Women's Crime and Criminal Administration in Pennsylvania, 1763-1790 NN WINTER appeared in court first in the December, 1764, term of Philadelphia County's court of quarter sessions charged Awith felonious theft; she suffered corporal punishment when a jury found against her. In 1770 and again in 1773, she appeared before Lancaster County's general sessions, in the first instance having a count of assault against her dismissed, in the second being convicted of stealing. Back in Philadelphia in September, 1777, she pleaded guilty to a third charge of theft and was sentenced to jail. In April 1779, before the mayor's court in Philadelphia and this time using the alias Mary Flood, Ann Winter was convicted of three counts of larceny and received thirty-nine lashes on her bare back for each conviction. She was by this time known as "a Notorious Thief." Records reveal she was also in "a forlorn condition," the mother of "two fatherless children," and again "big with child." Should she be released and her fine remitted, she promised authorities in November, 1779, they "should never after this time hear of the least blemish against her character As she intended retiring into the country to endeavour for an honest livelihood." Promises aside, Winter was again convicted of larceny in March, 1780, this time in oyer and terminer proceedings, and once more suffered corporal punishment and confinement. She was also judged guilty of larceny in the mayor's court in July, 1782, and in July, 1785, and pleaded guilty to still another charge of theft in April, 1784. She fared better in January, 1782, and in October, 1784, when juries in the mayor's court exonerated her of additional larceny * The author wishes to acknowledge the assistance of his friend and colleague, John W. Fox, as well as financial help provided by the Philadelphia Center for Early American Studies, a National Endowment for the Humanities "Travel to Collections" grant, and the University of Northern Colorado's Research and Publications Board. 336 G. S. ROWE July charges, and in July, 1785, when a grand jury failed to bring in a bill against her for stealing. The veteran thief was summoned to court a final time in June, 1796, but the grand jury refused to indict. Though Ann Winter's criminal career was longer than most and her notoriety more pronounced, she was but one of hundreds of Penn- sylvania females accused of criminal behavior and brought before Pennsylvania's judicial authorities in the eighteenth century.1 The stories of these women and the chronicle of the legal mech- anisms charged with punishing their crimes—crucial components of Pennsylvania's early social and legal history—have been ignored. This neglect is not unique to Pennsylvania. After surveying recent histo- riography, Douglas Greenberg lamented that, "we still know lit- tle ... about women and the criminal law in the colonies."2 By charting over time patterns of women's criminality in Pennsylvania, gauging the effectiveness of its law enforcement apparatus in dealing with alleged female criminal behavior, and identifying county vari- ations in both, this study seeks to make a contribution to women's history and to the study of our early law.3 The few available studies on women's criminality in the eighteenth- century emphasize five factors in explaining crime rates and patterns: (1) economic deprivation; (2) female vulnerability and powerlessness (they concur that most female defendants were single, poor, and bound servants); (3) urban environment, where poverty was more pronounced and opportunities for theft more diverse; (4) shifts in social priorities; and (5) war and its aftermath. There is agreement that females perpetrated fewer and less violent crimes than did males and that most allegations against females centered either on moral 1 Winter's criminal career can be followed in the dockets for the courts and the dates mentioned. For personal information and the fact that she used the alias, Mary Flood, see petitions of Mary Flood, Oct., Dec. 4, Dec. 7, 1779; petition of Ann Winter, Nov. 4, 1779; James Young to Timothy Matlack, Oct. 30, 1778, Clemency Records, RG-27, 1775- 1780, Roll 36. Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission (PHMC). 2 Douglas Greenberg, "Crime, Law Enforcement, and Social Control in Colonial America," The American Journal oj Legal History (AJLH), 26 (1982), 314. 3 It is not the intent of this paper to explore either the causes of crime or the make-up of the female criminal population. Both are to be treated elsewhere. The author is collaborating with Professor Jack D. Marietta on a social study of crime and law enforcement in Penn- sylvania to 1800 which will explore the causes of crime and the make-up of the female criminal population. 1985 WOMEN'S CRIME 337 or minor property offenses. These studies suggest also that as the eighteenth-century progressed women were less frequently accused of crimes usually associated with their sex (e.g., witchcraft, adultery, and infanticide) and more often charged with offenses associated with men. Also, women were more likely than men to be acquitted and to have their cases dismissed.4 Finally, there seems to be agreement that women lost ground in legal terms during and after the Revo- lution. Linda Kerber in particular has painted a grim picture of women's legal status in the post-Revolutionary years, stressing, for instance, the declining care taken by courts in preserving dower thirds.5 Because of the limited number of published works in early women's history which focus on crime, and the omission of women from most legal studies of early America, scholars cannot yet distinguish with any precision between the extraordinary and the mundane in either field. Few acquittal, conviction, or resolution statistics for early Amer- ica are available; none for Pennsylvania.6 Virtually no information exists on the effectiveness of eighteenth-century courts. Still unclear from current studies is the extent and nature of local and regional similarities and variations either in women's crime or criminal justice procedures and successes. Neither is it evident at this point what 4 See J.M. Beattie, "The Criminality of Women in Eighteenth-Century England," Journal of Social History (JSH), 8 (1975), 80-116} Donna J. Spindel and Stuart W. Thomas, Jr., "Crime and Society in North Carolina, 1663-17'40," Journal of Southern History, 49 (1983), 223-224; Douglas Greenberg, Law Enforcement in the Colony of New York (Ithaca, New York, 1976), 51} Linda M. Kealey, "Crime and Society in Massachusetts in the Second Half of the Eighteenth-Century," Ph.D. diss., (Univ. of Toronto, 1981)} Hugh F. Rankin, Criminal Trial Proceedings in the General Court of Colonial Virginia (Charlottesville, Va., 1965)} and Natalie E.H. Hull, "Female Felons: Women and Serious Crime in the Superior Courts of Massachusetts, 1673-1774," Ph.D. diss., (Columbia Univ., 1980). 5 Linda K. Kerber, Women of the Republic: Intellect &? Ideology in Revolutionary America (Chapel Hill, 1980), chapts. 5 and 6. For a generally more pessimistic assessment of women's roles and rights in the revolutionary period, see Joan Hoff Wilson, "The Illusion of Change: Women and the American Revolution," in Alfred E. Young, ed., The American Revolution: Explorations in the History of American Radicalism (DeKalb, 111., 1976), 383-445. 6 Greenberg, "Crime, Law Enforcement and Control in Colonial America," 308. Studies of Pennsylvania crime which do not offer systematic quantification, include Lawrence H. Gipson, Crime and Its Punishment in Provincial Pennsylvania (Bethlehem, Pa., 1935), and Herbert W.K. Fitzroy, "The Punishment of Crime in Provincial Pennsylvania," Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography (PMHB), 60 (1936), 242-269. 338 G. S. ROWE July impact the Revolution had upon criminal allegations against women or on processes designed to cope with those accusations. An examination of criminal allegations against females in Penn- sylvania between 1763 and 1790, the mechanisms by which authorities dealt with them, and the efficiency with which officials processed cases, reveals much about Pennsylvania legal processes. Even though there was a decline in prosecutions against women in Pennsylvania after 1780, a larger percentage of females appeared before courts there than elsewhere.7 The number of types of charges against them indicate either that they were more volatile and contentious than women studied in other colonies, or that Pennsylvania authorities more assiduously sought out and punished infractions by females than magistrates from other areas. In Pennsylvania important variations in criminal conduct as well as in the preoccupation of judicial per- sonnel and in the efficiency of legal mechanisms resulted from county differences and from the distance of the crime from the central administration. Nonetheless, once charged, women in Pennsylvania went before courts generally more effective than those faced by worhen elsewhere, even though that efficiency declined after 1780, particu- larly in prosecutions for sexual offenses. If their status before civil courts deteriorated after 1776, as Kerber and others have argued, Pennsylvania women were less likely to be charged with criminal conduct and to be taken before a criminal court after the American Revolution than before hostilities began. 7 Beattie, in his "The Criminality of Women in Eighteenth-Century England," 81, discovers that 21.2 percent of the cases coming before the Surrey courts involved charges against females. Spindel and Thomas, Greenberg, and Keally find that women comprised 11.4, 9.9 and 7.5 percent in North Carolina, New York, and Massachusetts respectively. Hugh Rankin gives no statistics but he makes it clear women constituted a very small portion of Virginia's colonial defendants. Beattie's study encompasses rural areas, but it also examines a much more extensive urban population than present in Pennsylvania.