i Nightwatch
– Grew out of ancient practices in England. The roots of all law enforcement agencies in South Carolina, and elsewhere in the American colonies, are firmly planted in a piece of medieval legislation called the Statute of Winchester (13 Ed. I), which was ratified in October 1285 by King Edward I of England to keep “king’s peace” throughout the land. It established the system of “watch and ward” in urban towns, performed by volunteer watchmen between sunset and sunrise, as a supplement to the duties performed by the town constable (a position created by statute in 1252).
The constable was required to place the names of all able-bodied men of the town on a roster and to require a portion of the men to perform voluntary watch duty each night in rotation. During the night, it was their duty was to challenge anyone found on the streets. Think of the phrase, “Hark! Who goes there?” If the watchmen encountered strangers or suspected criminals during their rounds, they were obliged to “arrest” (detain) them until morning, when they could be examined by a magistrate.
Second, the statute of 1285 revived the Anglo-Saxon practice known as the “hue and cry,” which required all citizens, whenever summoned, to participate in the pursuit and apprehension of fugitive offenders.
The third measure was the “assize of arms,” which required every male between the ages of fifteen and sixty to possess and maintain arms (the type of arms depending on their wealth), and to bear those arms in times of crisis if required.
The nocturnal watchmen of 1285 evolved into our municipal police departments that protect and serve urban and suburban areas. The Anglo-Saxon “hue and cry” formed the basis of both the sheriff’s department, which serves unincorporated and rural areas, and our modern highway patrol. The medieval duty to bear arms in case of emergencies is at the root of our colonial militias and the second amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America.
Early South Carolina settlers probably established an ad hoc “night watch” modeled on familiar English traditions soon after the beginning of the first settlement at Charles Town on Albemarle Point.
Medieval law prescribed that the complement of the nightly watch should be determined by the size of the settlement: “in every city by six men at every gate; in every borough, by twelve men; in every town, by six or four, according to the number of the inhabitants of the town.”
March 1696 law imposed a fine on the keeper of any public house or tavern who entertained sailors “after eight of the clock in winter at night, and nine of the clock in summer at night,” unless the sailors had written permission from their masters to remain on shore, and required “the captain of the night watch” to enforce this curfew during his usual rounds. From this text we see that the hour of “setting of the watch,” as it was commonly called in England, changed with the seasonal variations in sunlight. A 1696 revision of the “Watch Act,” ratified on the same day as the law relating to mariners, states that these seasonal adjustments to the curfew occurred on the tenth day of March and the tenth day of October each year. A further refinement of the “Watch Act” ratified in October 1698 defined more specifically the seasonal duration of the curfew, requiring watchmen to patrol the town “from the hour of eight at night to the hour of six in the morning, from the tenth day after the ratification of this Act to the tenth day of March following; and from the hour of nine at night, to the hour of four in the morning, from the tenth day of March to the tenth day of September following, yearly.” Although later refinements of the Watch Act amended the calendar of the seasonal adjustments, this stringently enforced curfew was a regular feature of daily life in Charleston for the next century and a half.
As the continuation of a long-established English practice, Charleston’s dusk-to-dawn curfew was not a unique phenomenon in late-seventeenth-century colonial America. Every urban settlement on the mainland, as well as those in the West Indian islands, followed a similar pattern of establishing some system of a nightly guard. In settlements where African slaves were imported in large numbers, however, the role of the night watch took on a specifically New World dimension. In such communities, from Barbados to Virginia and beyond, white European settlers lived in constant fear of a domestic uprising among their enslaved Africans, and the task of restraining their nocturnal movements soon became one of the principal duties of the urban watch. This process evolved gradually in early South Carolina, where the number of imported Africans increased steadily from the 1670s until they formed a majority of the population by 1708. The contemporary practice of enslaving Native American Indians not “in amity” with the English settlers, controversial even at that time, further increased the number of persons living in bondage in early Carolina. Although the majority of South Carolina’s enslaved population lived on rural plantations, the number of urban slaves residing in Charleston similarly outnumbered Europeans by the early years of the eighteenth century.[9]
The earliest known mention of the nightly curfew being applied specifically to enslaved people appears in a law passed in February 1686/7, “An Act inhibiting the trading with servants and slaves,” which prohibited “negroes, or other slaves, upon any pretence whatsoever, to travel or goe abroad, from his or their master or mistresses house in the night time, between the sunsetting and the sunrising, or in the day time, without a note from his or their master or mistresse or overseer.”
Although Charleston’s watchmen were undoubtedly responsible for enforcing this law in the 1680s, the earliest known confirmation of this duty appears in an October 1698 revision of the Watch Act, which complained that “negroes frequently absent themselves from their masters or owners houses, caballing, pilfiring, stealing and playing the rogue, at unseasonable hours of the night.” This colorful phrase was repeated in several subsequent revisions of this law, and the strict enforcement of the slave curfew continued to be one of the most notorious characteristics of Charleston’s urban police force until the demise of slavery in Charleston in February 1865. Upon meeting with any enslaved person who “cannot give [a] good and satisfactory account of his business,” the town’s watchmen were required to apprehend and detain such person until morning, at which time their masters could retrieve their property on payment of a fine or after permitting the administration of corporal punishment to the slave.
Since the enforcement of the nightly curfew was important to the preservation of the peace and good order in early Charleston, it was likewise imperative that the town’s polyglot inhabitants understand and observe the beginning and end of the nocturnal restrictions. For centuries, cities and towns in England and on the European Continent had answered this need by means of an audible signal, usually given by a drummer parading through the streets in a twin practice known as the tattoo (or taptoo) and reveille (or travallia). The beating of the tattoo at sunset announced the “setting of the watch” and served as a warning to slaves, servants, and sailors to repair to their respective domiciles or vessels for the evening. At sunrise, the beating or sounding of the reveille lifted the curfew and signaled the official beginning of the workday.. . . The immortal plays of William Shakespeare, for example, contain numerous references to the daily setting and raising of the night watch, and thus testify to the ubiquity of the practice in seventeenth-century English society.
. . . a revision of the militia law ratified on 2 March 1695/6. During times of alarm or general muster, this law states, it shall be illegal to dispense “any strong drinke from and after the beate of the tattoo or before and untill the beate of the travallia [reveille].”
In December 1690, they ratified a refinement of the watch law, specifying that the six “masters of families, or freemen” (or their substitutes) who attended “the constable or his deputy every night” should appear with “a gun well fixt, and six charges of powder and ball.”[14]
June 1692 to consider temporary means of restoring order to South Carolina, one of their first concerns was the enactment of proper laws to regulate the watch. The interim government’s first action was to order “thatt all persons capable of bearing armes in Charles Towne doe performe theire duetyes in the Constables watch in theire respective turnes and all houses that have nott an inhabittant capable of bearing armes shall furnish [a substitute] to the watch in theire turnes under the penalty of twenty foure howers close imprissonment for every default.”
Part II
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