The Bow St Runners

The next stop on my blog tour is on Victorian crime author Angela Buckley's excellent history blog. The magistrates attached to the Bow Street office in London, and their peace officers, the famous Bow Street Runners, play an important role in my new book Regency Spies.  
The Runners were sometimes asked perform investigations in the provinces; the magistrates also undertook covert missions outside London when necessary, for example, during the Luddite disturbances of 1812, and during the run-up to the Blanketeers' march of 1817. When local magistrates asked the Home Office to send Runners to help with inquiries in their locality, they were not best pleased to discover that they had to pay for their services.
Illustration:  The Bow St Runners arrest the Irishmen they hired to make false coins. George T. Wilkinson, Newgate Calendar Improved Vol. IV, Thomas Kelly, no date. Courtesy the Internet Archive, archive.org.