Magistrate and Social Reformer. The brother of ‘Tom Jones’ author Henry Fielding. In his late teens, John was blinded in an accident while serving in the Navy, but did not allow this disability to blight his life. With assistance from Henry he studied law, and the duo worked together as magistrates, fighting corruption within the very legal system of which they were part. Their lasting legacy is their formation of the Bow Street Runners, the country’s first Police Force, and their early attempts at creating criminal records in the form of a gazette. As magistrate at Bow Street, after his brother had died while away in Lisbon, Fielding was known as the ‘Blind Beak’ and claimed he could recognise 3000 criminals by their voices alone. He was knighted in 1761, and has achieved more recent fame by being the hero of a series of fictional crime novels by Bruce Alexander. (bio by: Mark McManus)