Sir John Fielding (1721-1780) was a magistrate. Though blinded accidentally, Fielding became one of the founding members of the Bow Street Runners alongside his half-brother Henry.
Life[]
Born in September of 1721 in London, John was the third-born son of General Edmund Fielding and his new wife. Throughout his childhood, he had a close relationship to his half-siblings Henry and Sarah (products of his father's first marriage).
Little is known about Fielding's early life. It is possible that he served in the Royal Navy before being blinded and it is known that Fielding's eyesight was poor even before he was blinded. In 1740 he underwent an operation to fix his eyesight. Unfortunately, the surgeon accidentally blinded John due to negligence (something which was proven after John sued the surgeon and won the case).
Ten years later, John (alongside his brother Henry) founded a company known as the "University Register Office". Around the same time, John became Henry's personal assisstant and helped him to form the Bow Street Runners and helped to establish the first police criminal records department by regularly circulating the "Police Gazette" (a newspaper used to show various wanted peoples and criminals).
In 1751, Fielding married the daughter of a reverend doctor. Four years later, John's brother died and John became a magistrate due to this. In 1758, John helped to found an "Asylum for Orphan Girls" and was knighted three years later. Nearly a decade later (specifically in 1774, shortly before the beginning of the Revolutionary War), John's wife died and he quickly remarried and died six years later.
Appearances in fiction[]
- John Fielding is a somewhat major character in Lawrence Norfolk's novel Lemprière's Dictionary.
- Fielding appears in Charles Dickens' novel Barnaby Rudge.
- Fielding is a character in Ken Follett's novel A Place Called Freedom.
- Leon Garfield's novel Smith has a blind justice (which is most likely Fielding or is based on him) in it.
- Bruce Cook (under the pseudonym Bruce Alexander) wrote a series of crime novels with Fielding as their main character, starting with Blind Justice.
- Fielding is a major character in Deryn Lake's detective novel Death in the Dark Walk.
- Fielding is a recurring character in Robert Lee Hall's Benjamin Franklin mystery series.
Sources[]
- Wikipedia