Policing From Bow Street: Principal Officers, Runners and The Patroles

The starting point for many scholars studying the art and science of crime investigation wrongly begins with the creation of Robert Peel's New Police in 1829, yet basic policing and investigative elements had been tried and tested at least 80 years before that. In mid-Georgian times, the playwright and magistrate Henry Fielding realised the ineffectiveness of the Parish Police Parochial Watch system that press-ganged traders and merchants into doing their civil duty as Constables. Each Pari...