A police force like the Maréchaussée already present in France would have been ill-suited to Britain, which saw examples such as the French one as a threat to their liberty and balanced constitution in favour of an arbitrary and tyrannical government.

Once the criminal had been apprehended, the parish constables and night watchmen, who were the only public figures provided by the state and who were typically part-time and local, would make the arrest.

Although the offer of such a reward was conceived as an incentive for the victims of an offence to proceed to the prosecution and to bring criminals to justice, the efforts of the government also increased the number of private and unofficial thief-takers, who would solve petty crime for a fee.

[5] Magistrate Henry Fielding decided to regulate, regularise, formalise and legalise the thief-takers' activity due to high rates of corruption and mistaken or malicious arrests, therefore creating the Bow Street Runners.

Taking up the legacy of his predecessor, Sir Thomas de Veil, Fielding turned Bow Street into a court-like setting in which to conduct examinations.

In fact, since 1749–50 Henry Fielding had begun organising a group of men with the task of apprehending offenders and taking them to Bow Street for examination and commitment to trial.

A new kind of magistrate's office and policing activity was therefore established; after the death of Henry Fielding in 1754, it was carried on by his brother John, who had overseen the whole project and was to further expand and develop it over the following years.

Known as the "Blind Beak of Bow Street", John Fielding refined the patrol into the first truly effective police force for the capital, later adding officers mounted on horseback, and remained chief magistrate of Westminster until his death in 1780.

[14][15] Eventually, the government agreed to establish a separate magistrate office from which Welch could operate, leaving Fielding as the dominant presence in Bow Street.

[15] Over the years, the government subvention raised from the initial £200 to £400 in 1757 and to £600 by 1765, as Fielding managed to persuade the Duke of Newcastle, now First Lord of the Treasury, of the increasing costs of an active policing and advertising, as well as of the need of recruiting a permanent clerical staff for the office.

[18] Fielding believed that a national system of criminal information circulating throughout not only the metropolis of London but also the entire country would ensure that offenders would be arrested and brought to justice; moreover, anyone contemplating an offence would be deterred from doing so.

Fielding created a court-like setting that could attract and accommodate a large audience for his examinations of suspected offenders, opened and available for the public for long and regular hours.

The first was the rise in crime rates because the end of a period of war (in this case the American Revolution) and the consequent return in the country of many soldiers and sailors, who were now out of a job.

The second factor was directly linked to the first and concerned the issue of transportation to the American colonies, which had been established in 1718 and begun the principal sanction imposed on convicted felons.

Eventually, in 1785, the Home Department attempted to introduce and pass 'A Bill for the further Prevention of Crimes, and for the more speedy Detection and Punishment of Offenders against the Peace, in the Cities of London and Westminster, the Borough of Southwark, and certain Parts adjacent to them',[23] which was meant to provide a measure of central control over the many police forces across the metropolis but failed to do so.

[24] Some elements were derived from the existing institutions, particularly Bow Street, but the concept of the metropolis as a unified district and a central command overseeing many policing divisions was completely new.

3. c. 53) which contained two elements of the 1785 bill: one was the establishment of public offices where magistrates monopolized the administration of criminal law throughout the metropolis, and the other was the increase in the powers of the police.

Their incomes from London crime diminished as the position that Bow Street had once held in the commitment of felons to trial continued to erode with the expansion of the patrol and the creation of new police offices from 1792.

The Bow Street magistrates' effective loss of authority over the activity of the Runners and the government's concern to control costs meant that the funds for the office were much diminished in the 1830s.

Of course, this included also the advertising of the activity carried out in Bow Street, as well as exhortations to victims to report offences and any kind of information on criminals and stolen goods.

That meant that the Bow Street officers did not have to seek the assistance of local magistrates in the counties surrounding London in order to make an arrest or carry out a search.

Turnpike gatekeepers and publicans were therefore encouraged to report crimes and offences as soon as possible to Bow Street, in order to allow Fielding's men to presently seek out and apprehend the offenders.