Bow Street seems to have been home to a mixed population of middle and lower class families, the middle class evidenced by the purple and red, with the lower class being the duller cool colors.

Bow Street serves as a through-route from Waterloo Bridge to St. Giles’s and Bloomsbury, and is known for the nature of public buildings around it. Bow Street’s association with the law dates back to 1740 when a justice for Middlesex, Thomas De Veil, transferred his office into No.4 Bow Street, which became the court-house of Bow Street magistrates. Across the street from the court-house, the first police station was opened on the street was back in 1832 until it was removed in 1880. The establishment of the police station did not affect the magistrates’ office, and stayed in its location until 1880, whereupon the police were removed to the present station and Nos.33-34 (the police court) was converted into a market warehouse, and then eventually demolished.

Bow Street is mentioned and becomes a crucial setting point in Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Man With the Twisted Lip”, a short Sherlock Holmes piece where Holmes and Watson investigate the disappearance of Neville St. Clair. After getting an idea of what might’ve happened to Neville, Holmes and Watson travel to the Bow Street Police Court where Neville, disguised as Hugh Boone, a beggar, is being kept in a cell. Holmes takes out a sponge and washes down Boone until the man is revealed to be Neville, who faked his own death out of shame that his wife had caught him while he was leading his double life – one as a respectable man and the other as a beggar. It is the setting of the climax.