Bow Street: From Oscar to Archer

The famous court even found its way into the literary world

Probably the most famous magistrates' court in the world - that is the view of Timothy Workman, chief magistrate of England and Wales.

Bow Street, looming large over bustling Covent Garden, has seen some of the criminal world's most notorious pass through its docks.

From Friday though, the courthouse's 267-year link with British justice will be severed when it falls into the hands of property developers.

While the future for the Grade-II listed building may be uncertain, its past makes it one of the most famous legal addresses in history.

East End raids

From Dr Crippen and the Pankhursts to the Kray twins and Jeffrey Archer, thousands of criminals, activists and modern day miscreants have made their first appearance at Bow Street.

It was there that Oscar Wilde took to the dock in 1895 after his arrest for "committing indecent acts", to eventually be sentenced to two years of hard labour.

The Kray brothers appeared after dawn raids in 1968

Some 13 years later, Suffragettes Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughter, Christabel, faced the so-called Rush trial after distributing leaflets aimed at rushing the House of Commons. They were later jailed.

And in 1910, Dr Hawley Harvey Crippen appeared on a charge of murdering his wife, Cora Crippen, better known by her stage name, Belle Elmore, and was later hanged.

Following dawn raids in 1968, East End twins Ronnie and Reggie Kray first appeared on charges of conspiring to murder underworld characters George Connell and Jack "The Hat" McVitie.

More recently court one and its neighbours have set the scene for the perjury trials of fellow disgraced Conservatives Jonathan Aitken and Jeffrey Archer.

The current court was built in the 1870s and 1880s

And although never appearing in person, an extradition hearing of former Chilean leader Augusto Pinochet was held at the court in 1999.

The famous court even found its way into the literary world when the Artful Dodger from Oliver Twist took his place in the dock.

Charles Dickens set his scene in the forerunner to the current courthouse in his 1838 publication.

About a hundred years earlier, Colonel Thomas de Veil, the first Bow Street magistrate, had established his office on the street and it was not until the 1870s and 1880s that the current court was built.