Before there was a police force, it is easy to imagine victims of crime or misfortune as without resources to redress the balance.  For serious fraud, murder and crimes against the body, there were the courts, but what if you were burgled, had your pocket picked, or were just a bit careless and had lost your engagement ring?  Then you needed a warning-carrier.

Warning-carriers operated as part of the Goldsmiths' Livery Company.  Livery Companies were essentially large, regulatory bodies for their own members.  They policed and protected every part of London's trade (salters, drapers, tanners, fishmongers, butchers and many more all have a company).  As such, some of them, like the Goldsmiths', became rich and grand, but their purpose remained the same: protection of their members' commercial activities.  Their effectiveness during the Georgian period is for another post, but in the context of the warning-carriers, they provided an intriguing and valuable service.

For a set fee (not cheap at a fraction over 11 shillings), Goldsmiths' Hall would print and distribute details of what you had lost and where, any pertinent facts, instructions on what to do should the goods be discovered and any reward offered.  These notices would then be distributed to beadles who visited every banker, goldsmith, jeweller, pawnbroker and 'toyman' (trinket shop) in London within three hours.  Three hours!  This was all done on foot, by goldsmiths who had fallen upon hard times and were employed as beadles.  The fliers were also pinned up at Goldsmiths' Hall where anyone who had found something could go along and see how they might claim a reward.  Most of the notices are for bank notes ('stop'd at bank' interestingly enough), and jewellery that has been either lost or stolen.  The amount of lost and really rather large diamonds sculling about London is astonishing.

Two very interesting conclusions can be drawn from these little fliers: they were effective, it couldn't be otherwise judging by the amount of warnings carried; the original owner of the goods nine out of ten times preferred to remain anonymous and brokered the retrieval of their goods through a banker or a coffee house.  The valuable sentence 'No questions ask'd' is included at the tail of almost every notice.

This is a tiny example of the thousands of mechanisms running through daily life in Georgian London.  There is often an assumption that it was a lawless or chaotic place before an organised police force, but examples such as the warning-carriers show that there were established protocols in place dealing with every aspect of life in the city.  Bearing in mind how long it can take to get a response to a burglary from the 21stC police, that a private body visited every likely outlet within three hours makes this system both remarkable, and admirable.