instrumental in securing the conviction of 858 "Leud and Scandalous persons." Two years later, the Governors of the London poor issued a proclamation, promising the sum of twelve pence to any person who should apprehend "any rogue, vagabond, or sturdy beggar," and, having brought him before a Justice of the Peace, cause him to be committed to the workhouse. The particular kind of lawlessness, however, that chiefly exercised men's minds in the days of Queen Anne was the work of young men of the town, commonly known as "Mohocks," who established a reign of terror in London, and whose excesses the peace-officers were powerless to prevent. The worst outbreak occurred in 1712, and the doings of these young blackguards are minutely described in a pamphlet published in that year.[143] "The watch in most of the out-parts of the town stand in awe of them, because they always come in a body, and are too strong for them, and when any watchman presumes to demand where they are going, they generally misuse them. Last night they had a general rendezvous and were bent on mischief; their way is to meet people in the streets and stop them, and begin to banter them, and if they make any answer, they lay on them with sticks, and toss them from one to another in a very rude manner. They attacked the watch in Devereux Court and Essex Street, made them scower: they also slit two persons' noses, and cut a woman in the arm with a penknife that she is lam'd. They likewise rowled a woman in a tub down Snow Hill, that was going to market, set other women on their heads, misusing them in a barbarous manner." In spite of the public indignation that such brutalities aroused, the feeble and timid watchmen were not superseded, nor was any inquiry instituted to discover the reasons for their inability to cope with these scandalous proceedings. It was thought rather a good joke that watchmen should be knocked down, and constables overturned, whilst the fact that London was left in complete darkness during the greater part of the night seems to have occasioned but little concern. There is a saying to the effect that a good lamp is a good policeman; but the subjects of Queen Anne, as it seems, expected the peace to be maintained without the assistance of either the one or the other,--the lamps were only lighted at six o'clock in the evening, and those that had not gone out before were extinguished at midnight, and when the moon was full they were not lighted at all.