Women Crime And The Courts In Early Modern England

Women, Crime, and the Courts in Early Modern England

An extended study of gender and crime in early modern England. It considers the ways in which criminal behaviour and perceptions of criminality were informed by ideas about gender and order, and explores their practical consequences for the men and women who were brought before the criminal courts. Dr Walker's innovative approach demonstrates that, contrary to received opinion, the law was often structured so as to make the treatment of women and men before the courts incommensurable. For the first time, early modern criminality is explored in terms of masculinity as well as femininity. Illuminating the interactions between gender and other categories such as class and civil war have implications not merely for the historiography of crime but for the social history of early modern England as a whole. This study therefore goes beyond conventional studies, and challenges hitherto accepted views of social interaction in the period.

This book charts the lives of (suspected) thieves, illegitimate mothers and vagrants in early modern Frankfurt. The book highlights the gender differences in recorded criminality and the way that they were shaped by the local context. Women played a prominent role in recorded crime in this period, and could even make up half of all defendants in specific European cities. At the same time, there were also large regional differences. Women’s crime patterns in Frankfurt were both similar and different to those of other cities. Informal control within the household played a significant role and influenced the prosecution patterns of authorities. This impacted men and women differently, and created clear distinctions within the system between settled locals and unsettled migrants.

A study of the crimes of women in early modern Germany, this text draws on court records to examine the lives of shrewd cutpurses, quarrelling artisan wives, and soldiers' concubines.

Female protagonists are commonly overlooked in the history of crime; especially in early modern Italy, where women’s scope of action is often portrayed as heavily restricted. This book redresses the notion of Italian women’s passivity, arguing that women’s crimes were far too common to be viewed as an anomaly. Based on over two thousand criminal complaints and investigation dossiers, Sanne Muurling charts the multifaceted impact of gender on patterns of recorded crime in early modern Bologna. While various socioeconomic and legal mechanisms withdrew women from the criminal justice process, the casebooks also reveal that women – as criminal offenders and savvy litigants – had an active hand in keeping the wheels of the court spinning.

A large proportion of late medieval people, were accused of some kind of misdemeanour. This book studies gender and crime in late medieval England. It shows how charges against women differed from those against men, and how assumptions and fears about masculinity and femininity were reflected and reinforced by the local courts.

This ground-breaking book reveals the economic reality of ordinary women between the late 16th and early 18th centuries. Drawing on little-known sources, Amy Louise Erickson reconstructs day-to-day lives, showing how women owned, managed and inherited property on a scale previously unrecognised. Her complex and fascinating research, which contrasts the written laws with the actual practice, completely revises the traditional picture of women's economic status in pre-industrial England. Women and Property is essential reading for anyone interested in women, law and the past.

Shani D'Cruze and Louise A. Jackson provide students with a lively overview of women's relationship to the criminal justice system in England, exploring key debates in the regulation of 'respectable' and 'deviant' femininities over the last 4 centuries. Major issues include: - Attitudes towards murder and infanticide - Prostitution - The decline of witchcraft belief - Sexual violence - The 'girl delinquent' - Theft and fraud. The volume also examines women's participation in illegal forms of protest and political activism, their experience of penal regimes as well as strategies of resistance, and their involvement in occupations associated with criminal justice itself. Assuming that men and women cannot be studied in isolation, D'Cruze and Jackson make reference to recent studies of masculinity and comment on the ways in which relations between men and women have been understood and negotiated across time. Featuring examples drawn from a rich range of sources such as court records, autobiographies, literature and film, this is an ideal introduction to an increasingly popular area of study.