Podcast: condemned women

Women represent fewer than a quarter of criminal defendants in current-day London and a sliver of the prison population — but it wasn’t always so. At the end of the 17th Century, half of the accused who appeared in the city’s Old Bailey courtroom were women. Then, that number declined drastically over the course of the 18th Century. Historians are obsessed with figuring out why. Were women committing fewer crimes? Or were they simply not being arrested? 

This podcast explores a single piece of that puzzle: How women’s own voices contributed to perceptions of women criminals. 

Voices in this episode are my own and those of Jacqueline Trout and Ben Simons. The music is “Sonata in b minor” by William Croft (1700) performed by Marjorie Lavers, violin, Jane Ryan, viola da gamba, and Robert Elliott, harpsichord; courtesy of the Baroque Music Library. Cover art is an engraving of Sarah Malcolm done by William Hogarth shortly before her execution, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. 

You can learn more about the women in this story at londonlives.com.