I’m so excited to welcome today’s guest blogger to the Riskies!  Sheri Cobb South is the author of the fabulous Regency-set John Pickett mysteries.  One commenter will win a signed ARC of her newest title, Family Plot….

In many ways, the history of London’s Bow Street force is too complex to be covered adequately in a blog. Whole books could be written—and have been—about this 18^th century precursor to Scotland Yard. In his introduction to Henry Goddard’s Memoirs of a Bow Street Runner (William Morrow and Company, 1949), Patrick Pringle notes the lack of contemporary sources, almost all the official records having been destroyed in 1881, when the Bow Street Police Office moved from its original site adjacent to Covent Garden Theatre across the street to the site where the Bow Street Magistrate’s Court building may still be seen.

Still, certain factoids concerning the Bow Street force—their red waistcoats, for instance—turn up again and again in novels, assumed by authors to be accurate by their very ubiquitousness; this was certainly my own view when I set out to create Bow Street Runner John Pickett and his world for my mystery series. But when I discovered the aforementioned Memoirs, published by Goddard’s grandson’s widow from his notebooks, I realized that many of the things I thought I knew about Bow Street were wrong.

Take those red waistcoats, for instance. They are accurate to a point; the Horse Patrol wore them, as did, later, the foot patrol. But the Runners were always a plainclothes force, and very deliberately so: the independent English mind had a horror of the kind of martial law found in European countries, and Bow Street founder Henry Fielding (he of Tom Jones fame) had the wisdom to know that anything resembling a uniform was to be avoided. Even when the Horse Patrol costume was standardized half a century later, in 1805, every care was taken to be sure that their blue coats and red waistcoats looked as much like civilian dress as possible.

Nor was everyone on the Bow Street force created equal—and not everyone was a Runner. The members of the Foot Patrol worked at night, and earned the lowest wages at half a crown—two and a half shillings—a day. As one might expect, this bottom rung of the ladder was where many eventual Runners started out, including memoirist Henry Goddard. He enlisted in the Foot Patrol in 1824, five years before Robert Peel’s Metropolitan Police would begin to encroach upon the Runners’ territory. Within a year or two Goddard was promoted to the Day Patrol at a salary of three shillings and sixpence per day. Finally he rose to the position of principal officer—those individuals we know as Runners. (He was twenty-six years old at the time, which told me I was not too far afield in letting my precocious young John Pickett achieve that position at age twenty-three.)

Bow Street Runners were paid twenty-five shillings a week, but they had other ways of supplementing their income. The first of these was by private commission on behalf of anyone who was able to pay them. The fee for their services was usually a guinea a day and, if the case should take them beyond London, fourteen shillings a day for travel expenses, including meals and lodging. If the case was successful, a reward would be paid as well.

Another, more controversial, income stream derived from the longstanding practice of offering payment for convictions. As one might imagine, such a system invited corruption, which had reached its peak (or perhaps its nadir) with the 18^th century “Thief-Taker General” Jonathan Wild, who enticed the young and/or gullible into committing crimes so that he might collect rewards for bringing them to justice. Although Wild was hanged for his crimes almost a quarter-century before Fielding’s establishment of the Bow Street Runners, his memory still lived in the public consciousness, and even in death he managed to blacken the reputation of a Bow Street force which operated under a very similar system.

While the creation of the Metropolitan Police in 1829 marked a change in law enforcement in what was the most populous city in the world at the time, it did not mean the immediate end of the Bow Street Runners. They continued in their role of detectives, and their civilian dress gave them advantages over the uniformed—and consequently more conspicuous—New Police. It was not until 1839, ninety years after their founding, that the Bow Street Runners ceased to exist. Even so, Henry Goddard continued to operate as a private detective as late as 1856, and very likely longer.

In addition to giving us an insiders’ look at the sort of cases a Bow Street Runner might be called upon to investigate, Goddard’s Memoirs offer a glimpse of the birth of modern forensics. In one of his cases, for example, he recalls his discovery that the balls fired from a particular gun left holes of a distinctive shape—a circumstance that allowed him to identify the exact weapon used.

Memoirs of a Bow Street Runner is out of print today, but might still be found through interlibrary loan or used-book sites such as www.bookfinder.com.

I’m taking a little blogging break for a couple of weeks, but we have an excellent guest blogger today, talking about the gorgeous city of Bath!  Keira Soleore is a a freelance book editor, a content editor for a travel start-up, and a medieval & Regency romance aspiring writer.  Visit her at www.keirasoleore.org….

Anyone who has visited Bath, England comes away with loving memories of a city rich in history and beauty. As Samuel Johnson wrote: “Let me counsel you not to waste your health in unprofitable sorrow, but go to Bath and endeavour to prolong your life.” For seventeen centuries, the City of Bath has hosted visitors from all walks of life believing exactly that. There’s this fan of Bath, H.V. Morton, who in 1927 wrote: “I like Bath. It has quality. I like Bath buns, Bath Olivers, Bath chaps, Bath brick, Bath stone (which to my London eyes is the beautiful sister of Portland stone), and watching the Bath chairs dash past.” Honestly, do you see any denizen of a Bath chair (AKA wheelchair) wanting to dash about the steep hills of the city?”

This gem in the Avon river valley lies over a volcano that sends up hot mineral water to the surface. King Bladud, who reigned in England 900 years before Christ is credited with the discovery of these springs. The first shrine at the site of the hot springs was built by Celts and was dedicated to the goddess Sulis, whom the Romans later identified with Minerva. Agricola arrived in Bath in the Roman year of 861. He called the city Aquae Sulis and constructed the temple to Minerva in 70 CE. He brought with him a taste for the Roman life, including public bathing, wearing of togas, traveling on well-constructed roads, and building temples and government buildings.

The waters of Bath were a natural draw for the elderly and the sick in the belief that bathing in and drinking of these waters cured the sufferers of all ailments, real and imagined. The Roman Baths that still stand today were built over the course of 300 years. King Bladud’s statue, which stands proudly in these baths, is saluted to in the whimsical words of Richard Brinsley Sheridan “Bladud assures me: Tho’ in his youth, about three thousand years ago, he was reckoned a man of Gallantry, yet he now never offers to take the least advantage of any lady bathing here.”

While public bathing continued to be the mainstay of life in Bath, many people disapproved of the practice. John Wood the Elder was much preoccupied with the licentious behavior in the baths: “Modesty was entirely shut out of them; People of both Sexes bathing by Day and Night naked.” Can you sense the outrage dripping in each syllable there? Many archdeacons and rectors over the years tried to school people in modesty;drawers for men, smocks for women, and no intermingling of the sexes. But people continued to court excommunication in order strip naked and enjoy bathing in their natural glory.

While John Wood the Elder was airing his views, John Wood the Younger was involved in a different project. He designed and built the Royal Crescent, a row of 30 terraced houses laid out in a sweeping crescent. This greatest example of Georgian architecture was built between 1767 and 1774 and is among the most enduring landmarks of Bath. Be sure to visit Number One Royal Crescent to see a typical townhouse in Georgian times. The others crescents to visit are the Lansdown Crescent and The Circus.

The Grand Pump Room, built in 1789 in the Abbey churchyard, was where the Georgian and Regency nobility gathered in the mornings to partake of the sulfurous waters. It was a place to see and be seen, and people dressed carefully for the occasion. Gossiping over glasses of the water was considered the norm as was promenading around the room. Nowadays, you can visit the building for a meal in the reputable restaurant.

The Bath Abbey, AKA The Abbey Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, was a former Benedictine monastery, but is now an Anglican parish church. It was founded in the seventh century, rebuilt and/or restored in the 12th, 16th, and 19th centuries. The abbey currently seats 1,200 people and continues to be actively used for religious services, various non-religious ceremonies, and also concerts and lectures. Small eclectic restaurants and shops have sprung up in the lanes surrounding there to cater to the thousands of tourists who throng to the abbey every year.

One of the oldest houses in Bath and the origin of the famed Bath buns, Sally Lunn’s House is a must visit for its traditional but varied menu. The Sally Lunn Bun is like a teacake made with a yeast dough, cream, eggs, and spice and is very similar to French sweet brioche.

The 148-foot long 58-foot wide Pulteney Bridge, across River Avon, has been in continuous use since 1774. Sir John Soane’s Museum in London in 2000, I saw Robert Adam’s original drawings for this bridge. To this day, it is only one of four bridges in the world to have shops across its full span on both sides.

And finally, I cannot end an account of Bath without mention of one of its most famous visitors, Jane Austen. In 1897, she wrote in Northanger Abbey, “They arrived at Bath. Catherine was all eager delight;her eyes were here, there, everywhere, as they approached its fine striking environs, and afterwards drove through those streets which conducted them to the hotel. She was come to be happy, and felt happy already. they were soon settled in comfortable lodgings in Pulteney Street.”