence from both primary and secondary sources, Beattie draws a detailed and chronological picture of prosecutions in the City for property crimes. Such prosecutions, he argues, illustrate the motivations behind the behavior of guardians of the law; just as revealing, he says, are the interpretations and different modes of punishment. He is sensitive to gender issues, highlighting the treatment of women, although his explanations could be expanded. Many of the institutions and personnel to which he refers—the Old Bailey, constables, night watchmen, beadles, Bow Street, etc.—are legendary markers of public order, but rather than take the traditional picaresque view, Beattie portrays them as complex players in the search for urban order. A fascinating chapter treats the problems of policing in the dark and the transformation of the city at night, topics that have gained new interest.

The debate about the preventive nature of capital punishment takes on a new cast with Beattie's argument that such policy accelerated during this period, particularly in the early eighteenth century. The unpopular transportation punishment represents a major shift in the way that authorities dealt with crime, providing a safety valve as the crime rate climbed. Beattie argues that transportation prevented more minor offenses from becoming capital ones. The book's view that the Transportation Act of 1718's "pattern of prosecutions ... made London crime seem more serious" lead to the conclusion that authorities made a concerted effort to turn the City into a symbol of national safety and security in the expanding mercantile world (40).

Beattie concludes that as policing changed, so did prosecutions, with the result that crime prevention and detection improved, support for this normative process gained wider currency, convictions increased, and punishments became more effective. This case study of the City could be particularly useful for drawing comparisons with other urban areas, particularly metropolitan London, which would give broader contextual meaning to the data.