Bow Street Magistrates' Court

Bow Street Magistrates' Court became the most famous magistrates' court in England in the latter part of its 266-year existence, on the specialisation of the Old Bailey to a Crown Court. It occupied various buildings on Bow Street in Central London immediately north-west of Covent Garden. Its modern-day equivalent is a set of four courts: Westminster Magistrates' Court, Camberwell Green Magistrates Court, Highbury Corner Magistrates' Court and City of London Magistrates' Court.

Predecessors were in each of the four counties in which London stood, such as the Middlesex Sessions House and its main predecessor, the Old Bailey which outlived both but saw its role upgraded.

The first court at Bow Street was established in 1740, when Colonel Sir Thomas de Veil, a Westminster justice, sat as a magistrate in his home at Number 4. De Veil was succeeded by novelist and playwright Henry Fielding in 1747. He was appointed a magistrate for the City of Westminster in 1748, at a time when the problem of gin consumption and resultant crime was at its height. There were eight licensed premises in the street and Fielding reported that every fourth house in Covent Garden was a gin shop. In 1749, as a response to the call to find an effective means to tackle the increasing crime and disorder, Fielding brought together eight reliable constables, known as "Mr Fielding's People", who soon gained a reputation for honesty and efficiency in their pursuit of criminals. The constables came to be known as the Bow Street Runners. Fielding's blind half-brother, Sir John Fielding (known as the "Blind Beak of Bow Street"), succeeded his brother as magistrate in 1754 and refined the patrol into the first truly effective police force for the capital. The early 19th century saw a dramatic increase in number and scope of the police based at Bow Street with the 1805 formation of the Bow Street Horse Patrole, which covered to the edge of London and was the first uniformed police unit in Britain, and in 1821 the Dismounted Horse Patrole which covered suburban areas.

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