Saunders Welch

[1] He also became involved in the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce and the British Lying-In, Lock, Foundling, Madgdalen, Middlesex and St George's Hospitals.

He also became active in local politics, becoming a churchwarden (1743) and vestryman (1745) for the parish as well as high constable of Holborn (1746–1755) and member of the Middlesex commission of the peace (1755–1756).

[4][5] Welch selected his men from former constables, discharged at the end of their year in office, who were prepared to receive legal training and carry on the work.

Welch spent two or more years in Italy for his health, finally dying at Taunton Deane in Somerset in 1784, though his body was brought back to the St George's Churchyard in Bloomsbury.

With rules and cautions for the more safe and effectual discharge of that duty, republished four years later in an expanded edition with a new "Introduction containing some Conjectures for fixing the Original of that Office in England; and certain Historical Anecdotes concerning the Rise and Progress of the Society of Thief-Takers, and the evil Consequences naturally resulting from an Institution of that Kind".