View report page

61
dents, 611 inspectors, 1,036 sergeants, and 10,950 constables,
a total of all ranks of 12,622. These figures, both as regards
the cost and strength of the force, are exclusive of the City
Police Force. The latter costs £105,000 a year, and comprises
about 900 men of all ranks.
A more complete change than that from the watchmen,
frequently feeble old men, to active constables, can scarcely be
imagined, and the value of the alteration is well illustrated
by comparing the present comparative immunity from street
outrages with the danger formerly attending a visit to the
suburbs after nightfall, or even (according to Gay) in crossing
Lincoln's Inn Fields on a dark night. Lincoln's Inn
Fields, it may be mentioned, was then merely a large unenclosed
space.
"The principle of Insurance, which now forms so important
an item in commercial life, was then scarcely known. The
first Fire Insurance Office, the Phoenix, was established in
1682, at the Rainbow Coffee-house, Fleet Street, and was
followed fourteen years later by the Hand-in-Hand; the latter
is the oldest of the existing offices, the office now known as
the Phoenix not being the original Society of that name.
The first Life Insurance Office was that founded by the
Mercers' Company in 1698.
In connection with the subject of fire insurance, it seems
almost incredible that London remained without a Metropolitan
Fire Brigade until the year 1833, when the various
Insurance Companies made some kind of provision for united and
systematic action on the outbreak of fire. Even then, and for
thirty years later, the residents in the Metropolis were mainly
dependent on the voluntary efforts of the Fire Insurance Companies
for protection from fire.
Until 1825 all the companies maintained a separate establishment
of fire engines, but in that year, the Sun, the Union,
and the Royal Exchange Offices combined their engines