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.