City, asking for no assistance from the Treasury, bore the whole expense connected with the improved constabulary out of its private revenues.[193] By the end of 1839 the consolidation was complete, and within a circumference distant fifteen miles from Charing Cross there remained but two police forces, both organized on similar lines and each designed on intelligent principles, in the place of the heterogeneous medley of samples formerly existing. In this same year, the efficiency of the Metropolitan Police was increased, and its sphere of usefulness enlarged, by an Act[194] which enables additions to be made to the police district by an Order in Council, and which empowers its officers to act as constables in and for certain specified districts outside the Metropolitan Police Area, such as, for example, the City of London, all navigable parts of the River Thames, and any place within ten miles of a Royal Palace. Authority was also given to police-constables to suppress gaming houses, disorderly houses, and illegal games (such as cock-fighting, prize-fighting, bull-baiting, and the like), to supervise licensed premises and pawnbrokers, and to regulate fairs and street-musicians.[195] The success that had attended the reorganization of the police of the metropolis, and the gratifying results that, on the whole, had followed the experiment, encouraged the hope that the benefits conferred by an efficient constabulary would soon be shared by the boroughs throughout the country. It would be an endless task to attempt a description of all the various police systems which found favour in the provincial towns, especially as in no two places was exactly the same pattern adopted; and it will be quite sufficient for our purpose if we briefly notice the arrangements come to for the prevention of crime and the maintenance of order in the case of a few selected boroughs. In 1833 Bath had a population of about 20,000, or if we include the suburbs, 55,000; there was no permanent body of professional peace officers, only tythingmen or constables to the number of 110. This small force was split up into three parts, each part independent of, and antagonistic to, the others: on the occasion of a parliamentary election, when party feeling ran high and serious disturbances took place all over the town, the Walcot and Bathwick divisions gave their assistance, but the city police refused to act, even when they were appealed to by the Mayor in person. If a felony was committed in the city, the guilty party could only be apprehended on the warrant of a city magistrate, and, if the felon should succeed in reaching the suburbs, the city constables could not execute the warrant until it was backed by a justice of the county of Somersetshire.