<P> The watchmen patrolled the streets at night, calling out the hour, keeping a lookout for fires, checking that doors were locked and ensuring that drunks and other vagrants were delivered to the watch constable . However, their low wages and the uncongenial nature of the job attracted a fairly low standard of person, and they acquired a possibly - exaggerated reputation for being old, ineffectual, feeble, drunk or asleep on the job . </P> <P> London had a system of night policing in place before 1660, although it was improved over the next century through better lighting, administrations, finances, and better and more regular salaries . But the essential elements of the night - watch were performing completely by the middle of the seventeenth century . </P> <P> During the 1820s, mounting crime levels and increasing political and industrial disorder prompted calls for reform, led by Sir Robert Peel, which culminated in the demise of the watchmen and their replacement by a uniformed metropolitan police force . </P> <P> The first form of societal protection in the United States was based on practices developed in England . The City of Boston was the first settlement in the 13 colonies to establish a night watch in 1631. (2) New York (then New Amsterdam) and Jamestown followed in 1658 . </P>

The watchman system proved to be an excellent method of law enforcement