[3] Dowling was present in the lobby of the House of Commons when John Bellingham shot Spencer Perceval, on 11 May 1812, and was one of the first persons to seize the murderer, from whose pocket he took a loaded pistol.
[3] From open reporting on a meeting of radicals at Spa Fields in 1816, Dowling moved to gathering intelligence in public houses for the Home Office.
When Queen Caroline was about to return from the continent, after the accession of George IV in June 1820, Dowling proceeded to France to record her progress, and being entrusted with her majesty's despatches, he crossed the Channel in an open boat during a stormy night, and was the first to arrive in London with the news.
He claimed to be the author of the plan on which the Metropolitan Police was organised; the names of the officers, inspectors, sergeants, and so on, were published in Bell's Life nearly two years before Sir Robert Peel spoke on the subject in 1829.
[3] Frank Lewis Dowling, his son, took over the editorship of Bell's Life, though Henry Hall Dixon was given the refusal of it, and of Fistiana.