The Blind Beak of Bow Street

The Blind Beak of Bow Street

THE BLIND BEAK OF BOW STREET

by John Dashney

Can a blind man be a policeman? This one was--and

he lived

more than 200 years ago. Here is his story as it

appeared in

Lifeprints.

One of England's first and greatest policemen was

blind.

Sir John Fielding, the younger half-brother of

the great

English novelist Henry Fielding, was born in

1721. He joined the

navy as a youth, but an accident cost him his

sight at the age of

nineteen. This was in 1740, nearly 70 years

before Louis Braille

would be born. There were no radios, no tapes--no

known way for a

blind person to be able to read. So what did John

Fielding do?

He opened a business which he called the

Universal Register

Office. This was a combination labor exchange,

travel agency,

information office, real estate agency, and

insurance company.

John ran it single-handed. In his spare time, his

brother Henry

taught him law.

Henry Fielding, when not writing novels such as

Tom Jones,

had become a magistrate. This was an office

something like that

of a justice of the peace.

Henry had the power to investigate crimes,

question

suspects, and then either release them or order

them held for

trial. He was successful enough to be given the

title of Chief

Magistrate. He was, in fact, what we today would

call a chief of

police--except that London of the 1750's had no

organized police

at all!

Imagine a city of over half a million people,

terrible

slums, a high crime rate, and no real police. The

few parish

constables were chosen by lot, much as we choose

juries today, to

serve for one year. Most paid substitutes to take

their place,

and many of the substitutes were as dishonest as

the criminals

they were supposed to control. Most of the rest,

along with the

night watchmen, were too disorganized, too

feeble, or too

frightened of the powerful street gangs to be of

any use.

Henry Fielding tried to change all this. He drew

up plans

for controlling crime, turned his house in Bow

Street into a kind

of police station, and hired a few of the best

constables to

serve as more or less permanent police

officers--"Bow Street

Runners" was the name by which they would

soon be known.

But Henry's health was failing, and in 1754 he

had to

retire. The position, which would become known as

Chief of the

Metropolitan Police, was offered to his blind

half-brother. John

Fielding accepted it and held it until his death

in 1780.

John immediately set out to put Henry's plans to

work.

Within two years his runners had broken up most

of the gangs of

street robbers. John then organized a horse

patrol to combat the

mounted highwaymen who prowled the roads leading

to and from

London. He set up systems of rapid communication

and published

descriptions of wanted criminals and stolen

goods. We take these

things for granted now, but the Fieldings were

the first to think

of them.

John's main skills were in questioning witnesses

and

suspects. Usually he left the legwork to his

runners. But

sometimes he investigated cases personally. When,

in 1763, Lord

Harrington's house was robbed of more than three

thousand pounds

worth of silver, gold, and jewels (nearly one

hundred thousand

dollars in today's money!), John investigated the

theft

personally.

Using one of his helpers for his eyes, he spent

the whole

day and most of the night examining and

questioning. He

determined that what was made to look like a

burglary was really

an inside job. His suspicions fell on a servant,

who later

confessed.

Elementary? Perhaps. But this was more than one

hundred

years before the first Sherlock Holmes story was

written.

About this time John was knighted for his

services and

became Sir John Fielding. The common people,

though, gave him

another title--"The Blind Beak of Bow

Street." ("Beak" was the

18th century slang for anyone in a position of

authority.)

A contemporary described Sir John as wearing a

black bandage

over his eyes and carrying a switch, which he

flicked in front of

him as he entered or left his courtroom. He was

strict with

hardened criminals and was responsible for

sending many men (and

some women) to the gallows. But he was lenient

with young people,

especially first-time offenders.

There was no welfare or aid for dependent

children in the

1700's. Most of London's slum children died

before they grew up.

Most of the boys who survived became thieves, and

most of the

girls who survived became prostitutes.

Sir John tried to save as many as he could. He

helped

organize charities to feed and clothe abandoned

children, and

institutions to teach them reading, writing, and

some kind of a

trade. As a police official, he saw that the best

way to stop

criminals was to get to them before they became

criminals. In

this he was almost two hundred years ahead of his

time.

In his role of keeper of the peace, Sir John

Fielding often

had to intervene in labor disputes and sometimes

even control

rioting, angry mobs. As a negotiator, he became

known for his

fairness toward the workers and apprentices, the

poor and

underprivileged.

Curiously enough, the one group that Sir John

Fielding did

not make any special efforts to help was the

blind. This was

because he considered his own blindness as no

great handicap, and

assumed that other blind people felt the same

way.

London would not have a regular police force

until nearly

fifty years after Sir John Fielding's death, but

many of the

rules and guidelines he set down for his Bow

Street Runners are

still used in police training manuals today.

People often feel that law enforcement is no

field for a

blind person even to consider. They don't realize

that one of the

first and greatest police officials ran the

London Metropolitan

Police for twenty-six years without the aid of

any sight.