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Sir John Fielding and the Problem of Criminal Investigation in Eighteenth-Century England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

John Styles
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Extract

Eighteenth-Century England witnessed an extraordinary transformation in the capacity to disseminate information. Improvements in communications, particularly the turnpike roads and the postal service, together with the multiplication of printing presses and newspapers, underpinned what has been described as an ‘information explosion’. The changes which these developments wrought in the political and commercial life of the nation are increasingly familiar to historians. Their impact on eighteenth-century crime and policing is less so.

Type
Research Article
Information
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , Volume 33 , December 1983 , pp. 127 - 149
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society 1983

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References

* I should like to thank John Brewer, Joanna Innes and John langbein for their comments on earlier versions of this paper.

1 Brewer, J., Party, Ideology and Popular Politics at the accession of George III (Cambridge, 1976), 158CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 See in particular McKendrick, N., Brewer, J. and Plumb, J. H., The Birth of a Consumer Society (1982), passimGoogle Scholar.

3 For an analysis of the impact of newspaper advertising, see my forthcoming article on crime advertising in the eighteenth-century provincial newspaper.

4 For general surveys of Fielding's activities see Leslie-Melville, R., The Life and Work 0f Sir John Fielding (1934) andGoogle ScholarRadzinowicz, L., A History of English Criminal Law (4 vols., 1948–1968), iii (1956), 11–62Google Scholar.

5 The following discussion is based on Bradford City Library (henceforth B.C.L.), Deeds Collection, 16/11/10, Samuel Lister's letters and undated drafts on the case. For a fuller account of Lister's career as a magistrate and the contribution to it of this case, see Styles, J., ‘An eighteenth-century magistrate as detective: Samuel Lister of Little Horton’, Bradford Antiquary, New Ser., 47 (1982) 98–117Google Scholar.

6 B.C.L., Deeds, 16/14/10, Richard Wilson to Lister, 19 Jan. 1756.

7 They would have been able to plead ‘autrefois acquit’.

8 B.C.L., Deeds, 16/14/10, draft of Lister to anon., n.d. (about 1 Feb. 1756).

9 B.C.L., Deeds, 16/14/10, draft of Lister to Mr Rookes, 26 May 1756.

10 B.C.L., Deeds, 16/14/10, draft of Lister to ‘Dear Alan’, n.d.

11 Take, for example, Thomas Rowden, with Dick Turpin and Samuel Gregory one of a group of men who achieved extraordinary notoriety as a result of their robberies in the London area in 1734 and 1735. They were advertised in the official London Gazette and much reported in other London newspapers. Rowden, having fled to Gloucester-shire and adopted an alias, was apprehended there in 1736 for putting off counterfeit coin and convicted. Neither at his trial nor during nine months he subsequently spent in Gloucester gaol was his true identity discovered. See Barlow, D., Dick Turpin and the Gregory Gang (Chichester, 1973), 123, 231–2, 241–4, 301–3Google Scholar.

12 For Poulter see Baxter, J.Poulter alias, The Discoveries of John Poulter alias Baxter (6th edn., Sherborne, 1753), 3–27Google Scholar. For the Coventry gang see Hewitt, J., A Journal of the Proceedings of J. Hewitt, Senior Alderman of the City of Coventry and one of His Majesty's Justices of the Peace for the said City and County, in his Duty as a Magistrate (2nd edn., 2 vols., Birmingham, 1790), i, 117–220Google Scholar.

13 See Barfoot, P. and Wilkes, J. (compilers), The Universal British Directory of Trade, Commerce and Manufacture (2nd edn., 5 vols., 1793)Google Scholar, passim. It is curious that Lister did not attempt to write to the mayors of Gloucester, Bath or Bristol, who were magistrates ex officio and could be located without knowledge of their names. However, it is also striking that the surviving documents suggest he wrote only to people to whom he had a formal introduction from someone in Yorkshire. Perhaps he considered such connections were more to be depended on in such a case than the sometimes questionable enthusiasm of anonymous magistrates for upholding the law.

14 The editions of The General Evening Post that carried Lister's advertisement (which appeared twice) do not appear to have survived. It is possible to establish the approxi-mate cost to Lister by comparing a draft of the advertisement among his papers with the run of The General Evening Post for 1736 held at the Guildhall Library, London, which carries the prices charged for different lengths of advertisement.

15 This was the predicament of which John Hewitt, the extraordinarily active Cov-entry magistrate, complained to the Treasury in 1766. See P.R.O., T1/449, Treasury In-letters, 1766, Memorial of John Hewitt, 20 March 1766.

16 Cranfield, G. A., The Development of the Provincial Newspaper, 1700–1760 (Oxford, 1960), 21, 202–6Google Scholar.

17 Take, for example, The Gloucester Journal in the years 1754 and 1755. Although crime advertisements came from quite distant parts of south and mid Wales, which evidently fell within the paper's territory, all those originating in England came either from Gloucestershire itself, or from immediately adjacent counties, with the sole exception of one from a place in Shropshire barely fifty miles from Gloucester.

18 The General Evening Post in 1736 carried crime advertisements from as far away as Yorkshire, Bristol and Norfolk, and The London Evening Post in 1756 as far as Flintshire and Lancashire, although in both cases the vast majority of their crime advertisements originated in the metropolis or adjacent counties.

19 B.C.L., Deeds, 16/14/10, A.B. to Lister, n.d. (about 3 Feb. 1756).

20 For example, Radzinowicz, , History, iii. 47–54Google Scholar; Pringle, P., Hue and Cry: The Birth of the British Police (1965), 183–194Google Scholar; Critchley, T. A., A History of Police in England and Wales, 900–1966 (1967), 32–5Google Scholar.

21 Radzinowicz, , History, iiiGoogle Scholar. Appendix i, 479–485, reprints four of the circulars, and some of the covering letters. For the fifth circular (that dated Bow Street, 11 Sept. 1773) and other covering letters, see Surrey Record Office, Kingston, Q5 2/6, Surrey Quarter Sessions bundles, Mich. 1772 to Mich. 1773. The following outline of the Plan is, unless otherwise stated, based on these circular letters.

22 Manchester Mercury, 22 and 29 Dec. 1772.

23 For Henry Fielding see Covent Garden Journal, 30 June 1752; for De Veil see Pringle, , Hue and Cry, 68–9Google Scholar. A clearing house for criminal information, operating mainly within the London area, but with provincial connections, had been the lynchpin of Jonathan Wild's activities in the 171 os and 1720s: see Howson, G., Thief- Taker General (1970), 66–9 and 125–6Google Scholar.

24 London Evening Post, 5 Feb. 1756.

25 See York Courant, 8 Nov. 1763; London Evening Post, 7 Aug. 1766; Salisbury Journal, 1 Sept. 1766; Cambridge Chronicle, 3 Aug. 1771. By the 1760s Fielding was already experienced in the use of such advertisements in provincial papers, having employed them to promote his Universal Register Office during the previous decade. See, for example, Gloucester Journal, 16 July 1754.

26 His advertisements about offenders and offences in the London evening and provincial newspapers before 1772 were essentially sporadic. He continued after that year to place advertisements in the provincial press on the same basis. See Manchester Mercury, 14 Sept. 1773 and Norwich Mercury, 24 Dec. 1773.

27 Some, but not all, of the copies of The London Packet or Mew Lloyd's Evening Post for the period Fielding used it survive in the Bodleian Library. I have been unable to discover any copies earlier than 1786 of The Hue and Cry that Fielding and his successors published from Oct. 1773. However, a virtually continuous run of much of the information Fielding and his successors inserted in these publications is available from Dec. 1772 in The Newcastle Courant, which reprinted most of it on its front page.

28 Although it should be noted that the vast majority of entries in The Hue and Cry carried rewards.

29 P.R.O., SP 37/10, Sir J. Fielding to Earl of Suffolk, n.d. (January 1773).

30 Surrey Record Office, Kingston, Q5 2/6, Surrey quarter sessions bundles, Mich. 1772, Sir J. Fielding to T. Lawson, 17 Oct. 1772.

31 Fifteen borough quarter sessions records were surveyed.

32 Newcastle Courant, 20 July 1776.

33 The counties of Northumberland, Cumberland and Durham are not included in this calculation because entries from those counties went in the local crime section.

34 Newcastle Courant, 31 July, 21 Aug. 1773; 5 and 12 Mar., 23 July 1774. Salisbury Journal, 14 Feb. 1774.

35 For other successful cases see Chelmsford Chronicle, 23 July 1773; Leeds Intelligencer, 19 Oct. 1784; Manchester Mercury, 9 Feb. 1773; Newcastle Courant, 11 Sept. 1773; Nottingham and Newark Journal, 1 May 1773; Norwich Mercury, 9 Nov. 1776; Reading Mercury, 12 Sept. 1774.

36 The Sept. 1772 and Mar. 1773 lists (the second included a list of those in the first who had been apprehended) survive in several quarter sessions collections, for example Essex Record Office, Q/SB b 2 72/58 and 64, Essex quarter sessions bundles, Easter 1773.

37 London Evening Post, 14 Jan. 1775; Norwich Mercury, 9 Nov. 1776; Burn, R., The Justice of the Peace and Parish Officer (16th edn., 4 vols., 1788), ii. 655–6Google Scholar.

38 Fielding's provincial reputation was such by 176a that in that year a Penrith bailiff who operated a horse theft and retrieval operation along the lines of Jonathan Wild could refer to himself as‘Justice Fielding’: P.R.O., ASSI45/26/6/50 P: Assizes Northern Circuit Depositions, examination of J. Winter, 10 Aug. 1762.

39 For public familiarity with the Coventry Gang, see York Courant, 30 Oct. 1764; for indictments see Hay, D., ‘War, Dearth and Theft in the Eighteenth Century: The Record of the English Courts’, Past & Present, no. 95 (1982), 123–6, 135–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

40 Fielding circular dated 19 Oct. 1772.

41 The Clerk of the Peace for Cumberland was ordered early in 1772 thereafter to make out lists of the names and descriptions of vagrants passed; Cumbria Record Office, Carlisle, Q 7/3, Cumberland quarter sessions Public Order Book, 1767–78, Easter 1772.

42 Undated printed circular from J. Fielding headed ‘To the Acting Magistrates of the Counties at large throughout ENGLAND, in their Quarter Sessions assembled’. This circular and its covering letter, dated 28 Feb. 1775, survive in several quarter sessions collections, for example Kent Record Office, Q/SB 1775, Kent quarter sessions papers, 1775.

43 Cumbria Record Office, Kendal, WQO/9, Westmorland quarter sessions Order Book, 1770–80, Easter 1775; Suffolk Record Office, Ipswich, B105/2/44, Suffolk quarter sessions Order Book, 1770–1776, Beccles, Easter 1775; Lincolnshire Record Office, Lindsey quarter sessions Minute Book, 1774–7, Gainsborough, Easter 1775; Stafford-shire Record Office, Q/SO 17, Staffordshire quarter sessions Order Book, 1775–81, Easter 1775; Devon Record Office, Exeter, Q/S 1/2, Devon quarter sessions Order Book, 1759–1776, Easter and Summer 1775.

44 Humberside Record Office, Beverley, QSV 1/6, East Riding quarter sessions Order Book, Michaelmas 1775 and Easter 1776; Derbyshire Record Office, Derbyshire quarter sessions Order Book, 1774–80, Easter 1775; Lincolnshire Record Office, Holland quarter sessions Minute Book, 1771–84, Spalding and Boston, Easter 1775.

45 Given the difficulty of proving a negative this cannot be a definite conclusion. It is based on a survey of quarter sessions collections and, in the case of the East Riding, Derbyshire and Holland, of parish (particularly contables') records.

46 Hertfordshire Record Office, LSMB/I: St Albans Liberty quarter sessions, Draft Minute Book, 1776–86, Epiphany Sessions 1777.

47 S. and Webb, B., The Parish and the County (1963), 501Google Scholar; Cumbria Record Office, Carlisle, Q/7/3: Cumberland quarter sessions Public Order Book, 1767–78, Easter Sessions, 1772.

48 For example see Gloucestershire Record Office, Q/SO/5, Gloucestershire quarter sessions Order Book, 1724–34, Summer Session 1724.

49 For the character and duties of high constables see , S. and Webb, B., The Parish and the County, 489–502Google Scholar and Cumbria Record Office, Kendal, Browne of Troutbeck Mss., vol. XV, Accounts of Benjamin Browne's disbursements as high constable of Kendal Ward, 1711–31.

50 Clarke, J. N., Watch and Ward in the Countryside (Horncastle, 1982), 8Google Scholar.

51 For Fielding's activities in London see the sources cited in note 4. From the 1750s Fielding used his London thief-takers on provincial pursuits and enquiries, sometimes at the request of magistrates or others in the provinces. However, their use in this way appears to have been limited and sporadic, partly because of the pressure of metropolitan business and partly because Fielding could afford to employ only a small number of thief-takers: see for examples P.R.O., T1/449, Treasury in-letters, 1766, Fielding's account for 1765–6.

52 See, for example, Radzinowicz, , History, iii, passim, iv (1968)Google Scholar, p. v, and Critchley, , A History of Police, 18–50Google Scholar.

53 For the use of ‘efficiency’ see, for example, ibid., 69 and 71, and Radzinowicz, , History, iii. 324Google Scholar.

54 See, for an example of the use of numbers of officials as a measure of their efficiency, Beattie, J. M., ‘Towards a Study of Crime in Eighteenth-Century England: A Note on Indictments’, in The Triumph of Culture: Eighteenth-Century Perspectives, ed. Fritz, P. and Williams, D. (Toronto, 1972), 309Google Scholar. For modern research which suggests that increases in police manpower do not necessarily lead to significant improvements in detection, see Burrows, J. and Tarling, R., Clearing up Crime (1982)Google Scholar.

55 I think there is a danger in some recent studies of underestimating the concern of many provincial magistrates to see serious offenders apprehended; for example, Philips, D., ‘“A New Engine of Power and Authority”: The Institutionalization of Law Enforcement in England, 1780–1830’, in Crime and the Law, ed. Gatrell, V. A. C., Lenman, B. and Parker, G. (1980), 160–1Google Scholar.