Sir John Fielding and Public Justice: The Bow Street Magistrates' Court, 1754–1780

Abstract

John Fielding succeeded his half-brother, the novelist Henry Fielding, as the leading magistrate in Westminster in 1754 in the midst of a crime wave in London. Over the previous six years, since the peace that had brought the war of Austrian Succession to an end, frequent reports of highway robberies around London and muggings on the streets of the capital had provided constant reminders, along with the high levels of executions at Tyburn, of the depth and seriousness of the crisis. Substantial rewards for the prosecution and conviction of robbers had failed to stem the tide. Nor had new legislation, deriving from the first enquiry ever held by a parliamentary committee into the problem of crime, diminished the danger on the streets. By the fall of 1753, with crime still apparently at an alarming height and a winter approaching that could only make things worse, the central government was ready to try new measures. It was in these circumstances that the Duke of Newcastle, the secretary of state, asked Henry Fielding to suggest what might be done.

Garrow and the Detectives: lawyers and policemen at the Old Bailey in the late eighteenth century1

“…And he ensured that Bow Street and the work of his runners would become widely known by inviting the press to report on his pretrial examinations. In these ways, Fielding opened the early stages of criminal prosecution to the public much more than they had ever been before and made Bow Street not only the best known and the busiest magistrates' office in the metropolis, but what was more important, a public institution that continued after his death to be a permanent part of the administration of the criminal law in the capital (Beattie, 2007).…”

The Blind Justice Paradox: Judges with Visual Impairments and the Disability Metaphor

“…In those years, Sir John Fielding served as a magistrate at the Westminster Court. 70 In 1754, Fielding, who had gone blind about a decade beforehand, took upon himself the implementation of a programme to eliminate crime in the city. The programme had been devised by his half-brother, renowned judge and author…”

Habit, the Criminal Body and the Body Politic in England,c.1700–1800

“…One mechanism that several authors sought to promote as a means of achieving the developmemt of morality and prevention of vice and idleness also emerged from the work of Henry Fielding, who is, of course, not only famous for his treatise on the problem of crime, but also for the Bow Street patrols he established with his half brother John (Beattie, 2006(Beattie, , 2007Bertelsen, 1997;Styles, 1983). Initially, this was essentially a gang of thief takers run by magistrates, however it also developed into a system of foot patrol with a preventative intent, which John Fielding (1758a) characterised as a system of 'police'.…”