Tales from Bow Street

Joan Lock
Works of: Non-fiction

Bow Street Magistrates is already famous as being the birthplace of an efficient system of summary jurisdiction and of the early founding magistrates but it is to the lesser characters whom the author also introduces us. For example ‘the audacious Miss West’ who exchanged banter with the blind magistrate Sir John Fielding magistrate. With her partner and fellow pickpocket Barrington they plagued the audiences at the local theatres. Or Mary Scroot, alias Bandy Charlotte ‘the terror of Covent Garden’ who felled a man who refused her advances.
Magistrate the Reverend Field Flowers was a gentle as his name suggests and nervous enough to lie awake before an important case came up while one court gaoler felt that some of the cells were an admirable aviary for his collection of exotic birds. Many famous people stood in the dock but the fate of the lesser folk could be just as dramatic. After she had gone too far ‘the audacious Miss West served three years in Newgate prison, contracted gaol-fever and died a fortnight after her release whilst Barrington’s dramatic speech in the dock failed saved him from a death sentence but was sentenced to transportation for seven years in Botany Bay. He so charmed his fellow shipmates on the way out was made superintendent of the convicts and flourished in his new home from then on.