THE OLD BAILEY HAS RECEIVED A LOT OF REPEAT BUSINESS FROM BOW STREET...........

Infamous names in Bow Street's past

DAILY MAIL online

 14 July 2006

 

One of the most famous addresses in the history of British crime and punishment closes down today.

Here are some of the famous names - real and fictional - who have stood in the dock at Bow Street Magistrates Court which opened in 1881, or in its earlier premises which were located nearby.

 

:: c1760 - Renowned womaniser Giacomo Casanova recalls in his memoirs that he appeared before magistrate Sir John Fielding at Bow Street charged with assaulting a prostitute, and was bound over to keep the peace.
 
:: 1838 - In fiction, the Artful Dodger appears at the fore-runner of the current Bow Street court in Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist, published in this year.
 
:: 1895 - Oscar Wilde is in the dock after his arrest for "committing indecent acts", and is eventually sentenced to two years' hard labour. A cartoon on the front page of Police News clearly shows the same dock still in court number one today.
 
:: 1908 - Suffragettes Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst - who were mother and daughter - and Flora Drummond face the so-called "Rush trial" and are jailed for handing out leaflets urging their supporters to "rush" the House of Commons.
 
:: 1910 - Dr Hawley Harvey Crippen murders his wife Cora Crippen - better known by her stage name Belle Elmore - and flees to Canada.
Captured and returned to London, Crippen appears at Bow Street, is tried at the Old Bailey and hanged.
 
:: 1916 - British diplomat Roger Casement tried for treason, espionage and sabotage against the Crown for dealing with Germany in connection with encouraging an Irish uprising. Executed at Pentonville prison, he was famously "hanged by a comma" after his trial took an unpunctuated interpretation of treason laws, adopting the literal sense.
 
:: 1928 - Radclyffe Hall's lesbian novel, The Well of Loneliness, is deemed obscene by magistrates at Bow Street and remains banned until 1949.
 
:: 1945 - Nazi propagandist William "Lord Haw-Haw" Joyce appears on high treason charges and is eventually executed.
 
:: 1968 - East End gangsters Ronnie and Reggie Kray appear after a series of dawn raids by police in connection with charges including conspiracy to murder underworld characters George Cornell and Jack "The Hat" McVitie.
 
:: 1998 - Former Conservative Cabinet minister Jonathan Aitken is committed to trial on charges of perjury, conspiring to pervert the course of justice and perverting the course of justice.
 
:: 2000 - Tory peer Jeffrey Archer is committed for trial on charges of perjury and perverting the course of justice.
 
(General Augusto Pinochet was excused from attending his extradition hearing at the court in 1999 due to ill health.)