London's Bow Street court closes doors forever

LONDON, July 15 (Reuters) London's Bow Street Magistrates Court, which has seen some of the most dangerous criminals pass through its doors over the centuries on the way to judgment, closed forever.

Oscar Wilde, Chilean General Augusto Pinochet and the notorious Kray brothers gang all stood in Bow Street's wood-panelled court which got closed yesterday.

But no more will the footsteps of petty and master-criminals echo in the corridors as the building has been sold to a hotel group and the court's business transferred to another central London court from Monday.

Nestling behind the Theatre Royal in Covent Garden, it means that Bow Street -- home of London's first organised police force the Bow Street Runners founded in 1750 -- will no longer have a court after almost 300 years.

To Chief Magistrate Timothy Workman, whose daily task sheet reads like a soap opera, it was a very sad day.

''Although the court building does not provide the facilities of the 21st century, it has an atmosphere and history that everyone responds to,'' he told Reuters.

''It is a personal sadness to me that I am presiding over its closure,'' added the soft-spoken 62-year-old.

Literary icon Oscar Wilde initially appeared in Court One on April 6, 1895 charged with homosexuality while American-born wife killer Doctor Hawley Harvey Crippen sat in the same dock 15 years later -- betrayed by telegraph while fleeing his crime.

The Kray brothers -- Ronald, Reginald and Charles -- all appeared there on May 17, 1968, and Chilean dictator Pinochet was arraigned there 30 years later.

Among other notorious notables to have passed through the Bow Street portals are Nazi propagandist William Joyce, also known as Lord Haw-Haw, and Irish nationalist Roger Casement.

''Since 1735 there has been a court in Bow Street either here or across the road. All life has passed through these doors,'' Workman said.

On any given day Workman may have to deal with a trail of humanity from destitute drunks to petty criminals interspersed with extradition requests from Russia and alleged terrorists charged with plotting mass murder.

Workman has heard initial cases against Chechen separatist leader Akhmed Zakayev, Russian business mogul Boris Berezovsky and Abu Hamza, the Muslim cleric convicted of soliciting murder at the mosque where shoe bomber Richard Reid worshipped.

Reuters SB DB0921