Vagrants and other offenders could be committed to Houses of Correction as well as to county gaols, because of the expense of the latter.
Crime was exacerbated by orgies of liquor drinking by the common people, especially between 1730 and 1750, the sale of which did not have to be licensed as did ale. In 1736, it was required that retailers of brandy, rum, and other distilled spirituous liquors be licensed and to pay 50 pounds a year for their license, because excessive use had been detrimental to health, rendering persons unfit for useful labor and business, debauching their morals, and inciting them to vices. Only persons keeping public victualing houses, inns, coffee houses, alehouses or brandy shops who exercised no other trade were allowed to obtain a license. This excluded employers who had sold liquors to their journeymen, workmen, servants, and laborers at exorbitant prices. Street vendors who sold liquors had to forfeit 10 pounds. A duty of 20s. per gallon was imposed on the retailers. There were riots in London against this statute and its new duties. There had been a tremendous growth in liquor drinking, which did not stop but went underground after this statute. In 1753, a penalty of 10 pounds or hard labor for two months was made for selling spirituous liquors without a license. Also licenses were restricted to people who were certified by four reputable and substantial householders to be of good fame and sober life and conversation. Sellers had to maintain good order in their premises or else forfeit 10 pounds. About 1754 only innkeepers, victualers, and vendors paying rent of at least 200 shillings could sell gin at retail. The punishment for the second offense was whipping and imprisonment. That for the third offense was transportation out of the country. In 1751, additional duties were placed on spirituous liquors to discourage immoderate drinking going on by people of the meanest and lowest sort to the detriment of the health and morals of the common people. In 1761, these duties were again raised. In 1768, officers were authorized to seize all horses, cattle, and carriages used to transport foreign spirituous liquors for which duties had been evaded. In 1773, the penalty for selling without a license was raised to 50 pounds, which could not be mitigated below 5 pounds. Half the forfeiture was to go to the suer.
The informer system for enforcing laws had its drawbacks. Informers were not trained and were sometimes retaliated against for informing. Sometimes this meant being tortured to death. Sometimes there were schemes in which a leader of thieves, would take a profit in the stolen goods by posing as a good citizen who tracked down and returned them to the owners for a fee. Also he might inform on his companions to get the reward for informing or to punish a troublesome one. Sometimes the owner of goods was involved in a fake robbery. An effort in 1749 to turn the whole haphazard system of informers, into a specialized organization for the detection and apprehension of criminals had caused a mob to form and make threats. Englishmen associated a police force with French tyranny. Nevertheless, about 1750, Sir John Fielding, a Bow Street magistrate, and his half-brother picked men to police the street under the direct control of the Bow Street magistrates. This first police district made an impact on the increasing violence of the times. In 1753, a proposal before Parliament to have a national census was also defeated by public fear of liberty being curtailed by having to make account of the number and circumstances of one's family and giving out information that could be used by enemies both in the realm and abroad.
In 1714, the mercury thermometer was invented by Gabriel Fahrenheit of Germany; this was much more accurate than the alcohol and water thermometers. Sweden's Anders Celcius invented the Celsius scale. The hydrometer, which measures air humidity, was also invented. These made possible weather forecasting. In 1718, the French chemist Etienne Geoffroy published a table of affinities among chemical substances, a precursor to the periodic table of elements. Carolus Linneaus, a Swedish naturalist and botanist, established the scientific method of naming plants and animals by genus and species. When he showed that there was a sexual system in plants, church authorities were so shocked that they suppressed this knowledge as they did other scientific knowledge. Rev. Stephen Hales made ventilators for ships, prisons, and granaries, using the method of injecting air with bellows. This saved many lives in the prisons. In 1727, he discovered that water that plants lost by evaporation was restored by the roots up the stems. He found that gas could be obtained from plants by dry distillation and invented a way to collect gases by heating certain substances.
Hans Sloane, the son of a receiver-general of taxes, who became a physician, had collected hundreds of species of plants in Jamacia while physician to its governor. He became physician to George II and was a benefactor to many hospitals and devised a botanic garden in London for the Society of Apothecaries.
Italian Luigi Marsigli started the science of oceanography with a treatise discussing topography, circulation, ocean plants and animals, along with many measurements. Frenchman Jean-Etienne Guettard prepared the first true geological maps, showing rocks and minerals. He identified heat as the causative factor of change in the earth's landforms. John Mitchell studied earthquakes.
In 1735, George Hadley, a London lawyer and philosopher, determined that the cause of the prevailing westerly winds was the rotation of the earth to the east. Benjamin Franklin in 1743 observed that a particularly violent storm occurred in Boston a day after a particularly violent occurred in Philadelphia, and realized that they were the same storm, even though the storm's surface winds were from the northeast. He determined that Atlantic coastal storms traveled from the southwest to the northeast. In 1770, he prepared the first scientific chart of the Gulf Stream.
Daniel Bernoulli, a Swiss university lecturer in physics, mechanics, medicine, and anatomy, proved his theorem that any degree of statistical accuracy can be obtained by sufficiently increasing the observations, thereby also representing the first application of calculus to probability theory. In 1738, he showed that as the velocity of horizontal fluid flow increases, its pressure decreases. This followed from his theorem that the total mechanical energy of a flowing liquid, comprising the energy associated with fluid pressure, the gravitational potential energy of elevation, and kinetic energy of fluid motion remains constant; that is, the mechanical energy is conserved. This was the first mathematical study of fluid flow. He demonstrated that the impact of molecules on a surface would explain pressure, and that assuming the constant random motion of molecules, pressure and motion will increase with temperature. He explained the behavior of gases with changing pressure and temperature, establishing the kinetic theory of gases. Jean Nollet from France discovered osmosis, the passage of a solution through a semi-permeable membrane separating two solutions with different concentrations.
In 1754, Scotsman physician Joseph Black identified carbon dioxide, the first gas recognized as distinct from everyday breathing air. He did this by using a balance to weigh alkalies before and after exposure to heat. They lost weight by losing carbon dioxide. His development of the concept of latent heat, the quantity of heat absorbed or released when a substance changes its physical phase at constant temperature, was the first application of quantitative analysis to chemical reactions. He ascertained the effects of carbon dioxide on animals and its production by respiration, fermentation, and burning of charcoal. At this time, all flammable materials were thought to contain "phlogiston", which was given off as they burned and was associated with the transfer of heat. Plants were thought to remove phlogiston from the air and therefore burned when they were dry.
In 1773, Joseph Priestley, a nonconformist minister, schoolmaster, and tutor, identified oxygen by heating red oxide of mercury. He had become interested in the study of gases by watching the process of fermentation in a brewery next to his house. Using a candle, mice, and plants in jars sealed over water, he showed that the processes of combustion, respiration, and putrefaction caused one-fifth of air exposed over water to disappear, and that plants restored air vitiated by these processes. This discovery of where breathable air comes from helped explain the system of life on the planet. When he isolated oxygen, he noted that it was better than air in supporting respiration and combustion.