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

Abstract

The article investigates the reputation of the Bow Street runners, the group of quasi-official police officers established at the Bow Street magistrates court by Henry and John Fielding in the second half of the eighteenth century. In particular, the essay studies the confrontation in trials at the Old Bailey in the 1780s between these police officers and one of the most aggressive defence counsel of the period, William Garrow, and compares their treatment with the way Garrow dealt with private thief-takers and other officers. The evidence suggests that the professional police detectives based at Bow Street enjoyed a relatively good reputation, and the essay concludes with the suggestion that this good reputation meant that when seven police offices on the model of Bow Street were established by parliament in 1792 there were no objections that each was given a similar staff of six paid detective constables. Unlike the police established in London in 1829, which was devoted to defeating crime by surveillance, the eighteenth century solution to the crime problem of the capital was detection and prosecution.