Bow Street Police Court

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Arthur H. Beavan continued his survey of London's Police Courts at the turn of the twentieth century in Imperial London, published in 1901, with a look at the Bow Street:

The present court at Bow Street, adjoining the police station, replaces one situated on the same side as the Opera House and close to Russell Street, mean and dingy, but as an institution, of world-wide fame, whose first chief magistrate was Sir John Fielding, the brother of Henry Fielding the novelist.

The new court compares most favourably as regards ventilation, etc, with some of its brethren: Worship Street, for instance, which court the magistrate described last year as "not fit to conduct public business in."

"The draughts," said he, "were excessive, and the warming utterly misunderstood. The clerk's rooms were unfit to sit in, and, indeed, the whole place would be a sorry stable for cattle."

Hard, therefore, must be the lot of certain stipendiaries, even with the solatium of their comfortable salaries which range from £1000 to £1800 per annum.

It would surely try the temper of a saint to appear on the Bench day after day for thirty-five years, as the late Sir John Bridge did, ever bestowing the greatest pains to elicit the truth in the cases before him.

At these courts are often unfolded the opening scenes in the drama of crime, played out to its tragic end, maybe, at Wormwood Scrubs, Portland, or Dartmoor, or perchance the scaffold!

Early in the morning "Black Maria" drives up from the divisional police station and deposits its occupants at the detention rooms to await their interview with the magistrate, who, on taking his seat in court, deals firstly with the night charges, usually confined to the "drunk and disorderly."

These cases are nearly always alike, ugly and nauseating; small fines or short terms of incarceration are inflicted; and the magistrate seems only too glad to be rid of them, and to proceed to the others, which vary considerably, from trivial assaults to grave and murderous attacks - for Bill Sikes is with us still.

There he stands ripening for the inevitable end, a great hulking blackguard six feet high and stout in proportion, charged with jumping on his diminutive wife and breaking her ribs, or, in company with other Hooligans, accused of pursuing his favourite amusement of half killing some practically helpless policeman.

Then come the cases, peculiar it would seem to the era we live in, of mere infants beyond their parents' control.

Two typical cases occurred last year; one of a child, described on the charge sheet as eight years old, brought before the "beak" for stealing 4 1/2d. from the till of a sweetstuff shop, and whom the father averred was so bad a boy that he could not manage him!; the other of a girl aged seven, charged with highway robbery.

She had waylaid another child aged five, and forcibly abstracted the sum of 6d.

The parents reported that she was beyond control, and had been a thief ever since she was a child of two years old!

Cases of desertion have sometimes to be heard; applications for separation orders; charges of theft, or robbery with violence; sometimes a great bank robbery case comes on; or a fashionable fortune-teller is heavily fined, or certain of the Peculiar People are brought up for neglecting to provide proper medical aid for their sick ones.

This kind of thing is daily going on in all the policecourts, though some have a larger proportion than others of charges relating to violence and the lowest forms of vice.

Next: London's Police Courts in 1900: Mansion House Court of Justice