Bow Street Runners
Show Notes
The Bow Street Runners, like Newgate Prison, are one of those setting markers that tells historical romance readers “oh we’re in a historical romance in London, probably in pre-Victorian.” A few different authors have written whole series centered on Runners as heroes—Lisa Kleypas, Kate Bateman, Jillian Eaton, and they pop up in quite a few different standalone books as well. But like how we investigated in our Newgate Prison episode, we’re interested in the why and the how of Bow Street becoming a part of the historical romance canon of setting markers. The proto-police force existed for a little less than a century, initially differed greatly in their mission than police forces of today, and would be nearly obsolete by the time Queen Victoria was crowned.
Books Referenced
Miss Billings Treads the Boards by Carla Kelly
A Seditious Affair by KJ Charles
Lady Sophia’s Lover by Lisa Kleypas
Hello Stranger by Lisa Kleypas
Sometimes a Rogue by Mary Jo Putney
A Lady Never Surrenders by Sabrina Jeffries
Jeffrey Farnol
Works Cited:
A Just Measure of Pain: Penitentiaries in the Industrial Revolution, 1780–1850, by Michael Ignatieff, 1978
Policing the City: Crime and Legal Authority in London, 1780-1840, by Andrew T. Harris, 2004
The First English detectives: the Bow Street Runners and the Policing of London, 1750-1840 by J.M. Beattie:
“The Bow Street Runners in Fact and Fictional Narrative”, David Cox in Law, Crime and Deviance since 1700, ed. Anne-Marie Kilday and David Nash, 2016
Transcript
Emma
Welcome to Reformed Rakes, a historical romance novel podcast that would never employ a professional police force, lest we accidentally appear French. I'm Emma, a law librarian writing about justice and romance at the Substack restorative romance.
Beth
I'm Beth, and I'm on booktok under the name bethhaymondreads.
Chels
My name is Chels. I'm the writer of the romance Substack, the Loose Cravat, a romance book collector and book talker under the username chels_ebooks
Emma
The Bow Street Runners, like Newgate prison are one of those setting markers that tells historical romance readers, oh, we're in a historical romance in London, probably in the pre Victorian period. A few different authors have written whole series centered on Runners as heroes, Lisa Kleypas, Kate Bateman, Jillian Eaton, and they pop up in quite a few different standalone books as well. But like how we investigated in our Newgate episode, I was primarily interested in the why and the how of Bow Street becoming a part of the historical romance canon of setting markers. The proto police force existed for a little less than a century, initially differed greatly in their mission than police forces today, and would be nearly obsolete by the time Queen Victoria was crowned. Founded by Henry Fielding, perhaps best known for his work as a novelist, the Bow Street Runners were England's first professional police force. Up until their founding, apprehension and prosecution of a thief was thought of as a private or community matter. Bow Street was partially subsidized by the state, with an annual budget of 600 pounds, supplemented with rewards from private individuals who could afford it. Fielding was inspired by a fascination with professional thieftakers, men who made their careers by offering to go get a thief for a portion of recovered goods.
Emma
These men were generally reviled as a necessary evil, since their proximity to criminality and corruption made them suspect. The Runners were supposed to take the task of thief takers and make it professional, noble, and sanctioned. The Bow Street Runners really became their legacy under the control of John Fielding, Henry's blind half brother, who took over after Henry passed. John Fielding had a vision for policing that lays some of the groundwork for policing today. John, as Henry's secretary, established methods for documentation for stolen goods and known associations that effectively created an institutional memory for Bow Street. Like so many of the markers of Georgian and Regency settings, Bow Street Runners are a policing force on the cusp of modernity and exist in between things, in between the old model of private apprehension and the new one of a professional police force, in between roguish criminality and professional policing. Things on the cusp often make for fruitful explorations of fiction, and we'll discuss some successes of authors who use the Runner subjects, and some failures. So, Beth and Chels, what do you already know about the Bow Street Runners, either from the romance novels you've read or researched for this episode?
Emma
And what outstanding questions do you have? And we can talk about how we're going to address them today.
Beth
I feel like normally they're not used very well. We've kind of been, like, chatting throughout the week about the Bow Street Runners, and it's just like, incidentally, someone will be a Bow Street runner, plus being an earl, plus doing something else, which we have talked about how silly that is. I don't know if I'd read very many Bow Street books before this, or I just didn't notice it because it wasn't, like, a strong enough component. But, yeah, I think that's been my experience so far. I did like the Lisa Kleypas books we read for this, and I couldt tell she did the most research
Chels
I knew, I guess. Lisa Kleypas' Lady Sophia's Lover was probably one of my favorite Kleypas. And so that one actually has a lot of detail about the Bow Street Runners and Bow Street itself. So I kind of had an idea of that. But I think seeing them kind of weaved in and out by other historical romance authors, I kind of never really thought deeply about what exactly are they doing and how did they come into being? And then I think even too, like, listening to you talk about thief takers at the beginning, I was thinking about that. It's like we talked about the King's Brat for the Newgate episode. And the way that she gets apprehended and taken to Newgate isn't from a thief taker. It's from the guy that she was trying to steal. Just, like, dragging her along, which, from what I understand, that was, like, before thief takers.
Emma
Yeah. If you had the power, if you had the brawn and the gumption to do it yourself, you didn't have to hire a thief taker.
Beth
Like, literally, you just grabbed someone and they were like, they were trying to steal from me and you take them.
Chels
So if you're a thief, but if you're very fast, you're probably okay until thief takers come into the picture, right?
Emma
Yes.
Beth
And so I had a question about thief takers because they still exist at the same time as Bow Street Runners.
Emma
Right. I think that's something to keep in mind as, like, throughout the whole history of Bow Street Runners and policing is that nothing moves that quickly. Even when the Met police get founded in, I think, 1829 is the cutoff year. The Bow Street Runners exist for, like, ten more years after that. Just because they have this other professional police force doesn't mean that the Runners stop existing. Things just move slower, I think. And also, there's not, like a. The way that common law works in England, because it's not statutory at this point, really, things don't have a start date of, like, this is the law now. Everyone. It's not coming down from on high. And even when it does, someone has to be aware of that law. That's a big thing with the Bow Street Runners, is that they have to study the law for who they're grabbing, because thief takers don't do that. And this is one of the things that's going to make them more professional, is like, they're going to read the law and figure out who they need to be apprehending. See, I think things moving slower, like less communication between people.
Emma
You might not know that Bow Street's a thing in the first few decades of Bow Street, if you live in a different part of London or you live in a different part of England. So it's just not. Nothing happens all at once in any of the history that we're talking about. So there's lots of overlap.
Beth
I don't know how many questions you want us to do here, because I assume you probably answer the questions we might have.
Emma
So I think the first thing we can talk about is generally what happened in England and London before the Bow Street Runners exist. So even before we dive into concrete history of the Runners, I think we can establish what England's relationship was to policing at the time of the founding. As an abolitionist, I always think this is a useful exercise to think about models of policing other than what we have now, because I think it's really easy to think the system we have is a foregone reality. And things have always been like this, or always been moving toward what we have now. And in the history of English policing, there are a few watershed moments when things changed. So importantly, prosecution in England has historically been a private matter, and the concept of public prosecution begins to emerge at the time we're talking about. But unlike in the United States, private prosecution is still, was, by and large, the standard, and is still an option in England. As far as I understand it, the state does not have to prosecute. You could bring prosecutions on your own, and I think that's until the 60s, private prosecution is still like the mode, at least as far as the litigation goes.
Emma
But at the time that we're talking about, prosecution doesn't just mean the litigation of the crime, it means the investigation and apprehension of the offender as well. This is frequently left to private citizens in England. And I think this is the biggest mind shift to think about is like, you're always like, who's paying these people? Who's funding this? And it's like, well, it's a community matter, it's not the state. And this is a point of pride for England that they view it as community over the state. And I think, again, with the enlightenment, you can see the sort of mistrust of the state, mistrust of the king, that we are doing this in community based policing. It's like one system of policing was hue and cry, which is going to be important for the the Bow Street Runners, that phrase later, which is basically a system of yelling, you witness a crime and you as a citizen have a duty to make a lot of noise and pursue the criminal from jurisdiction to jurisdiction until the offender is taken to a sheriff.
Chels
What
Emma
this is sort of how it worked. From the 1200s when people start living in villages, to the 1600s, there are watchmen who sort of take on this duty.
Emma
These are notably not professionals. This is a duty that you have as like a citizen of a jurisdiction, a citizen of a parish. They're primarily concerned with night watches. There's a lot of anxiety about night at common law. Like a great example of this is the common law definition of burglary, which any law student would know is like, you think of burglary as like stealing something from a place with a threat of violence. But at the common law, it has to happen at night. So when you're in criminal law, you're like, this blows my mind that.
Beth
So during the day, it's like free game
Emma
It's not burglary, I don't remember what they call it, but it's only burglary if it's from a dwelling at night.
Chels
That's really good to know.
Emma
And some jurisdictions, I think that's really good to know, still limited to a dwelling. So there's all this anxiety about nighttime, and things are worse if you do them at night. So these night watches happen, and then the profession sort of changes when nightlife becomes a thing with artificial lighting. So it's like, there's less anxiety about this when they can sort of have reliable candles that are not going to burn everything down. Because originally, during 1200s-1600s, it was basically like if you were out after dark and you didn't have a good reason to be out. Like, the watchman would apprehend you and be like, what are you doing? You're probably going to burglar something. I think a great example of sort of this watchman or constable is Dogberry in Much Ado about Nothing. We can sort of see Shakespeare, like, lampooning him as lazy, willing to sleep on the job, and he's an idiot who misapplies the law. That's like what his comic role in the play is, that he's constantly sort of citing the law incorrectly.
Emma
And another important job is, like watching out for fires. So constables and watchmen initially dealt with the beginning of the great fire from 1666, that they were the ones who were, like, on the scene, to the detriment of London, possibly. These people who are not trained to do anything are the people who are expected to deal with a fire. But constables are not professional and they were elected by their parish and have no central offices. There's no constable office, it's just a guy that you have. They're community funded, so they received no money or oversight from the state, even as they were taking people to state prisons, which we talked about in our Newgate episode, or sort of beginning under Henry II, if anything violent happened, that's what you sort of get the militia or yeomanry to be called. And so you kind of want to avoid that, because, again, you're having that state intervention that's, like, military based. And the difference between a watchman and a constable watchman was a role that a citizen was supposed to take on. Like, you weren't necessarily perpetually there, but it became so onerous and costly time wise, that nearly everyone who could would pay someone else to take over their duty.
Emma
And I saw estimates in the 1600s, like, 40% of all watchmen duties were being paid for someone else. Like, you would find someone who desperately needed the money. You're like, you're going to take my watchman shift. So only the poorest and most infirm people would actually end up serving as watchmen, because it's like, you're taking this really dangerous job on for no pay, and it's just like this community duty. So once the roles stratify, people just get paid to do it. So they're not particularly very useful. And it's a really reviled position because poor people and infirm people end up taking it.
Chels
I'm just thinking about the constables in the great fire. Did they do the hue and cry cry, just follow the fire and yell?
Emma
I think they started it. I read about the great fire, and it was like, they make the call to. Because basically, during the great fire, they destroy the buildings surrounding the fire, but it's like, they don't want to do that. The people who have the buildings or, like, "don't destroy my house." And it's like, that's how you deal with a fire before there's, like, water breaking. You have to destroy this surrounding area, and it's just, like, not dealt with. But again, I don't think if a constable just came up to me and was like, destroy your house, and I don't know how fire works, I think I would also be suspect of that.
Chels
Yeah, I'd be like, no, thank you.
Emma
On the opposite end of respect for these positions, before Bow Street Runners, there was the role of the justice of the peace, which was also taken voluntarily, like a constable, but it was attached to much more renowned and gradually gained more power as the constables lost renowned. And I think we can sort of see this is like the split between apprehension, and it's sort of like the law and order. This is the McCoy of the distinction. This is the Sam Waterston. He's gradually gaining more power. We see this in the Wyckerley trilogy, like the role of justice of the peace. These are the magistrates, and we can sort of think of them as adjudicating both civil and criminal cases. And this is the role that eventually will become more like judges and lawyers in the local level. While initially judges with actual legal training were at higher courts and magistrates were sort of just citizens, this eventually becomes like the lower county courts. Another marker of constables and watchmen is that they generally dealt with things that happened right in front of their face. Like, I grab a watchman and say, someone has stolen something from me, or they see someone wandering around at night, but they don't really have the skill set to investigate crime or the time.
Emma
It's an unpaid position that's not well funded. You have a life to lead, right? But if a crime happens to you and there's not people immediately around, what does a private citizen do? They could do the hue and cry. They could pursue them individually, or they could hire a thief taker. So thief takers, as their name suggests, worked mostly in the realm of property crime because they were paid on the speculative value of the returned goods. Like the ideas that my purse of coins has been stolen. You'll get 10% out of that bag if you return it to me. Or, like, my jewels have been stolen because I can afford these jewels, I can also afford to pay you 10% of those values when you come back. This private system was rife with corruption because thief takers would work with thieves to steal goods and then split the rewards. And this is just like, oh, widely written about sort of necessary evils. How do you have thief takers without corruption? We can't envision a system where that would happen.
Beth
Why aren't there more romances with thief takers? Because this just sounds like a great romance to me.
Emma
And they work like parallel to highway men. Yeah, they're either taking the highwaymen or they are the highwaymen. It's much more romantic. And I think this is also like Bow Street Runners don't appear in literature nearly as much as thief takers. Like an actual contemporaneous literature, people are right. They're interested in thief takers much more.
Beth
Yeah, I just feel like the possibilities of you could have corrupt ones, you could have ones actually trying to do their job right.
Emma
So generally we're a vile group mistrusted by the public. They have this proximity to criminality. But Henry Fielding, novelist and magistrate, so he's writing novels. He most famously writes Tom Jones, which is about sort of a reprobate who's, like, going through devolving in his life. He's going through on adventures and he's kind of a rake, but kind of a buffoon at the same time. He's kind of like Barry Lyndon, great Albert Finney movie directed by Tony Richardson. The movie is not great. Albert Finney is just cute in it. Henry Fielding, he's a novelist and he's a magistrate, so he has like some legal training. He's called to the bar. He thought thief takers were noble. He was like, the reason that thief takers have to work this way is because they're not supported enough. He wanted a system of private prosecution and investigation to continue to work. So he founds the Bow Street Runners based on this interest in thief takers. He's called to the bar in 1740 and he became a magistrate of Westminster in 1748. So he's sort of on the come up in his legal career. There's a crime wave this year after the ending of the war of Austrian succession.
Emma
And this is a big theme in sort of the history of arc of Bow Street Runners and also just London in general. When men have jobs like being soldiers, crime goes down. When they lose income, they steal things. Incredible-- this happens like nine times in the 18th century. And most everyone is still blaming, like, morality. They're like the men don't have morals, they need to go to church more. And it's like, get them jobs. But this happens all the time. They know when a war is over that crime is going to go up in London. So I have this quote that one of you could read from the sort of history of the Bow Street Runners by JM Beatty. It's called the first English detectives, and I think it captures sort of the relationship between London and the need for the Bow Street Runners that Fielding saw. So I don't know which one of you wants to read it. I think Chels.
Chels
Okay. For in the winter of 1749 to 50, with reports increasing of violence in the streets of London, Fielding had taken what was to turn out to be an important initiative by organizing a group of men to devote themselves to seeking out and apprehending serious offenders and bringing them to Bow Street for examination and commitment to trial. The need for such a body, as you saw it, sprang from the reluctance of victims to undertake prosecutions and the difficulties they faced if they chose to do so. Particularly the difficulties of apprehending members of gangs who were frequently armed and prepared to use violence to rescue any of their associates in danger of being taken. Victims got little help. Fielding confirmed, from the existing police forces. The impunity with which London robbers acted and the indifference they showed to the consequences of their actions exposed the serious weakness and incapacity of the civil authorities. A more vigorous response was required, indeed, the kind of response that Fielding was organizing at Bow Street, the success of which would depend on public support of men willing to undertake the dangerous task of finding and apprehending violent offenders.
Emma
Yeah. So Fielding sees this system as like, a victim forward system, is that victims can't go to constables, they can't go to watchmen, and then thief takers take advantage of them. But also, this came up in the Newgate research that I did. Victims also, at least some of them, were apprehensive about pursuing prosecution because of the extreme violence that was meted out by the state with the level of death penalty. That. That's like an anxiety that's also parallel here. So I think that's sort of elided a little bit in Fielding's understanding. Like, Fielding can't understand why you wouldn't want to prosecute someone who's stolen something from you. Maybe I don't want them to go to death row.
Chels
Right.
Emma
That seems to be a parallel theme, but he wants to advocate for victims of robberies. And I guess this is a big theme throughout Bow Street Runners. They do investigate non-property crimes, but because they're replacing thief takers, like, then that's Fielding's goal. That is always sort of their core mission, at least in London, especially. And we talk about this when we talk about their sort of jurisdiction and how it expands later. But anytime that they're investigating something that's not a property crime, they're doing something atypical, and Henry's really focused on the investigation. He views this as a responsive police force, and that's important. My little quip about France earlier. England is very hesitant, as a collective, to have a patrol-like police force. They view that as a military police. They view it as. They don't have the word, they don't have fascism yet, but they view it as a totalitarian. They view it as something that the monarchy does. And they distinguish between their monarchy and France's monarchy because of the Magna Carta. They're like, we don't do that here. France has this totalitarian police force, which is true. France does have a very strict police force, much earlier than England, but they're anxious about having police officers patrol and surveil.
Emma
And so Henry's solution to that is to have this investigation. He's like, only after something has happened will these police sort of follow the criminals. That doesn't really work. That's not how policing works. You can't have one half and not the other. And that's what happens, basically, when Henry leaves the Bow Street Runners. He founded the Bow Street Runners. He already suffered from poor health and he would eventually immigrate to Portugal for the weather and die there. So his half brother and secretary, John Fielding, would take over and then develop the Runners. And these are much more. Or these are his sort of. John Fielding's Runners become more notorious and they're much more like the institution that we see in the novels. So initially we see the Bow Street Runners develop so they can investigate major property crimes. But during John Fielding's tenure, the Seven Years War broke out, so crime goes down. All these men are off fighting in the war, and so they're not around as much. If they're any sort of professional age soldier, they go off to the war. So this is when we start seeing the equivalent of broken windows policing.
Emma
So it's investigations into minor crimes, supposedly to prevent bigger crimes, and also to justify the budget of the Bow Street Runners, because they have this annually renewing budget. So every year they have to ask for the same money. Also, we know, like broken windows policing has all these problems, like, it's crimeogenic rather than crime preventative and then John Fielding was also responsible for acute record keeping by Bow Street because this was one of his jobs under Henry. He sort of worked as a secretary. The detail of this is kind of wild to think about, that they don't have a model for this, and they're inventing it sort of on the spot like, one of the things I read about, they would track the dispositions of transportation at the Old Bailey. So the court, they would go to the court, and when people got a sentence, transportation, they would mark down their name and how long they were supposed to be transported, so that if they saw them, if they were transported for seven years and they saw them five years later, they would apprehend them. And they had this huge record of this. So these people could be arrested.
Emma
They tracked reports of stolen goods. They had, like, a book called the watch book, where it was, like, all watches reported missing with their inscriptions. So if they found them in pawn shops, they could return them to the owner.
Chels
Watches? Is that what everybody steals?
Emma
I think it's frequently stolen.
Chels
Okay.
Emma
And also easy to identify because I guess they're frequently inscribed opposed to coins. And then John Fielding sort of, he realizes that in order to have successful Bow Street Runners and expand their reach, these men have to be paid well. And so he both asks for more money, but he also helps them get jobs in carceral institutions, which also helps feed information to the Runners. So Runners frequently worked in places like Newgate or the Fleet or just any sort of prison so that they could have access to criminals gossiping and get that information. And so, again, we're reaching closer and closer to this surveillance thing. Yeah, you're taking notes on reported crimes, but then you're also looking at all the pawn shops. Like, who's going to the pawn shop? You're going from investigation to surveillance, sort of as John's in charge. This is also when they start patrolling. Initially, it's at crossroads to deal with highwaymen. Like, they were like, we're only going to be at the crossroads on the outside of the city, near the gates, where the highwaymen are. We're going to have a patrol on horses. John Fielding's, like, always asking for more horses.
Emma
He's like, we need more horses. To the Duke of Newcastle, who's, like, their patron. But then again, the patrolling aspect of policing moves the Runners away from their original purpose of investigation and makes them more like beat cops. Like, they're first at the crossroads, and then they're at the seedy neighborhoods, and then they're sort of all over their jurisdiction. Also, it's like once these men don't have to work other jobs, they become like plain clothes officers, where they're just like, out and about and they're like, I'm not doing my other job, I'm just always a Bow Street runner. So some of the crimes that they were primarily concerned with are like property crimes. So smuggling is a big one. Body snatching, much more than murder. So this is like a thing where, as, again, during the Enlightenment, they're always running out of bodies, scientific institutions. So there was like a huge market for grave robbing and stealing bodies. And so Runners investigate that. Organized frauds, like counterfeiting or rigged gambling, and then highway robbery. They did investigate some violent crimes, but murder investigations generally, the ones that I saw seemed more related to situations where there's a missing person and evidence needs to be recovered.
Emma
If a body was found in London, a coroner would be called. That's the job of the coroner. Of. I think that also helps to think about the Bow Street Runners purview of investigation. They're trying to find evidence, and when you have the body, most of the evidence in a murder investigation is on the body, and so you don't really need to find more evidence. But then also Bow Street expands their reach. And so the further away they get from London, the more likely they seem to be investigating non property crimes like arson and murder, because those jurisdictions outside of London don't have coroners or as robust other policing forces that are developing at the same time. And the Bow Street goes all over the place. Like, they go to Scotland, they go to Wales, they get taken everywhere, because the highwaymen are sort of everywhere. And also during these 75 years of Bow Street Runners, they become more and more notorious as investigation people, compared to the other police forces. And police forces in other jurisdictions outside of Westminster, start being modeled on Bow Street. But it has this institutional knowledge of investigation and this reputation for being able to investigate.
Emma
Also, because they are not police officers, they're not sworn officers, they're basically private citizens. So they have this sort of in between status for how they approach warrants. Some of them are sworn magistrates or constables, and that's like a way to improve your standing in the Bow Street Runners, but it makes it harder for them to serve warrants, but it makes it easier for them to work outside their jurisdiction. And so it's like kind of positives and negatives of not being sworn officers of a magistrate or a constable.
Chels
So did they have a harder time getting cooperation because they didn't have, if they were going to need someone's assistance in apprehending somebody. Would they be able to be like, I'm a Bow Street runner, and then people are like, oh, got you. I'll just do what you say. Or did that not really matter?
Emma
I think it depended on what the person, I guess, if the person's an associate or not. But there are reports of them. They're trying to open a door and they're like, we don't have a warrant. And they're like, come back with a warrant. You're not a constable. And so some of them are constables and magistrates and the power to serve a warrant. John Fielding and Henry Fielding both wrote all these things about why private citizens didn't need warrants. And they're like, arguing for the common law. They're like, this is private citizens, can search and seize, whatever they want. That's not how anything works. Private investigators don't need warrants to go inside. It's like, yeah, but you're breaking and entering. Needing a warrant means that you have permission to. If you go inside with the warrant, you're not breaking and entering. If you're a private citizen and you go inside without a warrant, you are breaking and entering like. But they're sort of developing the law of what they can do as these citizen police officers. But they're both always like, especially John Fielding is always arguing. He's like, citizens have this duty to. He sort of expands hue and cry, like, the duty, and it's up in the air.
Emma
I think I mentioned in the group chat where it's like, because they don't have a fourth amendment, like, the search and seizure law is a little iffy at this point in England, the citizens sort of reject that. And it's like, at a certain point, you just can't. Even if you're a Bow Street runner, you don't want to break down someone's door or beat them up to get the evidence, I guess, their natural sort of inclinations. So that's my history sort of overview, and we can talk more about different things that we talk about the books later, the specific romance novels. But I do have a brief history of Bow Street in literature because it doesn't originate with romance novels. The earliest I've seen a Bow Street hero in any genre is a book called Richmond, or Scenes in a Life of a Bow Street runner, drawn up from his Private Memorandum, which is an anonymously written novel that follows Richmond, the hero, becoming a Runner. And then he goes on a series of escapades. This is good insight into sort of like what Bow Street was actually like. He's sort of working class and he sort of falls into Bow Street.
Emma
He has, like, a connection at the office. He investigates property crimes, like rigged gambling and smuggling. He has sort of a ill fated romance in it, and there's sort of tragedy in his life that dedicates him to investigation. But the sort of second half of the book, when he's investigating the property crimes, is sort of a precursor to, like, a Sherlock Holmes type, where he's getting the evidence and comes to a conclusion that only he could come to. And then as far as early romance novels go, both Georgette Heyer and Barbara Cartland mention Bow Street. But as far as I can tell from their books, obviously, I haven't read all the books written by them or even reviewed all of them. I've only seen it in the context of a hero hiring a Runner. Like, a hero will reference hiring a runner to investigate a property crime that happened at his estate or something. I didn't see any actual Bow Street runner heroes, but an interesting discovery that I had when I was doing research for this episode is the author, Jeffrey Farnol. I had never heard of him before, but he is a generation older than Heyer, and his Wikipedia page mentions that he and Heyer were founders of the Regency romance genre.
Emma
Heyer's page does not mention Farnol. So I don't know if there's beef or what Heyer's relationship was to him or if he's not mentioned in any of her biographies, but he seems to be an influence on her, based on things I've seen again about him. He did write romances with central love stories, but he also had this character, Jasper Shrig, who is a Bow Street runner in the sort of. I think it's half a dozen novels that he wrote about Jasper Shrig. Shrig is like a Colombo like figure. He's like a working class investigator who is looking into the murder of a nephew, likely by his uncle. The nephew turns out to not actually be dead and ends up mirroring the uncle's ward, who the uncle had lecherous intentions towards.
Chels
As you do.
Emma
Literally, the plot. Yeah, if you have a ward, you have lecherous intentions, but this is literally the plot of two of the books. Like, the two books that I looked at in depth had the exact same plot. And it's like, that's fun. But Shrig is there and he's got his dialect and is working class, and people sort of think of him as an idiot, and they're like, oh, the Bow Street runner is, like, hanging around.
Emma
We can't get rid of him. And then he saves the day by revealing the uncle's sort of nefarious intentions. So he's not a romantic hero, but he is the hero in books that have a romance in them. Again, this is sort of pre codification of genre fiction conventions. So he sort of splits the difference between murder, mystery and romance. But that's sort of the early Bow Street Runners in literature. And then we get to our romance novels that we're going to talk about. So there are a few different plots that are sort of the bread and butter of Bow Street books. So there's the nobleman, who we've noticed is almost always an earl. Like, for whatever reason, that rank is bored and wants to be a Bow Street runner.
Chels
Dukes are too conspicuous, right?
Emma
And I guess viscounts are maybe not fancy enough. I don't know. But they tend to be undercover and they're using. Maybe they feel, like, unsatisfied with the earldom, or maybe they're not yet an earl and their older brother's the Earl. They're undercover and they're using their sort of power and money to do their investigations. Sometimes a Bow Street runner will be an over enthusiastic investigator or side character or like a villain. Like they'll be pursuing one of either the hero or the heroine who's actually innocent. I think from what I can tell, heroines are more likely to be accused of a crime, and the Bow Street runner is investigating her. And either he is the hero and this is like the precipitation of their romance, or the investigation creates drama for the hero. Like, he mistrusts the heroine because she's being investigated, probably for the murder of her first husband or something. So that's sort of overview of Bow Street. Any outstanding questions from my history, or you wish. Want to talk about some romance novels?
Beth
We can go to the romance novels, because I think as we talk about them, we can bring up, like, hey, this is kind of a thing that comes up a lot, actually.
Emma
So I think Chels going to start us with a sort of category romance that has a Bow Street Runner character.
Chels
Yeah. So I read Miss Billings Treads the Boards by Carla Kelly. So Henry, the Marquis of Grayson, doesn't like himself anymore. After returning from the war, he's lost interest in everything, and he has this come to Jesus moment where he realizes that he isn't important to anyone. His laziness has kept affection at a distance, and his idle aristocratic life feels increasingly meaningless to him. So Lord Grayson's solicitor and friend remarks on the drastic changes he's noticed in the man, calling him lazy to his face. The solicitor, upon learning that Henry will be visiting a friend in the country, gives him a task. Find his other client, Catherine Billings, and give her good news. So Miss Billings, whose art collector father has just died, is on her way to a new governess position. She mistakenly believes that a sketch her father left her is fraudulent. But according to the solicitor, it's real and could be enough for her to keep her from having to work at all. So Henry agrees to do this. On his way home to pack, Henry sees his nephew and heir, Algernon, and he asks Algernon what he likes about him. Algernon is a vain and kind of foppish man, and he answers in earnest, he likes Henry's money.
Chels
This is the final straw for Henry. So he cuts off Algernon from funds, and then when he returns home to pack, fires the valid that he has. That kind of coddles him as though he's a child. He's like, I've just had enough of this. So meanwhile, Kate Billings is on her way to her new governess position, and she finds out that the man of that Household she's to work for is a lecher. She grows increasingly nervous enough not to notice that she got off the coach at the wrong stop. She's picked up by a handsome man named Gerald Broussard. Gerald thinks that Kate is the actress he's sent to pick up for his employer, the head of a troupe of actors. And Kate simultaneously thinks that Gerald works for the household she's to govern us at. So it's like mistaken identity. When they realize their error, it's like too late for a neat resolution. She doesn't want to be preyed upon at the household she was hired at. And the acting troupe is short one actress who was supposed to play the part of lusty widow. So Kate agrees to fill in. So let's not forget about Henry.
Chels
On his way to the country, Henry is accosted by a nervous highwayman, who points a gun at him. So Henry tries to talk him down, but the highwayman panics and accidentally shoots him, like scraping the side of his head. So as the highwayman rides away, Henry recognizes the man as his former valet.
Beth
Oh, my gosh.
Chels
So his nephew Algernon and the valet were working together to scare Henry so that Algernon could come to his rescue last minute and redeem himself in both Henry's eyes and pockets. So it's just like a brilliant plan, of course. So then a wounded Henry encounters the acting trope and Kate helps nurse him back to health. Henry is, like, immediately smitten with Kate, and while he reveals to her that he's a marquis, he decides to pretend that he's actually in mortal danger and that he has to remain in hiding. And he does this because he wants to spend more time with Kate in order to get her to fall in love with him as he has with her. So he's like, I'm just going to be like, oh, these bad guys are still trying to get me. Oh, I'm so scared. I'm going to pretend to be an actor. As the acting troupe makes their way to a new town with both Henry and Kate in tow, they discover that everyone is talking about the missing marquis, whose bloodstained coat has been found. So at the end, the troop is lodging at they discover a Bow Street runner on their tail, looking for the wounded marquis.
Chels
The runner, a neatly dressed man named Will Muggeridge, confronts Henry and Kate at the end, and Henry lies to him, telling him that he's just a regular guy and that Kate is his wife. Henry is in no danger, but he uses the Bow Street pursuit to further invigor Kate into his wife, pretending that she is shielding him from his murderous relatives, who have hired a runner in pursuit. Will. The runner does not give up. He shadows the acting troop through their lengthy preparations at a new venue, and he's the only one who clocks Henry for who he truly. He obviously knows that Henry's lying and is always telling him. He's like, I know you're lying to me, I'm just waiting for you to slip up. But he's like very patient and amenable and he's just, like, content to just hang around until Henry gives himself away. So, like Kate and Henry, Will also gets enmeshed with the acting troupe. He falls in love with one of the daughters of the troop's leader. So Kate and Henry have a ways to go to their hea at this point, as they haven't really dealt with Henry's lies yet.
Chels
But the resolution of the Bow Street storyline is that Will ends up deciding to leave Bow Street to pursue a career with his lady love in acting, and he reveals to Henry that he was hired by his guilt ridden former valet who wanted someone to find Henry and make sure that he was okay. So this was really quite funny and cute. I really liked it. But yeah, I guess kind of the first thing. Is it a big step down from Bow Street runner to actor?
Emma
I think so. I think Bow Street Runners have this proximity to criminality, and sometimes they were prosecuted for corruption. So it wasn't like the Fielding made a perfect. I mean, that's also true of police today, that sometimes they're corrupt. But I think they were respected more because they got the job done and also had this pretty, they had an institutional. The Fieldings, or whoever was the leader at the time, wouldn't tolerate corruption. So I think probably, as far as public respect goes, they would be respected less as an actor, that's sort of my instinct.
Chels
Gotcha. He did it all for love. And so Will was hired by the former valet, which I thought was really interesting, because I guess the valet got like a. I don't know what the Regency term was for it, but he got a severance package. He used that to hire. But he felt so guilty, he used that to hire Henry. I was going to ask before you kind of got into it, like, their jurisdictions, but you did mention before that they could go quite far. But I guess here, for this book, there wouldn't be a Bow Street Runner involved if Henry was a body, right?
Emma
If he was a body, if he was a missing person. That's the thing. It's like you think of them. They're inspired to look for evidence. They find a body, which happens in some of the books that we've read. It's like you would call the coroner, and it's like the Bow Street Runner can't really do anything. Maybe if they were like, we know who killed them, and we need to find that person. A Bow Street Runner might do it, but it's like, we find a body, the evidence of the crime is on the body. You don't need to find more evidence, especially when you don't have forensics.
Chels
And then, too, what was really interesting is that Will, the runner, is just like, I don't know how long that they were setting up the preparations for this play and this new theater, but it was definitely weeks. So he's just like, hanging around there the whole time. And so I'm like, I wonder what that compensation was like.
Emma
Yeah, it was like they had the 600 pounds from the Duke of Newcastle. He was like the state figure who would give the money, at least for the first, I think, like dozen years or something, and they would have to apply for it every year. And then eventually it goes to parliament. When the Home Office is founded, it sort of goes under the Home Office. And the home office eventually subsumes the Bow Street Runners with the Met police but it's like the $600 or 600 pounds they get at the beginning of the year and whoever is in charge the fielding or whoever follows them. So the two Fieldings are the first person in charge and then it follows with different roles. They're in charge of doling out the 600 pounds for these investigations. And then it's supplemented by, if you get hired independently and you could do it speculatively, it would be like you have your expenses, but you're doing this with the speculation of the return. So presumably the valet could be like, if you find the marquis, you will get more money because you'll find the marquis. And it's like they were encouraged to.
Emma
If you could afford, you would pay the Bow Street Runner and also, I think you maybe got better service paying the Bow Street Runners, but they would investigate crimes without people paying large fees because that was like, the whole point is that it was supposed to serve people who couldn't afford thief takers or couldn't afford to be taken advantage by thief takers. But the idea of, like, a 600 pound budget. I've never been in charge of a company's budget, but, like, starting with 600 pounds at the beginning of the year and having to make it last for a year
Beth
That seems so small
Emma
You don't know what the property crimes are going to happen in December are, but I guess that's just how you. How. I guess that's how businesses work.
Beth
I feel like that's like what a small gentry family would live on. It was like 600 pounds. I know there weren't that many Runners, though.
Emma
They started with six. It was like, notoriously six. And then I think it goes up to a few dozen by the end. It's like, number of Runners and I think probably their budget goes up over time. But I saw the 600 number reported. I think they could ask for more money because the 600 pounds is distinct from the magistrate's budget.
Beth
Right.
Emma
And so it's like sometimes Fielding would supplement with his own money for this. And neither Henry Fielding nor John Fielding had children and they just lived at the Bow Street office and the bar across the street. It's like you could find them there all the time. They had very few, very little family lives. I think Henry Fielding was married, but I don't think John Fielding was. And they just stayed around and this was like their whole life. I think different magistrates probably had different approaches eventually to that.
Chels
Well, I liked Will. I'm glad that he wasn't the main character,
Emma
But this sounds really cute I'd like to read Carla Kelly. This also sounds like a Heyer or Cartland sort of way. The Bow Street runner would appear is sort of like a side character who's maybe moving the plot along rather than the romantic hero. Though he does have a love interest.
Chels
Which is, yeah, that part was really cute. He was kind of the smartest one, but he was also completely unbothered. He was just like, I know you're lying to me. Whatever.
Emma
Because what can you do as far as Bow Street tasks go? Like, babysitting a marquis who's in a play is a less dangerous one. I don't know if I'd be super gung ho to get off that task. I'd be like, I can hang out here for a few.
Chels
He was having a great time. They were short in actor, and they had to pull him in, too, at one part. They were always short in actor. They were, like, pulling people in. But, yeah, I guess we can move on to our next book. Yeah.
Beth
It's just about the home office, which Emma mentioned poster eventually kind of subsumes into. So this is A Seditious Affair by KJ Charles. So Dominic Frey is the one who works for the home office, and he meets Silas Mason every Wednesday night for an affair. Silas Mason is a radical bookseller and pamphleteer who writes under the pseudonym Jack Cade. Frey has been hunting down Jack Cade, although he doesn't know it's Silas. They don't even know each other's names, though. Like, they've been meeting for over a year. Silas thinks of Dominic as the Tory, and Dominic thinks of him as the brute. This story works really well because I have this thing where I think of it as, like, the domino of correct opinions, where it's like, I've been reading some books recently where you have these very highly evolved, leftist seeming characters, and they all have the right opinions, but there's not much conflict there. But I think KJ Charles does this really well. It actually reminded me a lot of what Chelsea mentioned with Ronnie Cartland, the Glamor boys. So you have these gay men who are like, that's. I feel like that's kind of KJ Charles's whole thing, where she will have her kind of radical character and then her more conservative character, and then they clash ideologically.
Beth
So I don't really have much of a plot summary. I just have, like, a conversation I pulled out. Did I mention Dominic is an aristocrat? He's an aristocrat. That's important to know. Dominic snorted. He did not like the spenceian philosophy. A chatter of rights and equalities mouthed by gutter revolutionaries. They intended to steal land from its rightful owners and share it out among what they called the people. Dominic did not share their idealistic views of mankind and had a fair idea what would happen to their utopia property in common. After a couple of years, I do want to mention, Dominic does have some principles. He notes others at the home office, they draw a paycheck, but they don't really do anything to earn it. They take credit for the work of those beneath them. So, I don't know, Emma, if you can shed some light, if people just kind of like, who's working at the home office?
Emma
So the home office is founded in 1782, pretty much as a direct response to the Gordon riots, which we talked about in the Newgate episode. That was where it was, like, anti catholic riots. They end up burning down Newgate and they're like, we need something more. As much as we don't like France and we don't like their military police, we need something that is organized in central London. So they found the Home Office, and so at the same time, they found the Home Office, they found the Foreign Office. And so it's like Department of the Interior. You can think of, like, FBI, CIA.
Beth
Right.
Emma
And the Home Office sort of is like the Department of State, and they're more noble than Bow Street Runners, and they basically start taking over jobs from different disparate police forces as London is becoming like a metropolitan. So the year that this book is set, there would still be Bow Street Runners, but home offices are. The home office is taking on more policing responsibility, and they eventually end up being the department that the Met police are under when that happens in 1829. And it's like, Bow Street is like this location, right? Like in Covent Garden. And it's like they've taken their sort of, like, location specific police force and changed it into this nationwide thing. And it's like, ultimately, the Home Office is more appropriate for that than Bow Street, which it is appropriate in London, because Westminster, like, where it is in Covent Garden, is, like, at the split between all these different jurisdictions, apparently. So it is suited for this multi jurisdiction force. But as the home office becomes more powerful and respected and has sort of, like, the secret service aspect of it, that's when they take over Bow Street.
Beth
Yes. Thank you, Home Office. We'll talk about more. It's not just this book. So I was mentioning that there was a scene where Dominic, he ensures that this lower level employee gets the proper credit for the work. That's done. And then just one other thing I thought was interesting, or that's kind of interesting about male romance in general, is this kind of like inherent contradiction for a character like Dominic to uphold the letter of the law while technically like breaking antisotomy laws. Dominic challenges Silas on this early or no, Silas challenges Dominic about this early on. So Silas repeats some gossip that he's heard that the Duke of Cumberland has cut his valid's throat. And Dominic says, that's slander. Silas ups the stakes and says everyone knows it. And apparently he had fathered a child on his own sister. So this is now the conversation. Well, he didn't. Dominic snapped either. That's a gross libel put about by muckrakers and rabble rousers. Silas is responding. Let's call it an analogy then. And just imagine Cumberland cut his ballad's throat. You think he'd hang for it? Dominic set back, perhaps not. He admitted, no. So there's not one law for all in the first place.
Beth
Are you going to prosecute me for sodomy? Turn King's evidence? Dominic responds, no. So there are laws you don't think will be enforced and laws you don't think should be enforced. So I think this whole book is just KJ Charles is just very good, like I mentioned before, with contrasting ideologies. And it's not like, I don't think Dominic, by the end of the book, is completely turned around and is pro radical and pamphleteer, but they do make their relationship work. I actually don't remember how this book ends. It's been a while since I reread it, but I do endorse reading it. I guess my one question, other question would be if the home Office was in charge of putting down revolution.
Emma
Homegrown insurgency. Yeah, because that's what the Gordon riots are seeing. The Gordon riots are like anti. I think they're actually like anti anti Catholic because I think Lord Gordon was like pro Catholic. It's messy politically, the Gordon riots, but because they're very anti establishment, they burn like the Bank of England and they burn Newgate and the fleet. And so it's that sort of like homegrown terrorism. They don't have that word yet, but is definitely the concern of the Home office and spurs the interest, which again, as you think about England, is like, we don't want to have police patrolling. But then the level of censorship and interest in sort of radicalism and controlling radicalism during the Regency period and early Victorian period is so it's like you're totalitarian. It's okay. Why are you pretending like you're not? Right a lot in Bow Street and the bar that they have, and it's like a police pub, right, where people are hanging out and spreading this information. And this is the nature of policing, is that if you have police, they're surveilling, they're patrolling, they're, like, lying to themselves, it seems, about the level of control that they think they're having, and people are advocating for it, even as parliament is saying, we don't want to do this.
Emma
We don't want to know their best deal. That's the thing that they're always. Because the French revolution, they see as, like, a direct. Yeah, the French revolution, obviously, there are lots of factors that cause the French revolution, but the level of policing that is happening in Paris leading up to the French Revolution is part of it. Like, this level of information that's being shared and control and surveillance. And so England's like, we don't want to have a French revolution, so we'd have to take all these things to avoid that. But it's like, yeah, the move of modernity is towards policing. As we have cities, we move towards more policing.
Chels
If I'm remembering correctly, Silas, something happens in the book where Silas has already been convicted of sedition before, and there was something where it was understood that if it happened again, he would be transported.
Beth
I think that's right, because at the end of the book, the whole plot is trying to make sure Silas doesn't get so.
Chels
So horrifying to have that be dangled as a punishment in front of you. So the next book I have is Sometimes a Rogue by Mary Jo Putney. Sarah Clark Townsend is the twin sister of Mariah, the Duchess of Ashton. Mariah is heavily pregnant, and she and Sarah decide to visit the church while Sarah is in town. So when they're leaving, Mariah goes into labor, and they return to the church, sending the groom away to fetch a doctor. While they're alone, they hear men arrive at the church, loudly and unceremoniously proclaiming that they've arrived to kidnap the pregnant duchess. So Sarah hides her sister and pretends to be her, angrily telling her kidnappers that she's already given birth and that they got their facts wrong. The kidnappers end up taking Sarah. When Mariah's husband, the Duke, finds out about the kidnapping, he asks his friend Rob Carmichael, who is not only a Bow Street runner, but has conveniently just arrived for a visit, to find Sarah. Rob tracks them all the way to Ireland, and he's able to spring Sarah from the clutches of her kidnappers and bring her back to England. So Sarah is kidnapped by members of free age, which is irish for Ireland.
Chels
This is a fictional organization that Mary Jo Putney created, and she describes them as a radical group. Their goals are similar to the Society of United Irishmen, who you might remember from our Stormfire episode. A real group that worked for a Free Ireland unencumbered by the British Society of United Irishmen, dissolved in the early 18 hundreds. So several years before this book is set. So this fake radical group's members are portrayed as bumblers. They kidnap the wrong person, loudly proclaim their plans, and are generally very inept. What's interesting to me is that this group that is so radical and awful has only gone so far as to kidnap a woman. They later plan on killing Sarah for making a fool of them. But this is like, I guess, kind of standard for violent resistance. And while she's kidnapped, Sarah is treated not great, but she's also not abused the same way that Catherine was in Stormfire. So anyways, Rob, the Bow Street runner, is the younger son of an aristocrat and is part Irish because he speaks Irish from spending so much time there, he's able to pretend he's a local in order to move under the radar while rescuing Sarah.
Chels
There are moments that talk about irish oppression under British rule, but it's kind of vague. And there are so many villagers that are willing to work against this radical group because they are the, quote, bad guys in a way that felt very false to me because the bad guys to them would be the british and not this other group that has kidnapped an aristocrat that they probably don't care about anyways. When he arrives to England with Sarah and Tow, Rob learns that his brother has died and that he's the new earl. Because of this, the Bow Street running is all in the early pages of rescuing Sarah. And the Duke mentions to Sarah later that for this sort of work, Rob would be compensated in a daily fee plus expenses incurred. Rob does talk about how shoddy his old living quarters were. So he was ostensibly not making a lot of money on Bow Street, and his former position is a source of ire for his grandmother, who does not see it as respectable. So there's this moment in the book after Rob inherits and his estate is in shambles due to mismanagement. Part of that is because the neglect from his father and brother, but his steward is also embezzling money.
Chels
When confronted by Rob and Sarah, the steward begs for clemency, saying that he has a wife and kids. Rob agrees to this, but not before saying, these are not small crimes. Buckley. I spent years putting lesser criminals in jail. Why should I release a man who has damaged everyone at Kellington? Yeah, I did not like this book. I actually really hate it. If you can't tell by the summary, there's a lot to think about. About, like, we're going to talk a little bit more about Irish people as cop characters in historical romance. I think this one is even more fraught because Putney has these really weird politics where she props up society of united Irishmen as these respectable radicals because they were nonviolent. But by the year that this was set, like 1812, I believe the Society of United Irishmen had already been disbanded, and the British definitely didn't see them as nonviolent at any point after the Irish rebellion of 1798. So I'm just kind of like, what history was she trying to reference? And there's this weird respectability about the right way to rebel against oppression, which the oppression is like, the British are really mean to us, which is kind of like downplaying the inherent violence in it.
Chels
So, yeah, that really annoyed me so much. But I guess kind of to get back to actual Bow Street running. So you want to talk about Irish Bow Street Runners here?
Emma
Yeah. So the likelihood of a Bow Street runner being Irish seems far, like, far removed from reality. Much more likely. So the whole thing with England and policing only applies to England? Their anxiety about police only applies to London and England. There are professional police forces in both Scotland and Ireland way earlier than the Met police. So there's one in Ireland after the Irish rebellion. So I think it's established in the eight. In 1800, Scotland, a little bit later, I think. But, yeah, there are professional police forces that are surveilling and patrolling, like doing the whole kit and caboodle in those countries much earlier than in London. So even when people are not rebelling directly, this is happening, they're much more likely to be surveilled. And again, when you talk about Hello Stranger, it doesn't make any sense for an irish person to want to work for Scotland Yard. That doesn't track at all with their politics. Or even if they're seeking a free Ireland, they're not going to find that in a London police force.
Chels
Yeah, there's one point where Rob tells Sarah, if I was living in Ireland, if I was living here, I would join the Society of United Irishmen, which, no, you weren't. They were disbanded. But also, like, you're a Bow Street runner. Why would. What!
Emma
Is he an earl of an. I guess, or is he an earl of an English county?
Chels
English. So he's an English earl. His mother is Irish, but he also owns. This is like another thing that really annoys me in the book. So he owns an estate called Kilvara in Ireland. It's just mentioned they never go there. But something that happens is like, his estate in England is being mismanaged, and then he finds out his Irish estate is also being mismanaged. And he's like, oh, well, I might just have to sell it, but it's too bad I won't be able to vet who I'm going to sell it to, and these tenants are going to suffer. And then know who's like, Sarah is like, the heroine of this book is a very hoyden stereotype with no redeeming qualities. She's just like, immediately good at everything, but there's nothing under it at all. So she's immediately able to identify that the steward is stealing from Rob within three minutes by looking at the books while he's talking to.
Beth
Right.
Chels
That's the type of character we've got here. But she has this really brilliant idea that here I'm going to read the quote, too many people for the available land. Sarah said thoughtfully. What about immigrations? Would any of the tenants be willing to move to the colonies for hopes and a better life? So her idea is that she's going to give a thousand pounds to the irish tenants and just tell them to move to America. And then everyone's like, great idea, Sarah.
Chels
Which is and I'm just like, all of you guys are paying lip service to the idea that you understand the source of the rebellion, you understand the source of the resistance, but you don't if you really think the problem is solved by them moving. Okay, for this book, not a lot of Bow Street running. I mean, I guess there's a big part of him saving Sarah, which is ostensibly part of his Bow Street running duties. So there the Bow Street running. But you've got two things. You've got an Earl who's a Bow Street runner, although he was technically a Bow Street runner before he became an earl, but he was still like, aristocrat. I think in this book, he was using it to, he really hated his family, so he was just like, fuck you, family. I'm going to be on Bow Street. And then he's also, of course, Irish, which is a thing that I guess we'll get into a little bit more in hello stranger as well.
Beth
Well, this is, like, your point, but I'm also going to connect it to Emma's thesis from the Newgate episode, where it's like, if you're going to talk about Newgate in historical romance, you're going to be basically talking about modern prison as well. Your conception of prison will be part of Newgate. So that's kind of. You have this point here, Chels, where you're talking about, we have this perception of Irish American cops and stereotypes in movies, and maybe you feel like that's kind of being like, Mary Jo Putney is kind of pulling some of that onto her character or that feel.
Chels
Yeah, that's how I am trying to rationalize this. Because why else would you even bring up the oppression of the Irish people and then also tie your main Irish character to someone who's enforcing in some way or who's more aligned part of the oppression?
Beth
It's weird.
Chels
Yeah. And I think that's. I'm just, like, picturing Mary Jo Putney, like, watching. I know this was years before Breaking Bad came out, but I'm just picturing her watching, like, mike and Breaking Bad, where they're all at the irish pub with the corrupt cops and stuff. That's her being like, Bow Street. Well, actually, no, this was written in 2012. Maybe she was right.
Emma
Maybe she's watching The Departed.
Beth
Oh, I literally thought of the departed. I was like, this feels kind of like.
Emma
Yeah, I mean, I think, like Newgate, it's like, if you're writing a police character in 2003, 2023, this is true of all historical romance. Like, whatever you're calling about, whether it's police or anything, you're writing both about the period that you're setting it and writing it about it now, I think even if the most historically accurate book, you're also writing it in the year that you write it. And I think this is true of all period pieces, historical romance, movies. The thing with Newgate is that Newgate is a bad metaphor for modern prison, and so it doesn't work. And then it's like you're going to have all these historical inaccuracies. So I think it's easy to see that it's a metaphor for modern prison or that people like their politics about modern prison comes out more clearly. And I think similarly with Bow Street Runners. Bow Street Runners are not, like, historically, are not good metaphors for modern day policing. And so if you read a Bow Street book or any sort of Met Police book, anything, I think the stuff is more metaphorical than it actually seems, because I think this is true. You talk about this sex mores.
Emma
If you're writing a book now and you're looking back, it's also going to be about sex in the time that you write it. But I think it works both and a little bit more with sex, but with these political entities, especially ones that are oppressive. I wish people would just sort of acknowledge that. It's like if your Bow Street Runner is investigating a murder or your Bow Street Runner is an earl or something, it's like this is about cops now, so just say something interesting about it. Or what happens, I think, with a lot of the books that we've read, is that they are saying, I guess, interesting things about it, but they're things that are more conservative than I think the authors might have us want to believe or want us to believe or things that we don't agree with. And it's just the nature of calling on this part of history.
Beth
All right, so we're going to jump to Hello Stranger by Lisa Kleypas. This is another home office book, and it's also the latest one that we read the year it was set in. It was set in 1876. So Garrett Gibson is a female doctor. She's walking home one night, and a bunch of off duty army men threaten her. She fights them off using her cane and then discovers that someone has helped her during the fight. And we discover that Ethan ransom has kind of been following her every Tuesday night, Garrett does the, like, I don't need help routine, and Ethan's like, dear God, yes, you do need help. So this leads to a self defense class, basically. They really like each other, but Ethan is a spy, and so he doesn't want his spy work to put Garrett in danger. Obviously, Ethan isn't like a bow straight runner, but a bit of his history that I thought was interesting is he starts off as kind of like a B cop who voluntarily works in the slums and solve unsolvable, like, unsolved cases at night for fun, I guess. So this is a quote from the book, and this is a cop talking to Garrett about Ethan.
Beth
The cops talking? He cracked a murder that had baffled the division's sergeant detective for years, cleared the name of a servant, falsely accused of jewel theft, and recovered a stolen painting. Garrett responds, so he's worked outside of his rank, and the cop she's talking to is like, right? And then this is the cop talking again. But instead of charging him with misconduct, they promoted him from fourth class constable to inspector. And Garrett's like five levels in the first year. And the cop's like, no, the first six months. But before they could promote him, the Home Office recruits him. I thought this was kind of funny, because I feel like that's not how it actually would have gone down. They would have been like, let's promote this guy. Doing great work. They probably would be like, let's fire him. He's making us look bad. That's, like, my instinct. And then I think another important thing to bring up is kind of like the structure of the Home office, or at least as Lisa Klepus relates it, and kind of this rivalry between the Home Office and the Metropolitan Police. So this is from the book. There was a vicious rivalry between Jenkins, that's the Home Office boss, and Fred Felbrig, the commissioner of the Metropolitan police.
Beth
Jenkin and his eight secret servicemen had become direct competition for Felbrig and his team of a half a dozen plain clothes active officers. Jenkin treated Scotland Yard with open contempt, refusing to collaborate or share intelligence. He said publicly that London police were incompetent, a pack of fools. Instead of using them for extra manpower, Jenkins had sent for Royal irish constables from Dublin. To add insult to injury, Jenkins'position at the Home office wasn't even legal. He and the secret service force had never been approved by parliament. One could hardly blame Scotland Yard and Fred Felbrig for being livid. However, Jenkins acquired power as easily as breathing. His influence extended everywhere, even to distant foreign ports and consulates. He had created an international web of spies, agents and informers, all answerable to none by him. So, as I was reading this book, it really felt like a James Bond, mission Impossible type international spy feel. I know, Emma, you've read this book.
Emma
Felt the same Lisa Kleypas trying to do, like, John Le Carre novel.
Beth
Yeah.
Emma
So the Metropolitan police, as far as I understand it, is like, under the Home Office, they're kind of, like, under it, but I guess they're separate and apart, and their actual duties are different. And obviously the Home Office is larger, but it makes sense that they have these other teams. So I think maybe it's like, the parallels are there where it's like there's a home office team that's working sort of on this interesting cases, and the Metropolitan police are more of these beat cops who are doing the everyday grunt work, and so they have this resentment towards them, but it's a fun as far as mysteries go. And Lisa Kleypas trying to do something interesting. I think she pulls it off. She doesn't always, but this one, I think, is solid. I do not like. I reread some scenes for this episode of this book. I do not like the surgery scene.
Beth
Which is funny, because I actually really enjoyed it.
Emma
It was, like, harrowing the first time I read it. I should have skipped it. Something about it got to me.
Beth
But I like this scene. And this is unrelated to anything we're talking about, but it feels like, you know that scene in, like, an action movie where the hero wakes up in the hospital at the end, and the friend is sitting there and the guy wakes up and he's like, how long was I out and doesn't even look up from reading will be, like, four days. Anyway, this entire surgery scene feels like the behind the scenes to that. Like, what Garrett has to do to keep Ethan alive. You could tell Kleypas did her homework. I really enjoyed it. It was good.
Emma
I guess if I had to pick, like, a hero being shot, I would pick this over St. Vincent any day.
Chels
She kept him alive, but at what cost, right?
Beth
And I did want to add, Kleypas does pull. Like she's pulling from history here. There's, like, a conspiracy plot that's fictional. And this is quoting from the author's note. There really was a secret and unauthorized team of agents supervised by Edward George Jenkinson. He ran clandestine operations from the Home office, often competing with Scotland Yard. Jenkinson was dismissed in 1887, and his force was replaced by the official special Irish branch. So when I was reading it, I'm like, this feels very fantastical, but apparently it's rooted in some history.
Emma
Do we want to talk about the one you both quit?
Beth
But I only have, like, one question from it where it's like, so Chelsea and I both tried to read this book, A Lady Never Surrenders by Sabrina Jeffries.
Chels
Beth got waved.
Beth
Yeah, Chels DNF'd at the prologue. I think I had to like the second chapter. I don't even know. But it's the fifth in a series. I don't even know. Okay. It's the fifth in a series. And Celia's grandmother conditions her grandchildren's inheritance on all of them, getting married in a year. So Cilly is the youngest, and she wants Bow Street Runner Jackson Pinter to investigate three potential marriage suitors. It seems like he's done this before for her older siblings. And Jackson is employed by one of the brothers, I think. So that's, like, the only question or talking point I have from this book is, like, do they do background checks? That's what this is.
Emma
I didn't see anything as far as just, like, private hiring. Also, it does go against Fielding's conceit, which is, like, we're supposed to investigate after the crime has happened.
Beth
Right.
Emma
But, I mean, I guess in your private time, you can do whatever you want because you're effectively not really a police officer. You could just investigate with your skill set. Yeah. This does not seem to be, like, a way that they made money that I saw in the nonfiction stuff that I read.
Beth
Yeah, I thought it was. I don't know. It's not, like, the worst conceit I've ever read, but it was just, like, a little strange.
Chels
I was like, oh, my God. Thank God there are more Bow Street books so I don't have to read this one.
Beth
This is an anti-recommendation.
Chels
I feel like this is the most anti-recommendations we've had in a single episode, too.
Beth
We were just like, we need Bow Street books. So it wasn't like we were operating from a theme and then a plugging in books that we've already can't.
Emma
I guess we talk about the book that inspired this episode, which is a book that we actually do like.
Beth
Yes, we should talk about that.
Emma
We've all read that we all like. All right. Yeah. So Chels going to tell us about Lady Sophia's lover by Lisa Kleypas, which is a good book and a good Bow Street book. So it's both things at once.
Chels
Good books. Sophia Sidney, the destitute orphan of a viscount, arrives at the office of Sir Ross Cannon, the chief magistrate of Bow Street. Sophia asks for a job as his assistant, and Ross declines because she's a woman, offering her the position of a housekeeper instead, a position that she emphatically doesn't want. Ross never has the upper hand in this negotiation, even though he ostensibly holds all the cards. He is immediately so smitten with Sophia that the good judgment that he's famous for flies out the window. The compromise is that Sophia will work as a housekeeper with some assistant duties on Bow Street. So Sophia has ulterior motives for gaining the position. Her younger brother participated in a highway robbery and was sentenced to time on a prison hulk. So originally created to reduce overcrowding in prisons, prison hulks were largely docked ships where people convicted of a crime would be imprisoned after a full day of hard labor. Sophia's brother, who was a teenager at the time of his conviction, died on the prison hulk after getting cholera. Believing that time on the prison hulk was an outsized punishment for her brother's crime, Sophia plans to get revenge on the man who passed the sentence, Sir Ross Cannon.
Chels
Now that she's in his employee, she plans to find material to blackmail him with, as well as make him fall in love with her and then betray him. So it's common. I'm going to make you love me and then I'm going to wreck you. Sophia's Bow Street duties include listing the occupants of prisoner vans coming to and from Newgate, compiling reports of the Bow Street Runners, and taking depositions from what Sir Ross Cannon calls the, quote, foul characters who parade daily through Beau street. She also has to compile notes for the Hue and Cry, which Kleypas describes as a weekly publication of police news, containing descriptions of offenders at large and the details of their crimes. As the chief magistrate of Bow Street, Sir Ross Cannon is in charge of all the Bow Street Runners and is credited with the expansion of their powers. And this is a quote from the book. For decades, Bow Street number four had served as a private residence, public office and court. However, when Sir Ross Cannon had been appointed chief magistrate ten years earlier, he had expanded his powers and jurisdictions until it had become necessary to purchase the adjacent building.
Chels
Now, number four served primarily as Sir Ross's private home, while number three contained offices, courtrooms, record rooms and an underground strong room where prisoners were held and interrogated. And then here's another quote that I thought was interesting. This is from Sophia's point of view. There were rumors of corruption surrounding the Runners and their activities, reports of illegal raids, brutality and intimidation, not to mention acting outside their described jurisdictions. Everyone knew that Sir Ross and his quote, people, as he termed them, were a law unto themselves. Once an already suspicious public was given solid proof of their misconduct, the paragon known as Sir Ross Cannon would be ruined beyond redemption. This is like the one book, I feel like, where we spend so much time with Bow Street Runners, whereas before, they're just like, it's just a guy. Yeah.
Emma
I think when we started planning this episode, I was like, I had read Lady Sophia's Lover, enjoyed it, and I was like, oh, people will have read this book because it's kind of also the first. I think it's published 2002 or 2003. I think it's the first romance novel that I've identified that has a hero as a Bow Street Runner. And I was like, oh, everyone who writes books after this must be like reading Kleypas and thinking that they could do it better. Nobody does it better. This is the best one that we're talking about.
Chels
By far.
Emma
Like, by far, both for Bow Street and for the novel. It's a really good romance. And also, so much of the history is there, like, the human actual. That is like an invention of the Fieldings. And that's how Bow Street becomes sort of like, outside their sort of small sector of London, is that they sort of take advantage of the publishing abilities and we're going to report crimes and also enlist sort of the community they were to take that community policing and publish things about it and use gossip networks and whisper networks to prosecute these crimes. Ross's role in society, that he sort of starts as a magistrate and then becomes the chief magistrate for Bow Street and becomes more investigatory later in his career, especially at this time, post Fieldings, where it's like, we need people who have this law degree or law background to be a part of Bow Street so that we can stay on the right side of law. Like the worry about corruption. So many of these things are reflected in Bow Street. And I think Kleypas has interesting things to say in this novel about redemption. What does it mean to police?
Emma
What does it mean to prosecute? What does it mean to condemn? Like, I think I tagged this on my goodreads as, like, a prison abolition romance, which is wild for Lisa Kleypas novel to consider these questions, but she does, and kind of with aplomb because of Sophia's interest in revenge against a system. And Ross, I think's reaction to Sophia's revelation that she wanted to commit revenge is also very compassionate and understanding. He's like, I might have done these things that you want revenge on, and I'm going to try and figure out if I did. He doesn't react with saying, I would never do those things. He's like, no, that's part of the job. But it's part of the job that I can also feel guilt over.
Chels
Yeah, I thought that was really interesting. And something too, I was thinking about. Because Sophia drops her revenge scheme fairly early.
Chels
As she kind of recategorizes. She's like, the man that I've created who has done this harm to me does not match up with you. And so even if you did do it, and that's kind of the point when she's confronting Ross, she's like, even if you did do it, I can't be mad in this way anymore because I know who you are, which is really interesting. But when you get to, like, I think one of those quotes that I pulled out, I was thinking about this earlier when you were talking about thief takers, because in Sophia's point of view early on in the book, when she's planning on ruining Ross. She's like, people are already distrustful of Bow Street. Like, people think that they're a law under. They're brutal, they have this intimidation tactics. And that sounded a lot more like the thief takers we were talking about earlier. Did the Bow Street Runners have this same reputation?
Emma
Yeah, I mean, I think it's like, again, the thing where I was saying is nothing happens immediately. It's like if you're doing thief taking and you're taking any sort of. You're doing that role, it's like there's going to be suspicion in early days of it. And then I think also at the end of the Bow Street Runners arc, they're more mistrusted. It's like we have this need for the Metropolitan police with more oversight and more professional police than the Bow Street Runners, which eventually become the less professional police version, when they're more professional than the constables, but they're less professional than what the metropolitan police end up being. But I think also, it's like, kind of. I mean, the way that people feel about police now, it's like there's people who buy into the institutional power, and this is something. It's like the corruption is a necessary evil of a state power that protects me, and then there's people who. It's like the level of corruption is unacceptable or something is inherent about the nature of policing that makes me mistrust this behavior. So I think it's like they could be, like, both.
Chels
Yeah. And I guess another thing, too. So Sir Ross is in a much more, like, we've talked a lot earlier about how there are all these earls who are Bow Street Runners, who are kind of, like, doing all this grunt work. Right. Which is just like, kind of stretches the limits of belief. But Sir Ross is in a really interesting position that seems like a much more natural trajectory. So he's gentry and his family is very wealthy, and he's not like a run of the mill Bow Street runner. Right? Like, he's the chief magistrate of Bow Street. So that kind of ascension, it seems like, much more linear than the other.
Emma
Yeah, I think this is true also of any police. Like, any accurate depiction of police work is going to be a lot of paperwork. Right. Which I don't think any of the other books seem as interested in compared to. It's like Ross. Ross is going to be at his desk looking through things. That's just police work in general. But also it makes more sense that he's in a behind the desk role. So he's effectively in the same position that the Fieldings were. Like the chief magistrate. He's taken over those origin roles.
Beth
Do we have much else to say?
Emma
I did read two books that I can recommend, but I guess this is sort of like, I guess, my bow on the Bow Street Runners thing. So I reread, or I guess I finished. The Earl of Her Dreams by Anne Mallory and a dangerous seduction by Jillian Eaton. And these are two books that I would describe neither of them as particularly historical, for Bow Street. Both of them involve. Actually, The Earl of Her Dreams involves an earl undercover for Bow Street. It plays like a clue mystery novel. It's like, who committed the murder in what room, with what weapon, but it's very charming. And Bow Street is like this. There's so many things about it that are ahistorical. In Bow Street, it almost becomes charming. And, like Bow Street, is totally mythologized. And then in A Dangerous Seduction, I think there's some historical inaccuracies in it, but I think it does say interesting things, sort of about the nature of the power of surveillance. Because the hero is suspecting the heroine of killing her husband, and he sort of has to admit to himself that he's abusing his power by investigating her. It becomes very clear that she did not kill her husband pretty early, and that's sort of like one of his moral quandaries that he has to reckon with is that he's taken on this investigative power to the detriment of her because they were like childhood sweethearts and he wants to hurt her.
Emma
So it's like sort of a discussion of the abuse of power, of having this investigatory role and surveillance role. So both of those books I would recommend, not necessarily as historical Bow Street books, but just cute romances. But, yeah, I guess. Any other outstanding questions about Bow Street or anything else to say about the novel?
Chels
Yeah, no, I think this is very interesting, especially in conjunction with Newgate. I think if you talk about Bow Street and Newgate in historical romance, historical romance seems to lean even more conservative than people would initially think.
Emma
Yeah, I think that's definitely true. And I think it comes up as this thing where it seems like when they're trying to condemn either institution or sort of suggest suspect things like, oh, the Bow Street Runners are overextending their jurisdiction, or Newgate is cruel. It seems like the genre tends to rely on that distance. I think that happens for both sort of setting markers that distance creates an excuse or a get out of jail free card for modern institutions. It's like, oh, it was worse back then, or Bow Street is closer to criminality than police are now. Newgate is a worse situation than prisons are now. And so it is invested in this long arc of justice where it's like things must be better now and things are different now. That doesn't mean that better or that these institutions are somehow not worthy of critique just because things used to be maybe a little bit more messy. I wouldn't even say like, Bow Street is worse than some police departments now. It just is different. It has different institutional rules, it has different institutional goals, but it doesn't mean that we can't critique things now.
Emma
And I think the most interesting way to use Bow Street in a book would be to critique policing now or engage with notions of policing now, because you're going to do that either way. So you might as well have an intention about it, which I think is a success of Lady Sophia's Lover. I think on its face, it deals with what does it mean to punish someone and to forgive people. Sophia has to go through forgiveness of Ross, which makes for a really good romance.
Emma
Thank you so much for listening to Reformed Rakes. If you enjoy the podcast, you can find bonus content on our patreon@patreon.com slash reformedrakes. You can also follow us on Twitter and Instagram for show updates. The username for both is at reformedrakes. Please rate and review. It helps a lot. Thank you again and we'll see you next time.
