The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1881-04-09 00:00:00

THE BOW- STREET POLICE- COURT.

The old police-court at 4, Bow-street, London,
was used for magisterial cases for the last time
on Saturday. Mr. Flowers sat throughout the day,
and was, therefore, the last magistrate to give
judgment in this famous old building, associated
with the names of the two Fieldings, Sir
William Addington, Sir Richard Ford, Mr. Read, Sir
Nathaniel Conant, Sir Robert Baker, Sir Richard
Birnie, Mr. T. J. Hall, Sir Thomas Henry (by whose
perseverance and industry the grant was obtained fcr
the present new courts), and Sir James Ingham, who
is the present chief magistrate. The above represent
the chief magistrates from 1750 to the present time.
The salary of Fielding and his contemporaries was
£4OO. This was afterwards raised to £OOO. The Bow.
street runners were dispensed with about the year
1829, when Sir Robert Peel's Police Act came into
force.

The Standard, in notichig the removal of Bow-street
Police-court, remarks:—

But if the Old Bow-street Police Office has passed
away, its memories will always remain. Most lovers
of curious books have looked over the famous "Morn-
ings at Bow-street," illustrated by the late George
Cruikshank—a work which in its time had as wide a
ponularity as "The Rejected Addresses." And, long
before "Mornings at Bow-street" first appeared, the
so-called Bow-street runners, or—as they were
named from their red plush waistcoats-4 Robin
Redbreasts," had laid the foundation upon which
our existing detective force is organised, and
had made Bow-street and its environs notorious.
The " Runner " held a strange position—somewhat
intermediate between that of Jonathan Wild and his
brother "thief-takers "and our own detective organ-
isation. Townsend, the chief of this old force, was a
man of great sapcity and astuteness. Many con-
temporary portraits of him can still be picked up at
bookstalls and old curiosity shops. He wore a low-
crowned farmer's hat, a green coat with gilt buttons, a
cherry-blossom plush waistcoat, knee breeches, and
top boots, and this especial uniform was strictly copied
by his subordinates. He was a man of immense nerve
and resolution, and his autobiography, had he ever
written it, would have been a most vivid picture of
his own times. Nor is this all. It is to Townsend
that we are chiefly indebted for our existing Police
Force. He had the shrewdness to recognise that pre-
vention makes core unnecessary, and that if thieves
know they are being watched they will give up their
business. He was examined in 1810 before a Com-
mittee of the House of Commons. "I have," said he
"actually come to Bow-street in the morning, and
while I have been leaning on the desk, had three or four
people come in and say, I was robbed by two highway-
men in such a place ; " I was robbed by a single high-
wayman in such a place.' People travel now safely by
means of the horse patrol. That Sir Richard Ford
planned. Where are the highway robberies now ! "
The patrol of Sir Richard Ford subsequently developed
into our existing Mounted Police Force, and Townsend,
had he lived, would have seen his views fully carried
out. He was a singularly shrewd men, and had a
positive genius for his particular work. Meantime,
with the impending demolition of the old Bow-street
Police-court there vanish the last local traces of
Townsend and of the author of "Tom Jones "—each
in his own way a striking personage in London his-
tory.