A Short History of Women's Rights

Excerpt: ...1897. VIII. The Renaissance of Girls' Education in England: by Alice Zimmern. London, A.D. Innes and Co., 1898. IX. Progress in Women's Education in the British Empire: edited by the Countess of Warwick. Being the Report of the Education Section, Victorian Era Exhibition, 1897. Longmans, Green, & Co., 1898. X. Current Literature from the Earliest Times to the Present Day, references to which are noted as they occur. NOTES: 393 If a woman sentenced to execution declared she was pregnant, a jury of twelve matrons could be appointed on a writ de venire inspiciendo to determine the truth of the matter; for she could not be executed if the infant was alive in the womb. The same jury determined the case of a widow who feigned herself with child in order to exclude the next heir and when she was suspected of trying to palm off a supposititious birth. But from all other jury duties women have always been excluded "on account of the weakness of the sex"--propter defectum sexus. 394 Blackstone, i, ch. 16. 395 Reg. Brev. Orig., f. 89: quod ipse praefatam A bene et honeste tractabit et gubernabit, ac damnum vel malum aliquod eidem A de corpore suo, aliter quam ad virum suum ex causa regiminis et castigationis uxoris suae licite et rationabiliter pertinet, non faciet nec fieri procurabit. 396 "Except in so far as he may lawfully and reasonably do so in order to correct and chastise his wife." 397 The learned commentator Christian adds a few more cases where formerly the criminal law was harshly prejudiced against women. Thus: "By the Common Law, all women were denied the benefit of clergy; and till the 3 and 4 W. and M., c. 9 William and Mary they received sentence of death and might have been executed for the first offence in simple larceny, bigamy, manslaughter, etc., however learned they were, merely because their sex precluded the possibility of their taking holy orders; though a man who could read was for the same crime subject only to burning in the...