Today remembered for his literary achievements, Henry Fielding, together with his half-brother John, also created London’s first police force, the Bow Street Runners.
Writer, London Chief Magistrate and humanitarian, Henry Fielding was terribly overworked in the 1750s and his health had not been good for years. Gout, asthma, cirrhosis of the liver, and other afflictions had left him on crutches. In the summer of 1754, he travelled to Lisbon by sea with his wife and daughter hoping that the warmer weather would improve his health. At the time, he was so bloated and immobile that he had to be lifted aboard the ship by use of a chair rigged with pulleys. As he was being carried to his cabin, the captain and sailors jeered and taunted him without mercy. The voyage eventually resulted in a diary which was posthumously published as A Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon.
Fielding survived for only a few months after arriving in Lisbon, succumbing to his myriad health problems. He died on 8 October 1754, aged forty-seven.
Henry Fielding’s energy as a writer was prodigious – in six years he wrote twenty-five plays, trying his hand at farces, ballad operas, light comedies, and political satires. His comic novel The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling is still widely appreciated. He and Samuel Richardson are seen as founders of the traditional English novel.