Chronicles of Bow Street police-office, (1888) PDF book by Percy Hetherington Fitzgerald

Chronicles of Bow Street police office, 

Recently, in the course of the " improvements " around Covent Garden Market, the old Bow Street Police Office — for almost a century the scene of many- exciting and eccentric incidents — was levelled to the ground, to be replaced by a spacious and commodious building. With it has gone a large portion of Inigo Jones' Piazza, notable for its elegant proportions and Italian air. Here were bound up many traditions and old associations which usually disappear, or are for- gotten, when the old stones have been carted away. 

For nigh a century, the old Court was the scene of many dramatic and eccentric incidents — engendered for the most part by the old school of manners and morals, long since happily reformed. Such is full of interest as illustrating a phase of forgotten London manners: and in the following pages, I have attempted to furnish an account of what took place within those narrow precincts. During the past twenty or thirty years, there have. been many criminal cases of extraordinary dramatic interest, the incidents of which are but faintly re-membered. It may be urged, indeed, that the serving-up these afresh is but pandering to an unwholesome taste. Such is indeed abundantly catered for in works like the Newgate Calendar; but it has always seemed to me that, quite apart from their tragic interest, such cases generally furnish extraordinary and even grotesque exhibitions of character: or odd and perplexing combinations of circumstances and evidence. 

These in themselves have extraordinary, even bizarro interest, such, for instance, as the curious and invariable tendency of criminals — when making a confession — to confess what is untrue. It is for this reason that I have dwelt at length on the remarkable case of Thurtell, which has always seemed to offer a sort of fascination from the weird, almost romantic incidents which attended it. Familiar as it is, and an oft-told tale, there will be here found much that is novel.
Download