Bow Street Runners

Bow Street Runners

Bow Street Runners, London's first, professional police force. A 19th century depiction, of the courtroom at 4 Bow Street, initially, a room in the private house of magistrate Thomas de Veil
Founded	1749
Founders	Henry Fielding, John Fielding
Founding location	London, England
Years active	1749–1839
Territory	London
Ethnicity	English
Membership (est.)	6-?

The Bow Street Runners have been called London's first professional police force. The force, originally numbering six men, was founded in 1749 by the magistrate Henry Fielding, who was also well known as an author.Bow Street runners was the public's nickname for the officers, "although the officers never referred to themselves as runners, considering the term to be derogatory". The Bow Street group was disbanded in 1839.

The Bow Street Runners are considered the first British police force. Before the force was founded, the law enforcing system was very much in the hands of private citizens and single individuals with very little intervention from the state. Due to high rates of corruption and mistaken or malicious arrests, judge Henry Fielding decided to regulate and legalise their activity, therefore creating the Bow Street Runners.

Similar to the unofficial 'thief-takers' (men who would solve petty crime for a fee), they represented a formalisation and regularisation of existing policing methods. What made them different was their formal attachment to the Bow Street magistrates' office, and payment by the magistrate with funds from central government. They worked out of Fielding's office and court at No. 4 Bow Street, and did not patrol but served writs and arrested offenders on the authority of the magistrates, travelling nationwide to apprehend criminals.

Henry Fielding's work was carried on by his brother, Justice John Fielding, who succeeded him as magistrate in the Bow Street office. Under John Fielding, the institution of the Bow Street Runners gained more and more recognition from the government and although the force was only funded intermittently in the years that followed, it served as the guiding principle for the way policing was to develop over the next eighty years: Bow Street was a manifestation of the move towards increasing professionalisation and state control of street life, beginning in London.

Contrary to several popular sources, the Bow Street Runners were not nicknamed "Robin Redbreasts", an epithet reserved for the Bow Street Horse Patrol. The horse patrol, organised in 1805 by Sir John Fielding's successor at Bow Street, Richard Ford, wore a distinctive scarlet waistcoat under their blue greatcoats.