Bow Street Office

London’s famous bobbies were still a thing of the future in 1808. Instead, public order was the work of a strange collection of quasi-private police forces. Here is the Bow Street Office, one of London’s better known legal establishments, a combination of privately run police station and courtroom. A panel of magistrates sit in judgment inside the fenced-in zone, while an array of petty criminals await their moment in the dock.