The First English Detectives: The Bow Street Runners and the Policing of London, 1750-1840, by J.M. Beattie

Abstract

This is in some ways a refreshingly old-fashioned monograph. It begins with a tale of death and depredation on the king’s highway in 1767, but any reader who is led by this to expect a history of crime from below will be disappointed. Solidly based on government archives and—where these (as so often) prove inadequate—a judicious helping of informed speculation, J.M. Beattie’s book is rather an impressive example of ‘top-down’ institutional history by a doyen of the subject. At its core is a detailed reconstruction of the procedures and practices of the Bow Street institution, and an account of the working lives of individual officers (runners) and patrolmen wherever possible. More immediately striking, however, is the strong emphasis on the far-sighted intentions of a handful of penal reformers. The book’s hero is John Fielding (magistrate from 1754 to 1780), whose ‘ideas and vision … made Bow Street the leading centre of criminal prosecution in the metropolis and, indeed, in the country, for his advice and the help of the runners were frequently sought by provincial magistrates’. He encouraged JPs to take a role in committing offenders to trial at the Old Bailey, he considerably expanded and refined the pre-trial process, he invited the press to engage with the latter proceedings, he encouraged the development of ‘a national system of criminal information, circulating throughout the country’, and much else besides. Under him, the Bow Street runners formed a stable group with some subvention from the government, and, although still mainly reliant on rewards, they were not regarded as corrupt like the ‘shadowy thief-takers’. Indeed, under Fielding, the runners successfully ‘established a public and professional character’ so as to constitute ‘a public institution … that continued after his death to be a permanent part of the administration of the criminal law in the capital’.