Chronicles of Bow Street Police-Office
With an Account of the Magistrates, ‘Runners', and Police; and a Selection of the Most Interesting Cases

Published in 1888, this two-volume work depicts the Bow Street Runners, the London police force of the eighteenth century.

Percy Fitzgerald (Author)

9781108036955, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 8 December 2011

422 pages, 14 b/w illus.
21.6 x 14 x 2.4 cm, 0.53 kg

Percy Fitzgerald (1834–1925) was a prolific author, critic, painter and sculptor. He was born in Ireland and attended Stonyhurst College in Lancashire, and then Trinity College Dublin. When he moved to London, he became a contributor to Charles Dickens' periodical Household Words. This two-volume work, published in 1888, gives a stirring account of the work of London's eighteenth-century law enforcers, the Bow Street Runners. Drawing on records of criminal cases, it tells how magistrates Henry Fielding and his blind half-brother Sir John Fielding helped to set up the Runners. Their actions dramatically reduced violent crime in the city and paved the way for the modern police force. Volume 2 features a wide selection of fascinating cases including the Cato Street Conspiracy and the callous murder of William Weare.

1. A strange episode
2. Bow Street and the patent theatres
3. Bank and coach robberies
4. Accomplished swindlers
5. Various murders and robberies
6. The Greenwich tragedy
7. The murder of Weare
8. The Cato Street plot
9. The Queen's funeral in 1821
10. The resurrection men
11. Murder of the Italian boy
12. Sir J. Dean Paul and Co.
13. The Waterloo Bridge Mystery
14. Dr Bernard
15. Governor Eyre
16. The Baron de Vidil
17. 'The Flowery Land' pirates
18. Muller
19. The Clerkenwell explosion
20. The female personators
21. Kurr and Benson
22. De Tourville's case
23. 'The slate trick'
24. The dynamiters
25. The new police.

Subject Areas: British & Irish history [HBJD1]