Search Warrants Victorian London

[bwclough]

I know that in modern America, the police need a search warrant to search your house or even your car. (I believe they can search your person without paperwork, if they can cite probable cause. Clearly it is not possible to rake in a judge and get a warrant if the criminal is fleeing on foot

Comments

[resident_pink]

No first-hand knowledge of my own, but a trip around Google for "police procedure 19th century London" turned up the links below, among other things. None state anything specifically about search warrants, but there may be links or suggested titles for further reading that could help you.

http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/static/Policing.jsp <-- lists reference literature at the bottom

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/victorians/crime_01.shtml

http://vcp.e2bn.org/

Some more Google-fu turned up The Prevention of Crime Act which is ten years off (1871) but may also give you a starting point for further research. It does mention that search warrants were issued.

[syntinen_laulu]

I can't give you chapter and verse for the 1860s, but the law on police powers to search people and premises today is governed by the Police and Criminal Evidence Act of 1984. This Act was aimed at defining and circumscribing the power of the police - it stopped them doing a lot of things they were routinely doing before, or at least limited the circumstances in which they could do them - so it's a fair bet that anything PACE allows the police to do, Victorian police could do and quite probably more

[ffutures]

As of 1912 warrants were needed - see The Police Code for more details

http://www.forgottenfutures.co.uk/policecode/code0.htm

[jenshih_blue]

Don't know if this will be helpful, but below are three links pertaining to Victorian Crime/Punishment/Law.

Victorian Crime & Punishment: Justice Index

http://vcp.e2bn.org/justice/index.php

The Victorian Web: The Metropolitan Police

http://www.victorianweb.org/history/police.html

British Library: Learning Victorians - Crime

http://www.bl.uk/learning/histcitizen/victorians/crime/crimepunishment.html

[bwclough]

thanks so much!