The Bow Street Runners have been called London's first professional police force. The force was founded in 1749 by the author Henry Fielding and originally numbered just six. Bow Street runners was the public's nickname for these officers, "although the officers never referred to themselves as runners, considering the term to be derogatory". The Bow Street group was disbanded in 1839.
Famous quotes containing the words bow, street and/or runners:
“I never knowed how clothes could change a body before. Why, before, he looked like the orneriest old rip that ever was; but now, when he’d take off his new white beaver and make a bow and do a smile, he looked that grand and good and pious that you’d say he had walked right out of the ark, and maybe was old Leviticus himself.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“Outside America I should hardly be believed if I told how simply, in my experience, Dover Street merged into the Back Bay.”
—Mary Antin (1881–1949)
“Why runners make lousy communists. In a word, individuality. It’s the one characteristic all runners, as different as they are, seem to share.... Stick with it. Push yourself. Keep running. And you’ll never lose that wonderful sense of individuality you now enjoy. Right, comrade?”
—quoted in Guardian (London, Dec. 29, 1984)