wn
in the above estimate, 19 sergeants against 8 fifty years ago, and 136
constables against 80 of fifty years ago, with a considerable
improvement in pay, viz., from the 17s. estimate of fifty years ago to
the 21s. 7d. to 27s. 5d., according to class--the present pay for
constables in the Herts. Constabulary.

{176}

We are sometimes reminded of a tendency to extravagance in county
expenditure in Hertfordshire compared with Cambridgeshire. I do not
know how far this may have held good historically, but certainly there
is evidence of it when the policeman came. A few years after the
establishment of the forces for Herts. and Cambs. the latter county had
70 police at an annual cost of L4,359 3s. 1d., and Hertfordshire had 71
police at a cost of L5,697 8s. 0d.

The new system was not so sudden a commencement as we may suppose, and
at first depended upon the inhabitants meeting the expense if they
wished for the luxury of a policeman in their midst. Hence in 1837 it
was recorded that "in consequence of petty thefts and depredations
committed in Baldock, it has been proposed that a police officer should
be stationed there and a subscription has been set on foot by the
inhabitants for that purpose."

In 1839 four policemen were sworn in for Royston and the neigbourhood,
and yet two years afterwards, in 1841, some persons in Royston appear
to have signed a petition against having a force of rural
police--against allowing to the village the same police protection that
the town and neighbourhood had already obtained for itself. These
were, however, exceptional cases, and the system of a county force soon
became general. The fact is that the old parish constable was a rough
and ready means of dealing with the social and domestic sides of law
and order, but on the criminal side he was of little use. He could
clap a brawling man in the stocks, or use his good offices in marrying
a pauper and getting her off the rates on to those of another parish,
but when it came to a question of serious crime he was useless beyond
carrying forward the "hue and cry" from his own to the next parish.

But the greatest of all the forces at work, breaking the life of the
Reform period from its old moorings, had already begun, and
Stephenson's triumph over Chat Moss had determined the great transition
in the social life and customs between the Georgian and Victorian eras.

At first the nearest railway station to Royston was Broxbourne on