352 Police of Ihe Metropolis. [APRIL; 



tion upon the amount of crime in the counties. But the present num- 

 bers of the nightly watch in London, are perfectly unequal to produce 

 any decided effect in the prevention of many kinds of depredations ; 

 especially of that species of theft which they are most peculiarly main- 

 tained to guard against the robberies (burglarious or otherwise) upon 

 houses. 



Every species of offensive operation must have an advantage over the 

 defensive. The street watch is a definite thing : to be looked for in a de- 

 finite place ; changing its position at known intervals ; and whenever it 

 takes up any one locality, leaving at least three others unguarded and ex- 

 posed. We have before observed, in a passing notice upon this subject, 

 that the duty entrusted to the nightly watch, is four times even more ex- 

 tended than its strength could properly perform. With less than a given 

 number of sentries, it is impossible to occupy a given line ; if we double 

 their distances, the enemy passes between. A nightly watchman can 

 only guard so much of ground or property as he can at once keep within 

 his eye or at least not a great deal more. If he must leave one street 

 (as he is compelled to do) for ten minutes together, unguarded, while 

 he walks round to serve another, he can by no possibility be responsible 

 for the safety of his "beat." Nothing is more easy, or more certain 

 and it is the ordinary habit of the thief to watch a watchman, from 

 that point of his guard, on which he (the rogue) proposes to perform 

 his operation : five minutes is in general sufficient to effect an entry 

 into premises ; and by a very little management he may calculate of 

 free leave for twenty. And it is impossible that any change unat- 

 tended with very heavy expense, could effect an improvement upon 

 this state of things : because five times the number of watchmen now 

 employed, would not be equal to such an arrangement as would give 

 each man a locality which he could overlook, and be reasonably held 

 answerable for. In fact, a great increase of number would reduce, but 

 no number that we can talk of retaining could entirely prevent depre- 

 dations upon houses. From the manner in which the streets of London 

 are divided : the various different avenues of access to the same build- 

 ings : the innumerable cross streets, and bye lanes, the alleys, and yards, 

 and passages, and "mews," it would be impossible to maintain such 

 numbers of guards as should make the watch upon houses entirely 

 effective. And even if this outward supervision could be compassed, 

 from the number of empty houses, or unfinished buildings, to which 

 admission may be obtained by day; from the possibility of hiring a 

 house, or lodging a speculation very slight compared with many of 

 those undertaken by London thieves for the purpose of passing from 

 one building to another : from the abutment of the backs of whole streets 

 of large and well inhabited houses, (as those in Bloomsbury) upon neigh- 

 bourhoods of entire knavery and pauperism, which the eyes of Argus 

 could not keep honest, and which cannot be removed : in short, when 

 it is notorious that the man who sits upon the front of a carriage, within 

 thirty miles of town, cannot prevent property from being stolen from 

 behind it it seems hopeless that we should ever devise any system of 

 watching (police or parochial) by which the entry of thieves into build-' 

 ings connected with which particular point a word hereafter can be 

 entirely, or even within a very long interval of entirely, prevented. 

 The watch, and the police also, may upon several points be susceptible 



