The year 1809 marks another crisis in the history of Bombay’s police administration, to which several factors may be held to have contributed. In the first place crime was still rampant and defied all attempts to reduce it. Bodies of armed men continued to enter the Island, as for example in 1806 and 1807, and to terrify, molest and loot the residents; and though these gangs remained for some little time within the Superintendent’s jurisdiction, they were never apprehended by the police.[31] In his report of November 15, 1810, Warden refers also to an attack by “Cossids”, _i.e._ _Kasids_ or letter-carriers, who must have been induced to leave for the moment their ordinary duties as postal-runners and messengers by the apparent immunity from arrest and punishment enjoyed by the bands of regular thieves and free-booters. In consequence of the general lawlessness traffic in stolen goods was at this date a most lucrative profession, and obliged the Justices in 1797 to nominate individual goldsmiths and _shroffs_ as public pawnbrokers for a term of five years, on condition that they gave security for good conduct and furnished the police regularly with returns of valuable goods sold or purchased by them.[32] Another source of annoyance to the authorities was the constant desertion of sailors from the vessels of the Royal Navy and of the East India Company. These men were rarely arrested and the police appeared unable to discover their haunts. The peons, _i.e._ native constables were declared to be seldom on duty, except when they expected the Superintendent to pass, and to spend their time generally in gambling and other vices. In brief, the police force was so inefficient and crime was so widespread and uncontrolled that public opinion demanded urgent reform. In the second place, the old system whereby the Governor and his Council constituted the Court of Oyer and Terminer and Gaol Delivery disappeared on the establishment in 1798 of a Recorder’s Court. The powers of the Justices, who were authorized to hold Sessions of the Peace, remained unimpaired, and nine of them, exclusive of the Members of Government, were nominated for the Town and Island. It was inevitable that the constitution of a competent judicial tribunal, presided over by a trained lawyer, should, apart from other causes, lead to a general stock-taking of the judicial administration of Bombay, and incidentally should direct increased attention to the subject of the powers vested in the Police and the source whence they drew their authority.