In July 1748 Henry Fielding became Justice of the Peace for Westminster, and in 1749 for Middlesex. His court was on the ground floor of his house in Bow Street, so he was still working and living in the area between Soho and the Strand, one of the most crowded and poverty-stricken districts of the capital. Magistrates of the day took an active role outside the court in detection of crime and maintenance of public order, but public provision of money and manpower was derisory. In Amelia (1751) Fielding laments the ‘decrepit’ and stupid watchmen, the fatuous constables, and the vicious magistrates like Thrasher. In reaction he was ferociously committed to reform such practices, working with his clerk, Joshua Brogden, with Saunders Welch, High Constable of Holborn, and, from January 1751, with his blind brother John, who joined him on the Westminster bench.

Fielding's adversaries cackled at the transformation of the wellknown debtor and author of ‘the adventures of footmen, and the lives of thief-catchers’ into a Justice of the Peace. In particular they pointed to his patronage by the Duke of Bedford and his friends in the Ministry. That his position as magistrate could never be wholly dissociated from politics was shown by two major incidents in 1749: the execution of a Devonshire man, Bosavern Penlez, and the Westminster by-election. Penlez was hanged for looting after a three-day riot in June, fomented by sailors who claimed to have been cheated at a brothel. Because he was a minor offender, committed for trial on the highly dubious evidence of the owner of the Star brothel, it was claimed that Fielding was in the pay of the pimps. The case was constantly cited by political opponents during the by-election that November, when Fielding certainly supported the ministerial candidate, Viscount Trentham, hosting feasts for potential voters, and being accused of deliberately releasing the ringleader of a disruptive pro-Trentham gang. Mud sticks, but there is no evidence that Fielding abused his position. His strongest weapon was still his pen, and a spoof pamphlet prompted by the by-election, the Covent-Garden Journal, would give its name to his last, and best, weekly newspaper in 1752.