by that combination of violent and more petty but pervasive offences that in-
creasingly typified the crime problem of the large urban and commercial envir-
onment. The question now arises: how were these new initiatives received by
the courts? How did the Old Bailey juries and judges deal with the new encour-
agements to prosecution, the extension of hanging, and the new forms of pun-
ishment? What was the result of all this legislative activity for those who had
been its central target—the men and women who found themselves before the
Old Bailey?
The Old Bailey, 1690‒1713
There was a striking fluctuating pattern in prosecutions for property offences at
the Old Bailey between the Revolution and the end of the War of Spanish Suc-
cession.^60 The 1690 s saw the strongest rise and the highest levels of offences of
any decade over the ninety years we are studying; conversely, the reign of Queen
Anne saw its reverse image in that prosecutions fell to some of this period’s
lowest levels. The quarter century after the Revolution of 1689 was also almost
certainly unique in the history of crime in London in that more women than
men were charged with crimes against property at the Old Bailey in that period.
The unusually high levels of prosecutions in the 1690 s, and the prominence of
women among the defendants, together help to explain some of the sense of
panic in those years about the levels and character of property crime and the
anxiety to improve policing, encourage prosecutions, and find more effective
punishments. Such attitudes were inevitably reflected in the way defendants
were dealt with in the courtroom.
We might note first that, as in the thirty years after 1660 , a number of defend-
ants in our Sample pleaded guilty at their arraignment and abandoned their
right to a trial. Three men who faced capital charges did so (two in burglary and
one housebreaking); one was pardoned on condition of transportation, but the
two burglars were in the end hanged, no doubt regretting their plea. One of the
sixteen men who pleaded guilty to a clergyable offence in the sessions sampled
between 1690 and 1713 was denied his request for benefit of clergy on the
ground that he had been already burned in the hand, and he too was sentenced
to death, though he was subsequently pardoned and transported. The striking
change registered in this period in the pattern of guilty pleas compared to the
years before the Revolution was in the behaviour of women. Where no women
confessed in court to a charge of clergyable theft in the previous period, thirty-
four women did so in the sessions sampled—a result no doubt of the extension
of the privilege of clergy to women on the same basis as men in 1691. All the
women who pleaded guilty were granted clergy, and all but one were branded
and discharged.
338 The Revolution, Crime, and Punishment in London
(^60) See Ch. 1 , figure 1. 1.