page_title: Charles Frederick Field
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: Charles Frederick Field / Career
caption_attribution_description: English: Charles Field funerary monument, Brompton Cemetery, London
context_page_description: Charles Frederick Field was a British police officer with Scotland Yard and, following his retirement, a private detective. Field is perhaps best known as the basis for Inspector Bucket in Charles Dickens's novel Bleak House.
context_section_description: Field had hoped to become an actor, but his impoverished circumstances led him to join the Metropolitan Police on its establishment in 1829. Entering as a sergeant with the E Division, he soon moved on to L Division and later the Woolwich Dockyards as an inspector. Around 1846 he joined the Detective Branch (on the retirement of Shackell), and retired as its chief in 1852.
  Charles Dickens had a particular fascination in the development of the police force in London and would occasionally accompany police constables on their nightly rounds. Through this, Field and Dickens became good friends, and in 1851 Dickens wrote the short essay On Duty with Inspector Field about Field and his work. Field was almost certainly the model for Inspector Bucket in Bleak House, and the parallel was drawn by contemporaries–so much so that Dickens wrote in to The Times to comment on the rumours, without actually denying them. There is also some suggestion that R. D. Blackmore may have based Inspector John Cutting, who appears the novel Clara Vaughan, on Field.
  In addition to these fictionalized portrayals, Field was frequently lionized by the press. In 1850 Dickens wrote three articles for the journal Household Words in which he told stories of the adventures and exploits of the new detectives. With these articles he supplied character sketches of the detectives, with only the names changed. He gives us this description of Field:
  ...a middle-aged man of a portly presence, with a large, moist, knowing eye, a husky voice, and a habit of emphasising his conversation by the air of a corpulent fore-finger, which is constantly in juxta-position with his eyes or nose.
caption: Funerary monument, Brompton Cemetery, London
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