Jury of Matrons

The Jury of Matrons was a form of special jury at English common law, usually used to resolve legal disputes over whether or not a party to a legal action was pregnant.

Civil Juries

The civil jury of matrons was used to determine whether a recently widowed woman was pregnant with what was presumed to be her late husband’s child. Such a pregnancy could delay or prevent the late husband’s property from passing to his father or brother, if he died without male heirs. Civil matrons juries were composed of twelve knights and twelve matrons, summoned by a writ "de ventre inspiciendo"("to inspect the belly"). [cite journal | author = Oldham, James | title = On Pleading the Belly | journal = Criminal Justice History | volume = 6 | pages = 1–64 | year = 1985] Civil juries of matrons appear to have largely died out by the turn of the 19th century and became obsolete with the Married Women's Property Act 1882.

Criminal Juries

In the criminal context, women convicted of capital crimes were permitted to plead that they were quick with child, and to have this claim tested by a group of six women. If the woman was found to be quick with child then she was reprieved until the next hanging time. Criminal juries of matrons were customarily drawn from the women observing the proceedings.

The use of matrons’ juries in a criminal context was documented as early as 1387, in language which suggests that it was already a customary procedure. By the sixteenth century, women who successfully pleaded their belly, as the practice was colloquially known, were frequently either pardoned or granted a lesser sentence, such as penal transportation. With the decline of capital offenses and the rise of a more sophisticated medical understanding of pregnancy, the practice was increasingly regarded as obsolete, and was generally regarded as archaic and ridiculed in the press on the rare occasions it was employed in the 19th century.

A jury of matrons was employed at least once in the twentieth century, by Ada Annie Williams, who was sentenced to death in December 1914 for the murder of her four-year-old son, but received a reprieve until delivery on account of her pregnancy and subsequently had her sentence commuted. [cite journal | title = A Jury of Matrons | journal = American Law Review | volume = 48 | pages = 280–281 | year = 1914] [ [http://secure.nationalarchives.gov.uk/releases/2004/may4/list.htm Highlighted List of Files] . "Ada Annie Williams" URL accessed on August 17, 2006.] The common law was superseded by the Sentence of Death (Expectant Mothers) Act in 1931. [cite journal | author = Means, Cyril | title = The Phoenix of Abortional Freedom | journal = New York Law Forum | volume = 17 | pages = 335–410 | year = 1971]

Abuse

The practice of drawing of jurors from the observers and lack of a process vetting the jurors’ expertise and honesty opened the possibility of stacking the jury pool, leading one eighteenth century commentator to complain that female thieves would have "Matrons of [their] own Profession ready at hand, who, right or wrong, bring their wicked Companions quick with Child to the great Impediment of Justice." [cite book |last=Smith |first=Alexander |title=A Complete History of the Lives and Robberies of the Most Notorious Highwaymen, Footpads, Shoplifts, & Cheats of Both Sexes |edition=2nd |year=1714 |location=London |pages=2:185 cited in cite journal | author = Oldham, James | title = On Pleading the Belly | journal = Criminal Justice History | volume = 6 | pages = 1–64 | year = 1985]

John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera alludes to the idea that women awaiting trial or temporarily reprieved from hanging by virtue of an inaccurate diagnosis of pregnancy would sometimes attempt to conceive by their jailers in hopes of pardon. The context of the allusion suggests that Gay expected theater-goers to be familiar with the notion.

In what was presumably an attempt to combat the practice, the law held that a woman was not entitled to a second reprieve, regardless of whether she has become pregnant a second time, even if the second fetus has quickened. In such an event, the jailer was subject to a fine for "keeping her so slackly". [cite book |title=The Office of the clerk of assize containing the form and method of the proceedings at the Assizes and General Gaol-delivery as also on the crown and nisi prius side |edition=2nd |year=1682 |publisher=S. Roycroft for Henry Twyford |pages=63|quote = "If after she is reprieved and delivered of her Child, and before the next Gaol deliver, she shall be with Child again, though she be quick with Child, Execution shall not be stayed, but shall be put to Execution presently; but the truth of the matter being enquired of, and found ; the Sheriff or Gaoler which had the custody of her shall be fined for keeping her so slackly that she had the company of a man."] Scholarly review of the records of the Old Bailey and Assizes suggest that this provision was not strictly enforced.

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