Richard Plunkett (1788–1832) was a Parish Officer of the Law, variously described as a headborough, beadle or night-constable, in Whitechapel, in the East End of London, between 1817 and 1826.
His duties were centred upon the Whitechapel watch-house, from which he and his watchmen had to deal with nocturnal criminality in an area of rapidly increasing population, crowded conditions with poor sanitation, and much urban poverty and squalor.
His testimony and that of his officers in these more serious cases show his relations with the population at large, his investigations, pursuits and arrests, often based on personal knowledge of the offenders.
[3] From various different homes in the neighbourhood, Luke and Margaret christened their children at St Mary Matfelon, Whitechapel between 1776 (as of Bell Yard) and 1790 (as of Rosemary Lane, now Royal Mint Street).
1817 seems to mark the completion of Richard's family-making intentions for the time being, and his first appearance as 'constable of the night' at the Old Bailey relates to an incident just a month before his youngest daughter's christening.
As he stood at the corner of Whitechapel church a 19-year-old man ran past an unemployed servant-girl and snatched the shawl (value 2 shillings) from her shoulders.
[17] About the same time a 15-year-old boy who had stolen a tablecloth and 11 shillings in copper coins from his master, proprietor of an eating-house in Wentworth Street, was made by his father to give himself up to Plunkett.
In court Plunkett said he thought the complainant was drunk, and remarked that the man had accused him of stealing a pound from him when held in charge two nights previously for drunkenness.
[19] By contrast, in November 1820, a man was invited in by a girl in George Yard, Wentworth Street: once he had paid her something to fetch gin, first the women and then the men of the house robbed his money and possessions and forcibly ejected him, padlocking the door.
5 Baker's Row (on the north side of Whitechapel High Street, just east of the Workhouse: now Vallance Road[21]), his two sons usually closed the outer shutters of the windows on their return from school, but were delayed.
Soon after 5 pm, while taking tea in his back room, he heard a noise and found that two men had broken into his house via the front window, and were moving about in the dark.
[22] He then chased the other, whom he recognised, up Baker's Row and round the corner into Church Street, where the man appeared nonchalantly in the doorway of a public house.
Fifty pounds of gunpowder and a large amount of saltpetre suddenly exploded, blowing the roof off, setting fire to the building, and smashing every pane of glass in most of the adjoining streets.
[33] In November 1825 a respectable lady, Mrs Byrne, stopped at a house in Leman Street and remonstrated with the owner, an undertaker, who was beating his wife.
[35] These events doubtless contributed to Plunkett's retirement as beadle, and the evidence he gave leading to two further convictions in 1826 are his last recorded in the Proceedings of the Old Bailey.