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Sir John Fielding and Public Justice: The Bow Street Magistrates' Court, 1754–1780

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 August 2010

J. M. Beattie
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Extract

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.

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Law and History Review , Volume 25 , Issue 1 , Spring 2007 , pp. 61 - 100
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Copyright © the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois 2007

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References

1. Rogers, Nicholas, “Confronting the Crime Wave: The Debate over Social Reform and Regulation, 1749–1753,” in Stilling the Grumbling Hive: The Response to Social and Economic Problems in England, 1689–1750, ed. Davison, Lee et al. (Stroud: Alan Sutton, 1992), 76–81.Google ScholarBeattie, J. M., Policing and Punishment in London, 1660–1750: Urban Crime and the Limits of Terror (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), chap. 1Google Scholar.

2. For rewards offered by Parliament and by royal proclamation for the conviction of certain felons, see below, 64.

3. For the committee and its work, see Rogers, , “Confronting the Crime Wave,” 77–98;Google ScholarBeattie, J. M., Crime and the Courts in England, 1660–1800 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), 520–25,Google Scholar 551–22; Sir Radzinowicz, Leon, A History of English Criminal Law and Its Administration since 1750, 5 vols. (London: Stevens, 1948–1986; vol. 5 with Roger Hood), 1: chap. 12; andGoogle ScholarConnors, Richard, “‘The Grand Inquest of the Nation’: Parliamentary Committees and Social Policy in Mid-Eighteenth-Century England,” Parliamentary History 14 (1995): 301–13Google Scholar.

4. See below, 68.

5. Fielding, Henry, An Enquiry into the Causes of the late Increase of Robbers (1751), ed. Zirker, Malvin R. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988).Google Scholar For Fielding at Bow Street, see Radzinowicz, , History of English Criminal Law, 3:Google Scholar chaps. 1–2; Martin C. Battestin with Battestin, Ruthe R., Henry Fielding: A Life (London: Routledge, 1989),Google Scholar Part IV; Bertelsen, Lance, Henry Fielding at Work: Magistrate, Businessman, Writer (London: Palgrave, 2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fielding, Henry, The Covent-Garden Journal and A Plan of the Universal Register Office, ed. Goldgar, Bertrand (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), IntroductionGoogle Scholar.

6. Henry Fielding, “Memorial” on the subject of the Bow Street officers, late 1753 or early 1754: Huntington Library: HM 11617.

7. The National Archive [hereafter TNA]: SP 36/153, f. 16.

8. Fielding was obliged to request the renewal of these funds every year while accounting for the previous year's expenditures. Seven of his accounts, from the 1750s and 1760s, remain among the Treasury papers at TNA: T 38/671, T 1/387, T 1/414, T 1/449, T 1/454.

9. For John Fielding's personal stipend from the Secret Service fund, see Sir Namier, Lewis, The Structure of Politics and the Accession of George III, 2d ed. (London: Macmillan, 1957), 228.Google Scholar There is no extended modern study of Fielding's work at Bow Street. Leslie-Melville, R., The Life and Work of Sir John Fielding (London: Lincoln Williams, 1905)Google Scholar contains useful material, but is largely anecdotal. See Radzinowicz, , History of English Criminal Law, 3:Google Scholar chap. 2; Langbein, John H., “Shaping the Eighteenth-Century Criminal Trial: A View from the Ryder Sources,” University of Chicago Law Review 50 (1983): 67–76;CrossRefGoogle ScholarPaley, Ruth, “The Middlesex Justices Act of 1792: Its Origins and Effects” (Ph.D thesis, University of Reading, 1983), passimGoogle Scholar.

10. Across the eighteenth century, prosecutions for property offenses in London tended to decline in years of war and to increase sharply with the coming of peace. For these fluctuations and possible explanations, see Beattie, J. M., “Crime and Inequality in Eighteenth- Century London,” in Crime and Inequality, ed. Hagan, John and Peterson, Ruth D. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995): 116–39;Google Scholar Beattie, Policing and Punishment, chap. 1; Hay, Douglas, “War, Dearth and Theft in the Eighteenth Century: The Record of the English Courts,” Past and Present 95 (May 1982): 117–60;CrossRefGoogle ScholarInnes, Joanna and Styles, John, “The Crime Wave: Recent Writing on Crime and Criminal Justice in Eighteenth-Century England,” Journal of British Studies 25 (4 October 1986): 380–435;CrossRefGoogle ScholarKing, Peter, Crime, Justice, and Discretion in England, 1740–1820 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), part 2Google Scholar.

11. For crime in the 1690s and the statutory rewards, established by Parliament in the 1690s and the early years of the seventeenth century—principally £40 to be paid on the conviction of a robber, burglar, or coiner, see Radzinowicz, , History of English Criminal Law, 2:Google Scholar chap. 3; Beattie, , Policing and Punishment, 227–32Google Scholar.

12. Hay, Douglas and Snyder, Francis, “Using the Criminal Law, 1750–1850: Policing, Private Prosecution, and the State,” in Policing and Prosecution in Britain 1750–1850, ed. Hay, Douglas and Snyder, Francis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 3–52;Google ScholarHay, Douglas, “Controlling the English Prosecutor,” Osgoode Hall Law Review 21.2 (1983), 165–86Google Scholar.

13. For thief-takers over the first half of the eighteenth century, see Beattie, Policing and Punishment, chap. 5 and 401–23; Wales, Tim, “Thief-takers and Their Clients in Later Stuart London,” in Londinopolis: Essays in the Social and Cultural History of Early Modern London, ed. Griffiths, Paul and Jenner, Mark S. R. (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001), 67–85;Google ScholarHowson, Gerald, Thief-Taker General: The Rise and Fall of Jonathan Wild (London: Hutchinson, 1970)Google Scholar; Paley, Ruth, “Thief-takers in London in the Age of the McDaniel Gang, c. 1745–54,” in Policing and Prosecution in Britain, ed. Hay, and Snyder, , 301–41Google Scholar.

14. Ekirch, A. Roger, Bound for America: The Transportation of British Convicts to the Colonies, 1718–1775 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987)Google Scholar; Beattie, Policing and Punishment, chap. 9.

15. The proclamation reward was to remain in force until 1745. It was renewed in the crime wave around mid-century, when its failure to prevent crime and the corrupt and false prosecutions it encouraged—at least one of which resulted in the execution of an innocent man—was the principal reason the government turned to Henry Fielding in 1753. Beattie, , Policing and Punishment, 378–80,Google Scholar 383, 401–9; Paley, , “Thief-takers in London in the Age of the McDaniel Gang,” 301–40Google Scholar.

16. Beattie, , Policing and Punishment, 103–8.Google Scholar For efforts at the local level in this same period to prevent crime by strengthening the nightwatch and improving street lighting in the City of Westminster and the City of London, see Reynolds, Elaine A., Before the Bobbies: The Night Watch and Police Reform in Metropolitan London, 1720–1830 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Beattie, Policing and Punishment, chap. 4.

17. Langbein, John H., The Origins of Adversary Criminal Trial (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), chap. 3.Google Scholar The accused's right to full defense by counsel was not to be established until 1836. On the history of the trial in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, see also May, Allyson N., The Bar and the Old Bailey, 1750–1850 (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 2003)Google Scholar; Cairns, David J. A., Advocacy and the Making of the Adversarial Criminal Trial (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998)Google Scholar; Lemmings, David, Professors of the Law: Barristers and English Legal Culture in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000),CrossRefGoogle Scholar chap. 6; Landsman, Stephan, “The Rise of the Contentious Spirit: Adversary Procedure in Eighteenth-Century England,” Cornell Law Review 75 (1990)Google Scholar; Beattie, J. M., “Scales of Justice: Defense Counsel and the English Criminal Trial in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries,” Law and History Review 9 (1991): 221–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18. For the Marian legislation—1& 2 P. & M., c. 13 (1554–5), 1 & 2 P. & M., c. 6 (1555)— see Langbein, John H., Prosecuting Crime in the Renaissance: England, Germany, France (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974), part 1CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19. For the “Marian pretrial,” see Langbein, , Origins of Adversary Criminal Trial, 40–47.Google Scholar The magistrates in the City of London applied the Marian rules in the late seventeenth century, sending all cases on to trial that were charged as felonies. Beattie, , Policing and Punishment, 91–99Google Scholar.

20. Langbein, , Origins of Adversary Criminal Trial, 47, n. 181Google Scholar.

21. Beattie, , Policing and Punishment, 103–8Google Scholar.

22. For the discretionary powers that magistrates exercised in dealing with misdemeanors and minor crime in general, the process of prosecution at quarter sessions, and the changing character of summary jurisdiction in the eighteenth century, see Landau, Norma, The Justices of the Peace, 1679–1760 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), part 3Google Scholar; Landau, , “Appearance at the Quarter Sessions of Eighteenth-Century Middlesex,” London Journal 23.2 (1998): 30–52;CrossRefGoogle ScholarLandau, , “Indictment for Fun and Profit: A Prosecutor's Reward at Eighteenth-Century Quarter Sessions,” Law and History Review 17 (1999): 507–36;CrossRefGoogle ScholarLandau, , “Summary Conviction and the Development of the Penal Law,” Law and History Review 23 (2005): 173–89;CrossRefGoogle ScholarShoemaker, Robert B., Prosecution and Punishment: Petty Crime and the Law in London and Rural Middlesex, c. 1660–1725 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 225–37;Google ScholarSmith, Bruce P., “The Presumption of Guilt and the English Law of Theft, 1750–1850,” Law and History Review 23 (2005): 133–71;CrossRefGoogle ScholarSmith, , “Did the Presumption of Innocence Exist in Summary Proceedings?” Law and History Review 23 (2005): 191–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23. Langbein provides a great deal of evidence in Origins of Adversary Criminal Trial, chaps. 3–4, of the intimate connection between the magistrates' management of evidencegathering at the pretrial phase and the trials that followed. And see his “Shaping the Eighteenth-Century Criminal Trial: A View from the Ryder Sources,” University of Chicago Law Review 50 (1983): 55–81.Google Scholar Ruth Paley's valuable edition of a Hackney magistrate's notebook records the pretrial work of a moderately active justice in the 1730s and provides some sense of the expanding discretionary powers becoming available to magistrates by then in dealing with felonies: Justice in Eighteenth-Century Hackney: The Justicing Notebook of Henry Norris and the Hackney Petty Sessions Book, ed. Paley, Ruth, London Record Society Publications, 28 (London: London Record Society, 1991).Google Scholar For changes in the form and substance of pretrial procedures in the City of London in the first half of the eighteenth century, see Beattie, Policing and Punishment, chap. 2. As we will see, the justices' pretrial process was to change even more strikingly in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Peter King has shown that magistrates in Essex were by then exercising much broader choices in their decision-making at the pretrial stage of felony prosecutions than had London magistrates a hundred years earlier: Crime, Justice, and Discretion in England 1740–1820 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), part 1Google Scholar.

24. For the status of Westminster and Middlesex magistrates—who lacked the standing of the landed gentlemen who typically served on the rural commissions of the peace—and for the work of the “trading justices,” see Landau, , Justices of the Peace, 184–90, andGoogle ScholarLandau, , “The Trading Justice's Trade,” in Law, Crime and English Society, 1660–1830, ed. Landau, Norma (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 46–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25. Beattie, , Policing and Punishment, 391Google Scholar.

26. De Veil's important career has yet to be studied in detail. His work is known in general terms—particularly the pretrial examinations he conducted in a number of famous cases. See Babington, Anthony, A House in Bow Street: Crime and the Magistracy, 1740–1881 (London: MacDonald, 1969),Google Scholar chaps. 4–5; Langbein, , Origins of Adversary Criminal Trial, 199–202.Google Scholar For his vigorous efforts to enforce the unpopular Gin Acts, see Warner, Jessica, Craze: Gin and Debauchery in an Age of Reason (New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 2002), 125,Google Scholar 149–51, 169–71. And see the contemporary Memoirs of the Life and Times of Sir Thomas Deveil, Knight (London, 1748).Google Scholar De Veil also wrote a guide for London justices: Observations on the Practice of a Justice of the Peace: Intended for such Gentlemen as design to act for Middlesex or Westminster (London, 1747)Google Scholar.

27. Paley, , “Thief-takers in London in the Age of the McDaniel Gang,” 301–40Google Scholar.

28. Information about his clerks and their work is contained in the annual accounts Fielding was obliged to submit to the Treasury every year with his request for renewal of the funds (see above, n. 8). For Fielding's use of the press, see Styles, John, “Sir John Fielding and the Problem of Criminal Investigation in Eighteenth-Century England,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., 33 (1983), especially 135–49; andCrossRefGoogle ScholarStyles, , “Print and Policing: Crime Advertising in Eighteenth-Century Provincial England,” in Policing and Prosecution in Britain, ed. Hay, and Snyder, , 55–111Google Scholar.

29. There is no detailed scholarly study of the runners. For brief accounts, see Emsley, Clive, The English Police: A Political and Social History, 2d ed. (London: Longman, 1996),Google Scholar chap. 1, and Beattie, J. M., “Early Detection: The Bow Street Runners,” in Police Detectives in History, 1750–1950, ed. Emsley, Clive and Shpayer-Makov, Haia (London: Ashgate, 2006).Google Scholar Radzinowicz deals with them only briefly in his History of English Criminal Law, 2: chap. 7, and 3: chap. 2. Palmer, Stanley H., Police and Protest in England and Ireland, 1780–1850 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 78–79Google Scholar is dismissive of their importance. For the provincial work of the runners after 1792, see Cox, David, “‘A Certain Share of Low Cunning’: An Analysis of the Work of Bow Street Principal Officers, 1792–1839, with Particular Emphasis on Their Provincial Duties” (Ph.D. thesis, University of Lancaster, 2006).Google Scholar There is a brief account of the substance and argument of the thesis in Eras 5 (Nov. 2003)Google Scholar [www.arts.monash.edu.au/eras]. More popular treatments of the runners include: Armitage, Gilbert, The History of the Bow Street Runners, 1729–1829 (London: Wishart, 1932)Google Scholar; Babington, Anthony, A House in Bow Street: Crime and the Magistracy, 1740–1881 (London: MacDonald, 1969); andGoogle ScholarPringle, Patrick, Hue and Cry: The Story of Henry and John Fielding and Their Bow Street Runners (London: William Morrow, 1955)Google Scholar.

30. See below, 73.

31. Beattie, , Policing and Punishment, 108–13Google Scholar.

32. TNA: T 1/372/109; British Library [henceforth BL]: Add Mss 32862, f. 375; Add Mss 32874, f. 379.

33. TNA: SP 44/138, p. 182 (I am grateful to Norma Landau for that reference).

34. BL: Add Mss 38334, ff. 75–79—an abstract of the Plan of Police that Fielding presented to George Grenville, 1762; reproduced in Radzinowicz, , History of English Criminal Law, 3:Google Scholar appendix I, 477–79.

35. London Metropolitan Archives [henceforth LMA]: MC/SJ (Rotation Committee Papers, 1763–64). On the efforts to create rotation offices in these years, see Paley, , “The Middlesex Justices Act of 1792,” 187–201Google Scholar.

36. Paley, “The Middlesex Justices Act of 1792,” chap. 6.

37. By the Middlesex Justices Act (32 Geo. III, c. 53).

38. TNA: T 1/449, f. 45.

39. Sir Fielding, John, Extracts from such of the Penal Laws as Particularly relate to the Peace and Good Order of this Metropolis (London, 1768; 1st ed. 1761), 7. According to Edward Sayer (who, as the deputy high steward of Westminster, had good reason to know) a system of stipendiary magistrates was being discussed in 1768 for the City of Westminster. It may have been the failure of that more general plan that enabled Fielding to persuade the Grafton administration to increase its support for his office.Google ScholarSayer, Edward, Observations on the Police or Civil Government of Westminster with a Proposal for a Reform (London, 1784), 32–33Google Scholar.

40. Gazetteer, 5 Jan. 1771Google Scholar.

41. For the 1742 print showing De Veil examining an accused, see Graham, Clare, Ordering Law: The Architectural and Social History of the English Law Court to 1914 (London: Ashgate, 2003), 168Google Scholar; for the dating to c. 1750 of a drawing of Bow Street by Marcellus Laroon, see Battestin, , Henry Fielding, ix–xGoogle Scholar.

42. The Malefactor's Register: or, the Newgate and Tyburn Calendar (1779), vol. 5:Google Scholar frontispiece. This engraving is reproduced in Langbein, , “Shaping the Eighteenth-Century Criminal Trial,” 74, inGoogle Scholar Leslie-Melville, The Life and Work of Sir John Fielding, frontispiece, and in Graham, , Ordering Law, 170Google Scholar.

43. He had been asked in court if he could identify Fielding's signature and replied that he could do so because he saw his distinctive scrawl on the document accompanying the commitment of accused felons very frequently (OBP, Jan. 1757, Charles Butler [t17570114–30]). Accounts of trials at the Old Bailey were published in pamphlet form after the eight sessions of the court under the title, The Proceedings at the Sessions of the Peace, and Oyer and Terminer, for the City of London, and on the King's Commission of Gaol-Delivery of Newgate, held in Justice-Hall in the Old-Bailey for the City of London and County of Middlesex… followed by the date. In citing these trials, I refer to the digitized version available on-line at Old Bailey Proceedings Online (www.oldbaileyonline.org). I follow the editors' suggested citation guide: OBP, date of Old Bailey session, name(s) of accused, reference number of the trial. The unique reference number makes it easy to find a trial. Cited quotations can be found by means of a keyword search.

44. The figures quoted here are based on a 10 percent sample of the Newgate gaol calendars—the lists of accused being held in gaol awaiting trial on the eve of the Old Bailey sessions, which include the names of committing magistrates—between 1756 and1780. The calendars formed the outside wrapper of the sessions roll. (LMA: OB/SR). The data over three periods in Fielding's years are as follows:

In a sample of eight sessions in the years 1780–92 (following Fielding's death), commitments from Bow Street were to fall to a level of just over 20 percent as a result of the increasing numbers of defendants committed by the other public offices.

45. Observations on the Police or Civil Government of Westminster, iv.

46. Langbein, , “Shaping the Eighteenth-Century Criminal Trial,” 69Google Scholar.

47. Landau has shown that Fielding was criticized by the Middlesex bench on at least one occasion for interfering in the prosecution of a case that had originated with another magistrate: “The Trading Justice's Trade,” in Law, Crime and English Society, 58.

48. OBP, Dec. 1765, Stephen Wheat and Robert Tull (t17651211–48).

49. OBP, May 1780, William Lessingham and Peter Brown (t17800510–40).

50. OBP, May 1780, Thomas Humphreys and Thomas Johns (t17800510–33).

51. OBP, July 1770, John Stretton (t17700711–26).

52. OBP, July 1784, Robert alias John Moore (t17840707–2).

53. For example: OBP Feb. 1767, Joseph Guy (t17670218–38); OBP, May 1767, Thomas Donnelly (t17670429–10); OBP, April 1773, William Collins, Thomas Oats, Thomas Spooner (t17730421–10). In a deposition given before the Bow Street magistrates, Moses Morant, a runner, testified that he had found a pawn ticket on Alexander Duff. This led him to the pawnbroker who had taken a stolen cloak in pawn and eventually to the shopkeeper who had lost it and the woman who had made it for him (LMA: OB/SP/April 1783/49).

54. Miles, William Augustus, A Letter to Sir John Fielding, Knt., occasioned by his extraordinary request to Mr. Garrick for the suppression of the Beggar's Opera (London, 1773), 21Google Scholar.

55. OBP, Jan. 1759, Anne Gyles, alias Friday (t17590117–25).

56. OBP, Jan. 1759, Edward Cleaver and Elizabeth Sharp (t17590117–30).

57. Langbein has traced the emergence of the “confession rule” in Origins of Adversary Criminal Trial, 218–23.

58. OBP, January 1780, John McCormick (t17800112–3).

59. A judge refused to allow a written confession to be read in court in 1774 when John Leigh, the chief clerk at Bow Street, acknowledged under questioning from the bench that Fielding had told him that if he confessed “he would endeavour to save his life.” (OBP, September, 1774, Amos Merritt (t17740907–62). Henry Morgan, on trial for murder in 1784 claimed that the Bow Street magistrate, William Addington, had pressured and persuaded him into signing a confession. He had taken him into a room by himself, Morgan said, and told him that “if I did not make some confession or other I should be sent to prison, and locked up, and loaded with irons, and nobody should see me; and if I would make any confession I should have every thing done that could be, and should be pardoned.” Addington was not in court to be questioned, but Nicholas Bond, the clerk who had recorded the confession, was able to persuade a sceptical court that Morgan had given it freely and voluntarily and it was admitted. OBP, September 1784, Henry Morgan (t17840915–1).

60. OBP, Feb. 1784, John Jacobs, Samuel Selshire, and Richard M'Donald (t17840225–11).

61. A lawyer prosecuting a former servant who had confessed to Jealous and Carpmeal when they apprehended him in Bath, assured the bench that he had said nothing to induce his confession and that “I take it for granted the officers are too much used to propriety in business, to do anything of that kind.” (OBP, Dec 1785, Charles Seymour, alias Moore (t17851214–1).

62. The first surviving example is dated 28 October 1783 (LMA: SP/OB/Oct.1783/52).

63. For a full account of the cases at the Old Bailey that reveal the adoption, functioning, and eventual modification of the corroboration rule, see Langbein, , Origins of Adversary Criminal Trial, 203–17Google Scholar.

64. Fielding, , Enquiry into the Causes of the Late Increase of Robbers, 158–63Google Scholar.

65. OBP, May 1756, Charles Cane and Thomas Williams (t17560528–22); General Evening Post, 20–2 July, 1773Google Scholar.

66. OBP, Oct. 1772, James Kennedy and James Divett (t17721021–54).

67. OBP, Dec. 1765, James Wilkins and Robert Scott (t17651211–6).

68. OBP, Feb. 1784, John Fox and John Jones (t17840225–8).

69. General Evening Post, 28–30 Jan. 1772.

70. Langbein, , “Shaping the Eighteenth-Century Criminal Trial,” 91–95.Google Scholar For the case, see Andrew, Donna T. and McGowen, Randall, The Perreaus and Mrs. Rudd: Forgery and Betrayal in Eighteenth-Century London (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001)Google Scholar.

71. His reasons for refusing to admit men as king's evidence were rarely stated. He refused one man on the grounds that he was an “old offender” (OBP, Dec. 1768, John Andrew Martin (t17681207–9). He told another man that he could not be admitted an evidence “as part of the property was found upon him” (OBP, June 1770, James Lee and Thomas Cook (t17700630–24). Others may have been refused because their evidence was not required (OBP, June 1772, Joseph Guyant and Joseph Allpress, alias Allprice (t17720603–44); OBP, April 1773, John Birch, Richard Bolton, and John Duffey (t17730421–39). And see, Morning Chronicle, 11 June 1772; General Evening Post, 1–3 Feb. 1774. In the mid-1780s the judges undermined the force of the corroboration rule in a judgment that changed its basis: rather than excluding as unsafe the uncorroborated evidence of a witness who was testifying to save his life, the judges agreed in Atwood and Robbins that such evidence could be retained if judges cautioned juries about its inherent dangers. Langbein, , Origins of Adversary Criminal Trial, 212–17Google Scholar.

72. The runners gave evidence, for example, in felony cases tried at the assizes on the Home Circuit—the counties surrounding London. In four assize sessions in Surrey, surveyed between 1770 and 1790, a total of 18 Bow Street officers gave evidence in 26 cases; in Essex in four sessions in the same years, 12 runners appeared in 7 cases; and in Kent, 8 testified in 5 trials (TNA: ASSI/94/1059–62, 1124–7, 1329–35, 1258–61). For the runners' involvement in cases in Essex in the 1780s, see King, , Crime, Justice, and Discretion, 78Google Scholar.

73. In January, 1753 a defendant was said to have been “brought from New Prison [to Bow Street] a second time.” OBP, Jan. 1753, Joseph Hall (t17530111–27).

74. 25 Geo. II, c. 36, s. 12 (1752). According to Fielding's account of a Bow Street session at which he examined thirty “idle, dissolute, and suspicious persons,” several members of parliament who were present “declared themselves sensible of the Necessity of a Law to detain all such suspicious Vagabonds, till they can be advertized, and seen by Persons lately robb'd.” The Covent-Garden Journal and a Plan of the Universal Register Office, ed. Goldgar, , 403.Google Scholar For Fielding's interest in this addition to magisterial authority, see King, , Crime, Justice, and Discretion, 94–95Google Scholar.

75. Langbein discussed the importance of the re-examination session at Bow Street under the Fieldings, in “Shaping the Eighteenth-Century Criminal Trial,” 64, n. 243Google Scholar.

76. The Public Advertiser, 10 August 1757Google Scholar (repeated in the next five issues).

77. The Public Advertiser, 1 September 1757Google Scholar.

78. The Public Advertiser, 8 September 1757Google Scholar; on 26 September, Fielding announced in the same paper that “the supposed Highwayman Henry Clarke” had been arrested, and he encouraged victims of robberies near London over the previous three months to come to Bow Street the following day at 2 p.m. when Clarke was to be re-examined.

79. Fielding, , Extracts from such of the Penal Laws, 7Google Scholar.

80. See above, 74–75.

81. Andrew, and McGowen, , The Perreaus and Mrs. Rudd, 26–27Google Scholar.

82. Miles, , Letter to Sir John Fielding, 22Google Scholar.

83. Some newspapers headed these reports “Intelligence from the Public-office in Bowstreet” or “Proceedings at the Public-office in Bow-street”; others simply began a paragraph “Yesterday at the Public Office, Bow-street. …” I have depended on the following papers for the account of the Bow Street re-examination sessions in the 1770s: Morning Chronicle, Morning Post, Public Advertiser, Gazetteer, British Mercury, London Evening Post, General Evening Post, St. James's Chronicle. The first five were dailies, the last three bi-weeklies. A comparison of the reports of the four Wednesday meetings of the Bow Street magistrates in January 1775 (5, 12, 19, 26 January) suggests that there were at least four reporters in court. Two papers regularly printed the same report as two others; the reports in the Morning Chronicle and the Morning Post were distinctive. The London press also reported reexamination sessions at some of the Rotation Offices, but not as regularly as those at Bow Street. See, for example, General Evening Post, 13 Feb. 1772 (Litchfield Street) and 28–31 May 1774 (St. Margaret's Hill).

84. Presumably either Samuel Male, alias May, or James Wilson, who were convicted of stopping the Hampstead coach at the January 1773 sessions (OBP, Jan. 1773 (t17730113–19). Two other groups of offenders were also tried at that session for attacking the same stagecoach at other times in January, but were acquitted.

85. General Evening Post, 6–8 April 1773Google Scholar.

86. General Evening Post, 3–6, 6–8 April 1773Google Scholar; OBP, April 1773, Thomas Broadhead (t17730421–29).

87. Journals of the House of Commons, XXXII, 878–82; Parliamentary History, XVI, cols. 929–43.

88. London Evening Post, 9–11 February 1775Google Scholar.

89. Based on the Bow Street reports in the Morning Chronicle, Public Advertiser, and Gazetteer for 5, 12, 19 January 1775. The Old Bailey trial of Thomas Tunks and John Hines (at which they were both convicted and sentenced to death) is at OBP, April 1775 (t17750426–57).

90. Fielding, , Extracts from such of the Penal Laws, 7Google Scholar.

91. Morning Chronicle, 13 January 1780.Google Scholar A woman charged with theft of bank notes testified at the Old Bailey that, having asked John Clarke, a runner, if she should tell Fielding that she had found them, he replied that “that was as good a defence as she could set up.” OBP, Sept. 1776, Ann Seabright, alias Forbes (t17760911–50). Newspaper accounts occasionally noted that accused felons had “set up a defence” at Bow Street (Morning Chronicle, 14 Sep. 1780)Google Scholar or had been asked what defense they had to make, that they had said little in defense or had made a poor defense (General Evening Post, 20–22 April 1773, 8–10 Feb. 1774Google Scholar; Gazetteer, 15 January 1778Google Scholar; Morning Chronicle, 29 Jan. 1778,Google Scholar 20 July 1780; British Mercury, 1 Dec. 1780)Google Scholar.

92. General Evening Post, 19–21 Jan. 1773Google Scholar.

93. Public Advertiser, 8 July 1779Google Scholar.

94. General Evening Post, 8–10 Feb. 1774Google Scholar.

95. General Evening Post, 14–16 Jan. 1774Google Scholar.

96. OBP, July 1774, John Mattsham alias Matchem (t17740706–1).

97. General Evening Post, 14–16 January 1774Google Scholar.

98. For defense counsel at the Old Bailey, see the literature cited above, n. 17.

99. Langbein, , Origins of Adversary Criminal Trial, 136–47;Google ScholarBeattie, , Policing and Punishment, 395–99Google Scholar.

100. General Evening Post, 24–26 August 1773Google Scholar.

101. General Evening Post, 2–4 April 1773Google Scholar.

102. Morning Chronicle, 7 July 1774Google Scholar.

103. General Evening Post, 7–9 May 1776.Google Scholar For barristers at Bow Street, see also May, The Bar and the Old Bailey, 89–90; and for Silvester's career, see ibid, 36–40.

104. For Miles, who was about twenty years old in 1773, see the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004)Google Scholar.

105. Miles, , Letter to Sir John Fielding, 7Google Scholar.

106. Ibid., 8–18.

107. Ibid., 21, 22.

108. Ibid., 19.

109. Ibid., 18–25.

110. Ibid., 19–20.

111. Morning Chronicle, 25 Feb. 1773Google Scholar.

112. Miles, , Letter to Sir John Fielding, 22–23Google Scholar

113. Ibid., 19.

114. Oldham, James, The Mansfield Manuscripts and the Growth of English Law in the Eighteenth Century (Chapel Hill and London, 1992), 2:1025Google Scholar; Browne's General Law-List, 3d ed. (London, 1778), 20Google Scholar.

115. This account of the quarrel is based on the reports of the subsequent trial in the British Mercury and the Morning Chronicle, cited below, and on Lord Mansfield's notes on the case, in Oldham, , The Mansfield Manuscripts, 2:1023–26Google Scholar.

116. British Mercury, 9 Dec. 1780Google Scholar.

117. British Mercury, 11 Dec. 1780Google Scholar.

118. British Mercury, 11 Dec. 1780Google Scholar.

119. Morning Chronicle, 14 Dec. 1780Google Scholar.

120. Having reported Bow Street examinations on 7 December 1780, The Morning Post, Gazetteer, and Public Advertiser declined to do so a week later.

121. British Mercury, 11 Dec. 1780.Google Scholar Emphasis in original.

122. British Mercury, 12 Dec. 1780Google Scholar.

123. British Mercury, 13 Dec. 1780Google Scholar.

124. Miles, , Letter to Fielding, 18–25.Google Scholar The author of a pamphlet noted by a correspondent to the London Courant on 19 December 1780Google Scholar (below, n. 127) also thought that justices of the peace were taking it upon themselves to “sit in judgment on [accused] men, as if brought before them for trial instead of commitment…”

125. At least one newspaper thought that in some cases the magistrates at Bow Street made judgments about the evidence they heard. A case involving theft from the mail was put off for a week because depositions had been taken in Bedfordshire where the offense had occurred and had to be sent for. The Morning Chronicle (6 Jan. 1780) reported that “the matter will undergo a more judicial investigation” when they arrivedGoogle Scholar.

126. London Courant, 14 Dec. 1780Google Scholar.

127. London Courant, 14, 16 Dec. 1780.Google Scholar On the 17th the Courant also published a letter from a correspondent that included passages transcribed “from a pamphlet published last year” critical of public examinations and their publication. The correspondent thought that the anonymous pamphlet may have been written by Manasseh Dawes, a barrister and writer on political and legal subjects, but I have been unable to confirm that. It is not included in his work listed in Hugh Mooney's biography of Dawes, in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004).Google Scholar The question of whether “publick examinations of prisoners and afterwards publishing the same” was “proper or improper” was proposed for debate at the Westminster Forum debating society in the week in which the Attorney General's opposition was revealed in the press, suggesting the possibility that someone might speak in their favor. The result of the debate was not subsequently disclosed, but the issue had clearly attracted public attention. See Andrew, Donna T., London Debating Societies, 1776–1799 (London: London Record Society, 1994), 121.Google Scholar The question of the fairness or otherwise of pretrial publicity was to remain a controversial subject well into the nineteenth century. See, for example, Bentley, David, English Criminal Justice in the Nineteenth Century (London: Hambledon Press, 1998), chap. 5Google Scholar.

128. Gazetteer, 15 August 1782Google Scholar.

129. The Times reported four in 1788 (21 July, 20 August, 7 and 16 October) and the same number in 1789 (2 June, 7 and 8 October, 17 November).

130. British Mercury, 11 Dec. 1780Google Scholar.

131. OBP, Dec. 1786, James Watts and Francis Hardy (t17861213–2).

132. OBP, Dec. 1787, Darcy Wentworth and Mary Wilkinson alias Looking (t17871212–7).

133. For lawyers at the Old Bailey in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, see above, n. 17. For the ten-fold increase, Beattie, “Scales of Justice,” 227.

134. See above, 91, for John Silvester representing a defendant at Bow Street; for other examples of barristers acting at Bow Street, see May, , The Bar and the Old Bailey, 89–90Google Scholar.

135. Langbein, , Origins of Adversary Criminal Trial, 273–77Google Scholar.

136. The questions and answers were published in pamphlet form in Copy of Case [submitted to counsel by the Magistrates of the County of Lancaster] and Opinions (Liverpool, 1801).Google Scholar The pamphlet contains the answers to three queries from five members of the bar, including Edward Law, the future Lord Ellenborough and Lord Chief Justice, Spencer Percival, the solicitor general, and William Garrow, who had made his name in the 1780s as the leader of the Old Bailey bar. A copy of the pamphlet is in the British Library at shelfmark T.1177 (1).

137. Copy of Case, 4.

138. The first of Sir John Jervis's acts (11 & 12 Vict., c. 42) dealt with the duties of justices of the peace out of sessions with respect to persons charged with indictable offenses. For this legislation and the history of pretrial procedures in the first half of the nineteenth century, see Sir Stephen, James Fitzjames, A History of the Criminal Law of England (London, 1883), 1:220–21;Google ScholarFreestone, David and Richardson, J. C., “The Making of English Criminal Law (7): Sir John Jervis and his Acts,” Criminal Law Review (Jan. 1980): 5–16;Google ScholarPue, W. Wesley, “The Criminal Twilight Zone: Pretrial Procedures in the 1840s,” Alberta Law Review 21 (1983): 335–63;Google Scholar Bentley, English Criminal Justice in the Nineteenth Century, chap. 3.