Aliens,Subjects and the State: Surveillance in British Hotels during World War I

The apparatus of the state expanded in unprecedented ways during World War I, with implications for longstanding practices and legal principles which governed the relationship between guests and staff within hotels and similar lodgings. Commercial hostelries were required, under successive Orders in Council, to register the movement of guests and supply these details to police authorities on state-mandated forms. This idea was new to the United Kingdom, where jurisprudence had upheld the right of guests to receive accommodation in anonymity. Exploring how institutions grappled with new regimes of surveillance, this article reveals how the British hotel’s relationship to the state and to guests of all nationalities changed dramatically in the course of war, with implications for the operation of the post-war hospitality sector.