Sir John Fielding

Early life

Born in 1721 in St James’s, London, John was half-brother to the novelists Henry and Sarah Fielding. Nothing is known of his education and very little of his life before 1749, although John may have served in the Royal Navy. Suffering from poor eyesight, he was blinded in 1740 after what he called an ‘accident’, but which was in fact negligent treatment by a surgeon. He was awarded £500 of damages for the incident in 1741.

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A calling to fight crime

John would not let his blindness hold back his career, and together with his brother Henry, who was also a successful playwright and lawyer, set out to fight the crime that was rampant upon the streets of London.

By the early 1750s the crime rate in the capital had soared. The War of Austrian Succession had ended with the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748, and left many soldiers and mariners unemployed and turning to crime. This caused the existing parish law enforcement process to be overwhelmed and increasingly reliant on ineffective (and mostly aged) nightwatchmen, and highly fraudulent ‘thief-takers’, bounty hunters usually paid by the victims of an offence. Henry had written a satirical play about one in 1743 entitled The Life and Death of Jonathan Wild, the Great, about the villainous ‘Thief-Taker General’ Jonathan Wild, who had been hanged at Tyburn in 1725.

The Fielding brothers would form Britain’s first voluntary policing service, the plain-clothed Bow Street Runners, in 1749 (with the help of the High Constable of Holborn, Saunders Welch). On becoming Henry’s personal assistant in 1750, John helped him root out corruption and improve the competence of those engaged in administering justice in London. The Bow Street Flying Squad was essentially the first organised police force, and through the regular circulation of a police gazette in 1772 (originally called The Quarterly Pursuit), which contained descriptions of known criminals, John Fielding established the basis for the first criminal records department.

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When Henry Fielding died in 1754, John was appointed magistrate at Bow Street, Covent Garden in his place. He became renowned as the eminent ‘Blind Beak of Bow Street’ (‘beak’ being a common slang name for people in authority). John is said to have recognised 3,000 criminals by their voices alone, relying on his heightened senses of sound and touch. He also introduced a new system in which crimes could be reported in newspapers, which he hoped would encourage witnesses to come forward.

In 1763, with short-lived government funding, John raised the Bow Street Horse Patrol to combat highway robbery, which had seen an unprecedented surge after the demobilization that followed the ending of the Seven Years’ War. The noted antiquarian and Inspector of Imports and Exports, Horace Walpole, had himself been robbed by highwaymen in Hyde Park in November 1749, and areas like Hounslow Heath and Enfield Chase were notorious for highway robbery. Fielding's Patrols were ready to arrest any prowling highwayman or unmounted footpad who fell into their net.

Having broken up most of the gangs of street robbers – such as the well-to-do ‘Mohocks’ who terrorised the Strand, and the vicious Armstrong gang who were finally overcome in 1755 – and protecting the roads leading into the capital, John set up a system of rapid communication and published listings of stolen goods.

Significant successes

John was criticised by a Committee of the House of Lords for a lack of vigour in quelling riots by the Spitalfields silk weavers, and by supporters of the radical MP for Middlesex John Wilkes (who became Lord Mayor of London in 1774, and whom George III referred to as 'That Devil Wilkes') at electoral hustings in the later 1760s. Nevertheless, he was knighted in 1761 for his already considerable services to law and order.

His major achievement lay in the General Prevention Plan of 1772, which aimed to deter potential offenders by the ‘Certainty of speedy detection through the drawing of all informations of fraud and felony into one point,’ his Bow Street ‘Public Office’ headquarters.

Chairing the 1770 Committee on Burglaries and Robberies, John was also responsible for legislating the 1774 Westminster parishes Night Watch Act, which set minimum standards in terms of the number of watchmen, their pay, and their basic duties. Although he became Magistrate for the counties of Middlesex, Essex, and Surrey, John's authority was extended to all corners of the British Isles.

Ultimately John Fielding's greatest successes were in securing the arrest of the pro-American dockyard arsonist John the Painter in February 1777, who threatened to bring terror in the name of the Patriot cause upon Plymouth, Bristol and Portsmouth at the height of the Revolutionary War, and in his measures to defend London during the infamous anti-Catholic Gordon Riots of June 1780. Those riots saw both Newgate Prison and the Bank of England attacked, during four days in which London was ruled by the mob.

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Mercy and patronage

While acting under the conventions of the eighteenth century ‘Bloody Codes’ of criminal justice, John was severe with hardened criminals and responsible for sending many men and women to the gallows. However, he could be merciful, and was lenient with the young, especially first-time offenders.

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Having a genuine concern for the poor and public health, he petitioned for both the lowering of the price of basic foodstuffs, and for affordable medicines. Like William Hogarth, Fielding regarded the drinking of beer as a wholesome alternative to gin (as shown, for example, in this note).

John organised charities to feed and clothe abandoned children, and institutions to teach them reading, writing and to acquire a trade. He helped to found the Marine Society in 1756 for recruitment into the navy, and a seminary in 1769 for seafarers to equip boys for the Merchant Service (now known as the Merchant Navy).

As governor of Magdalen Hospital, he was also a life-governor of the Orphan Asylum for Deserted Girls (established in 1758), which later became the Royal Female Orphanage. John was also a member of the progressive Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce.

A long-term legacy

Although blind, John Fielding enjoyed reasonable health, and held the post of Chief Magistrate at Bow Street for twenty-five years, ultimately earning £400 and a knighthood. While assisting his more famous brother and serving as an officer of the law, he reformed the justice system and helped lay the foundations for Robert Peel’s Metropolitan Police Act in 1829, and the creation of a nationwide standing police force.

Becoming ill in early 1780, John died at Brompton Place on 4 September 1780, at the time the Gordon rioters destroyed the records he had gathered so meticulously at his Bow Street office. He was buried at All Saints Church, Chelsea.

Further reading on Sir John Fielding

Ciara Griffith, Sir John Fielding (2015).

Elaine A. Reynolds, ‘Sir John Fielding, Sir Charles Whitworth, and the Westminster Night Watch Act, 1770–1775’, in Louis A. Knafla, ed., Policing and War in Europe, Criminal Justice History Vol. 16, London, 2005.

Patrick Pringle, Hugh & Cry: The Birth of the British Police (London, 1955).

Philip Rawlings, Fielding, Sir John (2004).

R. Leslie-Melville, The Life of Sir John Fielding (1934).