Bow Street Magistrate's Court

Bow Street Police Court

Bow Street's association with the maintenance of law and order dates from 1740, when (Sir) Thomas De Veil, a justice of the peace for Middlesex, acquired the lease of No. 4 Bow Street and transferred his office there. (fn. 33) This house stood on the west side of the street a few yards to the south of the Royal Opera House on the site now covered by sheds connected with the market, and with the addition of the adjoining No. 3 in 1813 it remained the court-house of the Bow Street magistrates until the opening of the present building on the east side of the street in 1880. The first Metropolitan Police Station in Bow Street was opened in 1832 at Nos. 33–34 upon part of the site now occupied by the new telephone exchange on the east side of the street, where it remained until it too removed in 1880 to the present building adjoining the magistrates' court.

De Veil's house had been built in 1703–4 by John Browne, a surgeon. (fn. 34) The court was probably held in one of the principal ground-floor rooms. (fn. 4) Under De Veil the Bow Street office began to acquire its pre-eminence within the metropolitan magistracy, and two years after his death in 1747 Henry Fielding, the novelist and playwright, was appointed to the Bow Street office. (fn. 35) Fielding was the originator of the small band of 'thief-takers' which later became known as the Bow Street Runners, (fn. 36) and after his death in 1754 he was succeeded by his blind half-brother, (Sir) John Fielding. In 1763 Fielding's court-room was described by Boswell as a 'back hall', (fn. 37) and this no doubt was the high narrow room with a public gallery depicted on Plate 60d. (fn. 38)

On 6 June 1780 the house was attacked during the Gordon riots but the damage was evidently not extensive for on 14 June Sir John wrote to Robert Palmer, the Duke of Bedford's agent, 'My lease is not of long duration. I shou'd be glad to know from you how far it can be extended by his Grace, so as to justify my repairing the old office which I am inform'd may be easily done and which I wou'd wish to do immediately in order to establish the Public office.' (fn. 39) Sir John died on 4 September 1780 but in April 1781 his executors received a ten-year extension of the lease from the fifth Duke of Bedford, in consideration of the cost of repairing the damage sustained during the riots. (fn. 40)

By 1811, when the magistrate James Read renewed the lease of No. 4, a new court-room had been built in the yard behind (Plate 61a). This was a single-storey building measuring 20 feet by 30 feet and connected to the house by a narrow passage only 6 feet wide. Two years later in 1813 Read acquired the lease of the next-door house, No. 3 Bow Street, at the back of which there was a 'felons room' which could be entered from the room immediately behind the public office at No. 4. (fn. 41) Later the yard behind No. 3 was converted into cells and a gaoler's room. (fn. 42)

A drawing reproduced on Plate 60a shows the front of No. 4 in 1825 when it still retained much of its early eighteenth-century appearance. The court-room entrance, formed out of a window of the ground storey, is on the left.

The establishment of the Metropolitan Police by Sir Robert Peel's Act of 1829 did not affect the Bow Street magistrates' office, but the ancient parish watch-house in St. Paul's churchyard was taken over by the Metropolitan Police Commissioners (see page 126). It proved quite inadequate for the needs of the new force, and in 1832 the headquarters of the Covent Garden police division was transferred to a handsome 'new Station House' which had been built in 1831–2 on the east side of Bow Street on the site of Nos. 33–34 (fn. 43) (Plate 60c).

[...]

Meanwhile the old magistrates' court at Nos. 3–4, opposite the police station, was beginning to feel the pressures of increased business. In May 1840 the Receiver of the Metropolitan Police Force (to whom responsibility for the maintenance of the magistrates' courts had been transferred by an Act of 1839) applied to the seventh Duke of Bedford for permission to demolish and rebuild both the houses used for the court. The Duke's agent welcomed the proposal: 'on account of the vicinity of the Market and the two Theatres, I think it desirable that the Police Court should be retained in Bow Street', he wrote, (fn. 45) but the scheme was nevertheless dropped and instead the Duke granted a repairing lease of both houses. (fn. 42) Repairs included the refacing of No. 4 with a suitably imposing stucco front incorporating the royal arms (Plate 60b), but the court-room itself was not enlarged and in particular nothing was done about the narrow passage into it. Conditions in the court continued to deteriorate and in April 1860 The Builder described them as 'in winter bad, but in the heat of summer perfectly abominable'; the building should be 'entirely reconstructed'. (fn. 46)

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The old court at Nos. 3–4 Bow Street was vacated at Midsummer 1881: six years later these two houses were demolished to allow for the expansion of the market. (fn. 60)

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Footnotes

33. R.B.; T. A. Critchley, Survey of London, 1967, p. 20.

34. E/BER, Bow Street, lease of 20 Sept. 1703 to J. Browne.

35. Critchley, loc. cit.

36. Critchley, op. cit., p. 323.

37. Boswell's London Journal, ut supra, p. 281.

38. Percy Fitzgerald, Chronicles of Bow Street Police Office, 1888, vol. I, facing p. 32.

39. B.O.L., Correspondence, Fielding to Palmer, 14 June 1780.

40. E/BER, Bow Street, lease of 10 April 1781 to W. Addington and K. Brydges.

41. Ibid., Bow Street, leases of 27 May 1811 and 9 Aug. 1813 to J. Read.

42. Ibid., Bow Street, lease of 28 Feb. 1842 to J. Wray.

43. W.P.L.s, H.840, p. 190.

44. E/BER, Bow Street, lease of 5 Nov. 1832 to W. Bucke.

45. B.O.L., Correspondence, Haedy to Duke of Bedford, 23 May 1840.

46. The Builder, 21 April 1860, pp. 247–8.

60. E/BER, Solicitors' Papers, no. 73; B.O.L., Annual Report, 1887, p. 172.