Bow Street Beak

Ronald Bartle

Description

From the cases of Michael Fagan and other Buckingham Palace intruders to those of West End pickpockets, over-zealous preachers, 'saucy' prostitutes and cockroaches in the kitchens of one of London's most prestigious clubs, Bow Street Beak is a roller-coaster ride through the judicial career of stipendiary magistrate Ronald Bartle at the iconic Bow Street Magistrates' Court.

Sujets

• Droit et juridique
• Legal history

Informations

• Publié par: Waterside Press
• Date de parution: 28 octobre 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781910979204
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

Bow Street Beak
Ronald Bartle
With a Foreword by Lord Hurd
“Why Sir,” said Johnson, “I suppose this must be the law since you have been told so in Bow Street.”
Boswell’s Life of Dr Johnson
Copyright and publication details
Bow Street Beak
Ronald Bartle
ISBN 978-1-909976-36-8 (Paperback)
ISBN 978-1-910979-20-4 (Epub ebook)
ISBN 978-1-910979-21-1 (Adobe ebook)
Copyright © 2000, 2016 This work is the copyright of Ronald Bartle. All intellectual property and associated rights are hereby asserted and reserved by her in full compliance with UK, European and international law. No part of this book may be copied, reproduced, stored in any retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, or in any language, including in hard copy or via the internet, without the prior written permission of the publishers to whom all such rights have been assigned worldwide.
Cover design © 2016 Waterside Press.
Main UK distributor Gardners Books, 1 Whittle Drive, Eastbourne, East Sussex, BN23 6QH . Tel: [phone]; [e-mail] ; www.gardners.com
North American distribution Ingram Book Company, One Ingram Blvd, La Vergne, TN 37086, USA. Tel: [phone]; [e-mail]
Cataloguing-In-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book can be obtained from the British Library.
Printed by Lightning Source.
e-book Bow Street Beak is available as an ebook and also to subscribers of Myilibrary, Dawsonera, ebrary, and Ebscohost.
This Revised Edition Published 2016 by
Waterside Press
Sherfield Gables
Sherfield-on-Loddon
Hook, Hampshire
United Kingdom RG27 0JG
Telephone [phone]
E-mail [e-mail]
Online catalogue WatersidePress.co.uk
Table of Contents
Copyright and publication details ii
First edition vi
About the author vii
Acknowledgements viii
Foreword ix
Introduction 11 Drama at the Palace 17
The Queen’s Intruder 17
Descent from Above 23
A Short Postscript 24 Laughter in Court 25
The Walter Mitty Complex 27
Anyone Fancy a Pigeon? 28
A Wild Goose Chase 29
What a Charmer! 30
When is a Square not a Square? 31
Do You Like Your Cockroach Grilled or Boiled? 33
A Flutter in the Dove-Cote 34
… And Tears 36 Coping with Crime 39
Sentencing the Violent Offender 46
The Sex Offender 49
Sentencing the Minor Drug Offender 52 Policemen Under Fire 59
The Wapping Riots 59
The Guildford Four Police Officers 63 Security — Does it Exist? 79 Crime Knows No Frontiers 83 Magistrates: Lay and Stipendiary 93 These I Have Known 105 A Day in the Life of a London Magistrate 115 A Little of Myself 131
Making Justice More Efficient 140 Japanese Days 153
Nagasaki 160 The Pinochet Drama 165 Summing It Up 181
Appendix 185
Index 187
First edition
Bow Street Beak was first published by Barry Rose in 2000 and this revised edition is reproduced by kind permission of his daughter Diana.
About the author
Ronald Bartle was Deputy Chief Stipendiary Magistrate (now District
Judge) for Inner London. His books include The Telephone Murder: The
Mysterious Death of Julia Wallace (2012); The Police Witness: A Guide to
Presenting Evidence in Court (1984 onwards) and Three Cases that Shook the Law (2016).
Acknowledgements
To the memory of the late Barry Rose MBE and to Miss Diana Rose who has kindly agreed to this book being republished, and with thanks to my wife Molly whose enthusiasm and support enabled this to take place.
Foreword
I have known since Cambridge days that Ron Bartle possesses lively views and a stylish pen. He has turned both to good account in these reflections on his life as a Bow Street Beak.
A huge amount is written about crime, criminals and sentencing. We have the television soap operas. We have the tedious debate, which Ron Bartle rightly criticises, between the political parties about who is tough and who is soft on crime. We have learned academic volumes on criminology. But alongside these there is scope for a practical account based on down-to-earth experience of how the system actually works — particularly when this can be laced with humour and many proofs of the eccentricity of human nature. You do not need to agree with all Ron Bartle’s conclusions to be stimulated as well as entertained by the story of a vivid career.
The Rt Hon Lord Hurd of Westwell CH, CBE, PC
October 1999
Introduction
It it good to be able to revisit this book, written over 15 years ago. A great deal has changed in that time and a certain nostalgia is added to by the fact that Bow Street Magistrates’ Court no longer exists and so there will be no more “Bow Street beaks.” Neither do stipendiary magistrates as such, who are now known by the perhaps more grand sounding title of district judge as I explain in the closing chapters. Even the Lord Chancellor’s Department has become the Ministry of Justice (after a brief spell as the Department for Constitutional Affairs). And the legal landscape has changed: in terms of procedure, substantive law (including the creation of new offences) and the availability (or lack) of legal aid to defend cases or put forward mitigation. The Criminal Justice Act 2003 in particular made many changes including in order to incorporate some of the suggestions I made in the original version and that are noted later in the book. In a more streamlined age it may also be that there is less scope for “characters” of the kind I describe in the book, from within the system or without, even if they make life interesting. Just occasionally and where I think it is useful to the reader I have added notes about some changes.
The book is about my work and not about myself since the former is, I trust, of some interest to the reader whilst the latter I may confidently assume is of none. It concerns the 20 years during which I sat on the bench at Bow Street Court as a Metropolitan Stipendiary Magistrate dispensing justice, or what I hope and trust has been justice, to a variety of offenders, many of them minor and some quite major, who passed through the dock day-after-day, year-after-year.
The jurisdiction of Bow Street Court broadly speaking covered that area of London known as the West End. It belonged to the South Westminster Division of Inner London, the court-house being situated in Covent Garden opposite the Royal Opera House. It is said that when Queen Victoria went to the opera she found the view of Bow Street so uncongenial that she directed the curtains of her hansom cab to be drawn on that side. The name of the court derived from the design of the street which is shaped somewhat like an archer’s bow.
The significance of this particular court was not derived from the central position which it occupied. The reason why it was universally acknowledged to be the “flagship” magistrates’ court, not only of London but also of England, is twofold. First, it was traditionally the court at which the Chief Magistrate resided. Secondly, it enjoyed a special jurisdiction in the form of extradition. This meant that Bow Street stipendiary magistrates were specially designated by statute and with the Lord Chancellor’s approval, to hear applications by foreign states for the return of offenders who were fugitives from justice in those countries.
I am not intending to dwell on the early history of Bow Street Court or to describe the celebrated cases which took place there during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It would seem appropriate, however, that by way of introduction I should touch quite briefly upon this subject.
The story begins when, in the year 1740, a Colonel Thomas de Veil, a justice of the peace for the counties of Middlesex and Westminster, moved his magistrate’s office from a house in Soho to a house in Bow Street. From such apparently innocuous origins there began a process by which the administration and enforcement of summary criminal justice slowly spread across London and, in due course, throughout the country as a whole. De Veil launched this historic development but of far greater importance was the work done by his immediate successors Henry and John Fielding and Saunders Welch.
Henry Fielding had already achieved fame as an author, Tom Jones being his masterpiece, but he was far too active a man to rest upon his literary laurels. He set about his new profession as a magistrate with great enthusiasm and resolve.
At the request of the government he drew up a plan to combat the criminals who infested the streets of London. He also engaged a small number of volunteer “ policemen”, thus laying the foundations for the famous Bow Street Runners, a body of independent law enforcers whose courage and devotion to duty was to win for them an international reputation. In these days when our newspapers and television screens contain so much reporting of crime it is some consolation to bear in mind that compared with the London of the eighteenth century, the capital city of today is a relatively secure and orderly place. The absence of a police force and of a developed system of criminal courts greatly contributed to the inadequacy of such meagre forces of law and order which did exist, confronted as they were by a degree of violence, thieving and mayhem unimaginable today. This was illustrated to the full by the Gordon Riots in which the mob indulged in an orgy of destruction for days on end until the military finally gained control. A great debt is due to Henry Fielding for his efforts to confront London’s criminals, but the work he began was carried crucially forward by his half-brother John and John’s assistant and subsequent successor Saunders Welch.
Sir John Fielding and Saunders Welch laid the basis for the administration of magisterial justice in London and established a routine of court sittings at Bow Street. Most importantly, however, Fielding and Welch introduced the then revolutionary principle that magistrates should be both qualified lawyers and paid for their services.