A Visit To The Bow Street Police Museum

Tucked down a little side-street called Martlett Court near Covent Garden you will find the entrance to the Bow Street Police Museum. 

Opened in 2021, it is one of London’s newest and smallest museums and is only open Friday-Sunday 11am-4.30pm, so it is important to get the timing right with this one.  

Housed in part of the building that was once the Bow Street Police Station and adjoining Magistrate’s Court, it covers the history of policing in Covent Garden, London in general and some of the high profile court cases that took place here such as the hearing of Oscar Wilde, the Pankhurst sisters and the Kray twins. 

Early Crime-Fighting

As London’s population started to rise rapidly in the 17th and 18th centuries, unsurprisingly crime continued to rise as well. Covent Garden, in particular, with its theatres, brothels and market had a reputation as a place rife with petty criminals such as pickpockets. 

Before the Metropolitan Police were set up in 1829, crime fighting in London was a patchwork system of wardens, volunteers and parish watchmen. Watchmen, or ‘Charley’s’, named after King Charles II who set them up, were generally more elderly and poorly equipped. As well as deterring criminals, their other roles included calling out the weather and escorting drunkards home.

Later ‘Thief takers’, often criminals themselves, were used. They would be paid per criminal they brought in, which, as I am sure you can imagine, was a totally watertight system, that was not open to abuse at all… 

The Fielding Brothers 

In 1748 magistrate Henry Fielding and his half-brother John Fielding as his assistant, took over a townhouse on Bow Street. Henry Fielding was also a writer and is probably best known for his 1749 novel The History of Tom Jones.

He himself had not had an untarnished life, for example in 1725, he had tried to abduct his cousin Sarah Andrews, with whom he had an infatuation, and had to flee to avoid prosecution. 

4 Bow Street had previously been the home and courthouse of Sir Thomas de Veil, a well-respected magistrate and detective. Fielding quickly established himself as London’s leading magistrate, but despite improvements, the system was still pretty corrupt and inefficient. 

The Bow Street Runners

In 1749 Fielding obtained a grant from the government to hire six men, who worked directly with him to apprehend criminals. They were trained, given equipment and paid with government funds. Unsurprisingly they were a lot more effective at fighting crime. They were known as ‘Fielding’s people’ and later the ‘Bow Street runners’, London’s first professional police force. 

Initially they did not have a uniform and instead wore plain clothes. However one particular Bow Street Runner called John Townshend was known for his flamboyent style. He apparently wanted to wear the same clothes as the king who he was protecting.

In 1751, after his health had deteriorated, Henry Fielding stepped aside and John took over the running of the place. John was blind, having lost his sight in an accident, and was nicknamed the ‘blind beak of Bow Street’. He continued Henry’s work and turned Bow Street into the headquarters of policing in London. 

The Bow Street Runners grew and later moved to a larger premises on the other side of the street. 

The Metropolitan Police

In 1822 Robert Peel became Home Secretary and proposed a single unified force, that would be large enough to not have to call in the army to deal with large protests or disturbances. In 1829 this was approved by Parliament and thus was born the Metropolitan Police force. It is from his name that we get the nickname’s ‘Bobbies’ and ‘Peelers’ from for Met police officers. 

The nickname ‘copper’, by the way, seems to have a few different theories behind it. It was first recorded as a nickname for a policeman in 1846 in London and possibly comes from ‘Constable On Patrol’, i.e. COP, or the word ‘cop’ meaning to capture, from the latin ‘capere’ or old French ‘caper’. 

The Bow Street Runners, actually carried on for a few years in a reduced capacity, before eventually being totally incorporated in the Metropolitan Police in 1839. 

The current building

The current building on the site dates from 1881. One half operated as the police station and had both male and female cells inside it. The other, to the North, was the magistrates court. 

It was designed by Sir John Taylor and according to Historic England, is in a ‘dignified, eclectic Graeco-Roman with some slightly Vanbrughian details’.

Many high profile court cases took place at Bow Street over the 266 years of its operation. 

The Suffragettes

In 1908 Suffragette sisters Christabel and Sylvia Pankhurst were arrested, along with Mrs Drummond, for causing a breach of the peace, protesting outside the Houses of Parliament. 

In court at Bow Street they all refused to ‘keep the peace’ and all served sentences in Holloway Prison (10 months for Christabel and 3 for the other two). Many other Suffragette’s were charged at Bow Street over the following years. 

The Kray twins

Ronnie and Reggie Kray, who reigned supreme over the Eastend’s clubland for decades, running protection rackets, were arrested on the 8th May 1968 for murder.

They were brought to Bow Street for their initial hearing before being taken to the Old Bailey for the trial and they were both sentenced to life imprisonment. It was such a high profile case, that the public viewing benches had to be extended. 

Ronnie died in Broadmoor Hospital in 1995 and Reggie died in 2000 shortly after being released on compassionate grounds.

Oscar Wilde

The poet, playwright and author Oscar Wilde had an affair with a young aristocrat called Lord Alfred Douglas. When Douglas’s father the Marquess of Queensbury found out about this, he accused Wilde of homosexual acts or ‘Gross indecency’ as it was in law at the time. Wilde sued the Marquess for libel, a case that he lost. In 1895 Wilde was arrested for ‘indecent acts’ and spent a night in the cells at Bow Street.

He had his hearing Bow Street before being sent for trial at the Old Bailey.

He was convicted and sentenced to two years hard labour. After he was released from Reading prison he spent the rest of his life in poverty, in self-imposed exile in Europe and died in Paris on the 30th November 1900.

Bow Street also saw the trial of murderer Dr Crippen and the hearing of Chilean dictator Pinochet for crimes under the 1984 convention Against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment.

The Museum

The police station shut in 1992 and all operations moved to the new Charing Cross police station, where the old Charing Cross Hospital had once been and the court closed in 2006. Since 2021 it has been home to the Nomad hotel and the museum.

One of my favourite parts of the museum was a 10 minute video of interviews with people who worked at Bow Street before it shut. It includes, for example, Norwell Roberts who was the first Black Met police officer. It was touching to see how much affection there was from all the interviewees about their old place of work. 

How To Visit

The museum is small (45 minutes roughly needed), but very interesting and is well worth a visit.

The Bow Street Police Museum is open Friday-Sunday 11am-4.30pm. Tickets cost £8 for an adult, but there are also concessions such as £4 for local residents.

Find out more about visiting, on their website here.

They also run walking tours, which you can find out more about here.

Thank you for reading, more of London’s historic museums below…