This pioneering study examines the considerable changes that took place in the criminal justice system in the century after the Restoration. The author reveals how and why an alternative means of dealing with crime emerged in the policing of London, in the practices and procedures of prosecution, and in the establishment of new forms of punishment.

This comprehensive work explores the broad question of how the English courts dealt with crime in the period during which the foundations of modern forms of judicial administration were being laid.

This is the first scholarly study of the Bow Street Runners, a group of men established in the middle of the eighteenth century by Henry Fielding, with the financial support of the government, to confront violent offenders on the streets and highways around London. They were developed over the following decades by his half-brother, John Fielding, into what became a well-known and stable group of officers who acquired skill and expertise in investigating crime, tracking and arresting offenders, and in presenting evidence at the Old Bailey, the main criminal court in London. They were, Beattie...