Order and the Police

Abstract

On a simple level the preservation of order can mean simply the prevention, or suppression, of riots or tumultuous assemblies. But for the historian a problem arises over the definition of ‘order’ in a given period and who makes that definition. From the seventeenth century, at least, the state jurist’s view of order came into conflict with the more negative view found among the poorer groups in society. ‘Order’ for the jurist was an ideal to be achieved; it embraced good behaviour, cleanliness, morality and sobriety, and it thus required the suppression, or tight regulation, of gaming, prostitution, vagabonds and ale houses or cabarets. This view of order appealed also to many men of property, particularly those in urban areas. The Parlements and the police administrations of eighteenth-century France issued ordinances and decrees designed to establish such ‘order’. In eighteenth-century England societies were formed for the suppression of vice; Wilkite tradesmen, while preaching ‘English Liberty’, were happy to use the law to regulate street traders who might undersell them, and prostitutes who distracted their customers. From the late eighteenth century this view of order could involve official prohibition of plebeian sports and pastimes, and in England and parts of the United States the prohibition of drinking at the same time as Sunday church services was extended into regulations generally forbidding Sunday trading.