In London, magistrate Henry Fielding established the Bow Street Runners, widely regarded as England's first professional detective force. Operating from the Bow Street magistrates' court in Covent Garden, these paid officers investigated crimes, gathered evidence, and pursued criminals — a radical departure from the unpaid parish constable system. The Runners used informants, conducted interviews, and secured convictions using gathered testimony, laying early groundwork for organised criminal investigation in Britain.

Henry Fielding was himself a major novelist and literary figure, and his experiment at Bow Street directly influenced the detective figure emerging in English literature. The Runners appear in Dickens's early work and helped shape the fictional Bow Street context in Oliver Twist. The professionalisation of evidence gathering also influenced the shift in literary attention toward crime, detection, and the urban underworld that defines so much Romantic and Victorian writing.