Sexuality was subjected to scrutiny in cases concerned with sodomy, bestiality, rape and murder. These cases dealt differently with male and female sexuality. Statute law required that there be different sets of questions asked of defendants and complainants. However, like cases of domestic violence, the appearance of such cases at all also resulted from a complex interaction of understandings of acceptable behaviour and unacceptable violence by witnesses, victims and the authorities. In the colony cases concerning such direct scrutiny of sexuality are few and therefore their construction was unusual. What makes a rape case, for example, will show us nothing of the extent of rape in the colony; but it will show us the interpretations which local communities, surgeons and magistrates placed on the female body at such times of crisis. So, in this chapter, we are asking how the body figured in criminal cases: what kinds of affront were claimed and what questions were asked of the evidence presented.

Cases concerning the body, like those concerning household violence, come from the population rather than from constables. In them we find another subtle net of power relations resembling the more direct control of the convict's body. This is the net of suspicion or expectation of proper modes of behaviour, a sensitivity to gesture and speech which was sex specific. Like the administration, popular attitudes held clear notions of male and female roles, and what was female was subject to more scrutiny than what was male.