The Regency of England refers roughly to 1811 to 1820, though the term more broadly includes 1800 to 1830. When George III, stricken with illness, was no longer able to function, his eldest son, the Prince, became Regent in his place. “The Regency took its tone from the larger-than-life figure of the Prince of Wales… The age spawned a bustling underworld of scandal, criminality, gambling and personal notoriety. Embezzlement and fraud flourished then as now. The war against France caused more instability and led to the collapse of law and order.” (Low, Sutton, p. xxv)
Authors of crime stories and mysteries, like me, must enter the dangerous world of this time. Low says that London, England “outperformed the rest of the British Isles in crime and vice.” (Low, p. xi) There was no police force, as such, until the Victorian period, adding to this instability. The growth of the underworld had begun in the 18th century (Georgian period). In London, Henry Fielding became a salaried chief magistrate of Westminster in 1749. He established the Bow Street group, whose men became known as the Bow Street Runners. Henry’s brother Sir John Fielding continued the work, and by the time of the Regency the work of the Runners had expanded considerably.
London embodied a complex world in the Regency. Crime abounded in many forms and areas. From the gambling dens frequented by the wealthy, who also used the services of the deminondaines, or better-class prostitutes, to the prostitutes who frequented the Drury Lane and Covent Garden theater area, the area of murderers and escaped convicts–the crime takes precedence. The dark streets encouraged thieves and pickpockets (gas lighting was installed in some streets of Pall Mall in 1807) to target the public, and well-bred females did not roam at night without the protection of men. Few from the West End traveled to the East End without good reason, and a fully loaded pistol or two.
The thieves came from the East End colonias, or criminal districts like St. Giles and Whitechapel. In these dens of crime the ‘flash houses’ flourished. These were numerous pubs frequented by criminals teaching children to steal, pickpocketing, robbery and worse crimes. Bribery, extortion and blackmail were rampant. While the underworld bosses ruled this part of the city, the brothel owners ruled over the unlucky young women, who found their way to them.
South of the River Thames, home to wild orgies of prostitutes and gin-drinking drunks, it was also home to the ‘Resurrection Men’, who sold corpses to surgeons and were not averse to killing to do so, although they raided graves. it was his ‘forte’. The Thames itself was bent by sailors, called ‘River Men’, who looted warehouses, docks and ships.
All of this crime kept the Bow Street Runners on their toes, as the night watchmen were ineffective. In 1800 the Thames River Police Act was established. In 1805, a Bow Street horse patrol of sixty men rode into Hounslow Heath, a notorious center for highwaymen, who terrorized travellers. Many wanted reforms, but the bills introduced were slow to take effect, so crime remained high until the Victorian period, when a police force was created. You can see what my heroes and heroines had to deal with while fighting crime.