5 - Searches

Summary

This chapter shows how changes to officeholding shaped practices of searching in the capital. Searches are a neglected feature of the history of law enforcement. Common law protected houses from being searched, except in pursuit of suspected criminals. Even then, searching houses required the presence of officers with specific warrants. Those who did not have houses of their own were less able to resist searches by non-officers or searches without warrants. Searches of people were entirely unregulated, restricted only by cultural norms about gender and social status. The poor were less able to resist being searched than the rich. Women could insist that they were searched by other women for the sake of modesty, though this was not always successful. Women were much more likely to be invasively searched than men. Searches of women by officers were especially intrusive and sometimes violent, giving tangible expression to the links between policing and gendered power.