Gender and the Politics of Punishment in 18th-19th Century Britain (on the Basis of the Old Bailey Records)

This study analyzes the reports on court sessions held at the Old Bailey criminal court in London during the XVIII-XIX centuries. The archives of the Old Bailey's court records have been preserved almost in full, and they are stored in digitized form in an online electronic database, which has allowed to do the extensive analysis to identify certain patterns. The paper considers the availability of easing in punishments for crimes, depending on the gender of the accused. In the course of the study, was studied in detail the gender stereotypes of the XVIII-XIX centuries in English, and how these representations of gender affected the relationship between society and the law. Confirmation of the hypothesis about changes in punishments due to gender stereotypes is based on an analysis of reports of the Old Bailey court, which contained information about commuting punishments to women, for example, because of pregnancy, and reports that mention that men's death sentences were commuted and replaced with forced military service.