Judicial and Journalistic Representation in Bow Street

Abstract

Henry Fielding took the oaths for the Westminster magistracy on October 25, 1748; on November 2 he began holding court in the famous house in Bow Street, Covent Garden, formerly occupied by the magistrate Thomas DeVeil. The following January 12— primarily for economic reasons and with significant help from the Duke of Bedford—he added the Middlesex County magistracy to his appointments.1 Fielding was a “court JP”—a specially appointed urban magistrate with a heavier workload and correspondingly higher level of government financial support and judicial power than his gentlemanamateur counterparts in the country.2 Martin Battestin has called Fielding’s office “among the most cheerless and despicable in the kingdom,” one that daily brought him face-to-face with “a horrid parade of thieves and cheats, robbers and murderers, rapists and sodomites; many who reveled in cruelty, who battered women and ravished children”3—a description that may be usefully compared with the partial record of the Bow Street Magistrate’s office presented below.