Sir John Fielding and the Problem of Criminal Investigation in Eighteenth-Century England

Transactions of the Royal Historical Society

Volumn 33, Issue , 1983, Pages 127-149

  Styles, John ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 85012420494     PISSN: 00804401     EISSN: 14740648     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/3678993     Document Type: Article

References (35)

1. J. Brewer, Party, Ideology and Popular Politics at the accession of George III (Cambridge, 1976), 158.
2. N. McKendrick, J. Brewer and J. H. Plumb, The Birth of a Consumer Society (.1982), passim
3. R. Leslie-Melville, The Life and Work of Sir John Fielding (1934) and L. Radzinowicz, A History of English Criminal Law (4 vols., 1948–68), iii (1956), 11 -62.
4. J. Styles, An eighteenth-century magistrate as detective: Samuel Lister of Little Horton’, Bradford Antiquary, New Ser., 47 (1982) 98–117.
5. B.C.L. Deeds, 16/14/10, Richard Wilson to Lister, 19 Jan. 1756.
6. B.C.L. Deeds, 16/14/10, draft of Lister to anon., n.d. (about 1 Feb. 1756).
7. B.C.L. Deeds, 16/14/10, draft of Lister to Mr Rookes, 26 May 1756.
8. B.C.L. Deeds, 16/14/10, draft of Lister to Dear Alan’, n.d.
9. D. Barlow, Dick Turpin and the Gregory Gang (Chichester, 1973), 123, 231–2, 241–4, 301–3.
10. J. Poulter alias Baxter, The Discoveries of John Poulter alias Baxter (6th edn., Sherborne, 1753), 3–27.
11. J. Hewitt, A Journal of the Proceedings of J. Hewitt, Senior Alderman of the City of Coventry and one of His Majesty's justices of the Peace for the said City and County, in his Duty as a Magistrate (2nd edn., 2 vols., Birmingham, 1790), i, 117–220.
12. P. Barfoot and J. Wilkes (compilers), The Universal British Directory of Trade, Commerce and Manufacture (2nd edn., 5 vols., 1793), passim. It is curious that Lister did not attempt to write to the mayors of Gloucester, Bath or Bristol, who were magistrates ex officio and could be located without knowledge of their names. However, it is also striking that the surviving documents suggest he wrote only to people to whom he had a formal introduction from someone in Yorkshire. Perhaps he considered such connections were more to be depended on in such a case than the sometimes questionable enthusiasm of anonymous magistrates for upholding the law.
13. G. A. Cranfield, The Development of the Provincial Newspaper, iyoo-iy6o (Oxford, 1960), 21, 202–206.
14. Yorkshire, Bristol and Norfolk, and The London Evening Post in 1756 as far as Flintshire and Lancashire, although in both cases the vast majority of their crime advertisements originated in the metropolis or adjacent counties.
15. P. Pringle, Hue and Cry: The Birth of the British Police (1965), 183 - 194 ;
16. T. A. Critchley, A History of Police in England and Wales, 900– 1966 (1967), 32–35.
17. Pringle, Hue and Cry, 68–9. A clearing house for criminal information, operating mainly within the London area, but with provincial connections, had been the lynchpin of Jonathan Wild's activities in the 1710s and 1720
18. G. Howson, Thief-Taker General (1970), 66–69 and 125–6.
19. London Evening Post, 5 Feb. 1756.
20. Manchester Mercury, 14 Sept. 1773 and Norwich Mercury, 24 Dec. 1773.
21. J. Fielding to Earl of Suffolk, n.d. (January 1773).
22. Sir J. Fielding to T. Lawson, 17 Oct. 1772.
23. Newcastle Courant, 20 July 1776.
24. R. Burn, The Justice of the Peace and Parish Officer (16th edn., 4 vols., 1788), ii. 655–666.
25. J. Winter, 10 Aug. 1762.
26. D. Hay, War, Dearth and Theft in the Eighteenth Century: The Record of the English Courts’, Past & Present, no. 95 (1982), 123–6, 135–146.
27. Fielding circular dated 19 Oct. 1772.
28. J. Fielding headed ‘To the Acting Magistrates of the Counties at large throughout ENGLAND, in their Quarter Sessions assembled’. This circular and its covering letter, dated 28 Feb. 1775, survive in several quarter sessions collections, for example Kent Record Office, Q/SB 1775, Kent quarter sessions papers, 1775.
29. Derbyshire and Holland, of parish (particularly contables’) records.
30. Hertfordshire Record Office, LSMB/I: St Albans Liberty quarter sessions, Draft Minute Book, 1776–86, Epiphany Sessions 1777.
31. B. Webb, The Parish and the County (1963), 501
32. B. Webb, The Parish and the County, 489–502
33. J. N. Clarke, Watch and Ward in the Countryside (Horncastle, 1982), 8.
34. J. M. Beattie, ‘Towards a Study of Crime in Eighteenth-Century England: A Note on Indictments’, in The Triumph of Culture: Eighteenth-Century Perspectives, ed. P. Fritz and D. Williams (Toronto, 1972), 309.
35. J. Burrows and R. Tarling, Clearing up Crime (1982).