| Book Review | Law and History Review, 26.2

Book Review

Karen Jones, Gender and Petty Crime in Late Medieval England: The Local Courts in Kent, 1460–1560, Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Boydell Press, 2006. Pp. 252. $85.00 (ISBN 1-8438-3216-X).

This extensively researched book might well be read as social history. The author has mined the records of a number of courts in Kent, among others the Canterbury Quarter Sessions records and Burghmote books, Fordwich Mayor's Court records, Sandwich Year Books and Treasurer's Accounts, the Act books of the Canterbury Archdeaconry Court and the Consistory Court, and court rolls from a number of manors. But her focus is not on procedure or the development of doctrine; it is on societal attitudes, on the men and women who came before those courts, and the role gender did or did not play in prosecutions for various offenses.

The volume's genesis in a doctoral dissertation is reflected in its thirty-one-page Introduction, which includes a detailed discussion of sources and methods used, together with tables, and a lengthy history of the county of Kent in the later Middle Ages. That origin may also account for a cautious reluctance to make definitive statements; many are qualified by "perhaps," "probably," "possibly," "seems to be," or "could suggest," sometimes lending an air of uncertainty to the author's conclusions. Yet for the most part those conclusions, firmly grounded in evidence, are thought-provoking, if not startling.

In separate chapters, Jones considers offenses against property, physical violence, verbal violence, sexual misbehavior, and what she calls the "gendered crimes" of witchcraft, Sabbath-breaking, unlawful games-playing, and vagabondage. In the first category, she reports that women were prosecuted for theft less frequently than men, but were more often presented for very petty theft, perhaps because they committed it more often or possibly because they were more likely to be prosecuted for minor offenses than men were. Contrary to her expectation—and to the conclusions of various other studies—she finds that women accused of theft were not dealt with more leniently than men. But predictably, neither men nor women were usually treated with the severity prescribed by law.

As for physical violence, few women were prosecuted for minor assaults, although men were. Jones speculates that men could not deal with the concept of women's violence, preferring to define it in non-physical terms. Thus, presentments for scolding and defamation may have masked brawling. Not unexpectedly, she concludes that female victims were disadvantaged. Sexual attacks on married women, for instance, rarely led to prosecution and such attacks on children or young girls rarely led to conviction. As for verbal violence, both men and women were prosecuted for verbal abuse, but the offense was a substantial component of prosecutions of women. The "common scold" was almost entirely a female figure; men were prosecuted primarily for slander against their superiors but women for quarreling even with their social equals. As such, Jones concludes, the concept of "scolding" as an offense acted to intimidate women.

Under sexual misbehavior, there is discussion of treatment of fornication and adultery and of prostitution and "bawdry" in secular and church courts. The author does not perceive a gender-based double standard in prosecution of adulterers and fornicators, although men were more often fined while women were shamed or banished if only because they could not pay fines—itself evidence of inequality.

Women were more often prosecuted for witchcraft (although the practice was apparently viewed as somewhat unisex at the beginning of the period covered). This, it is suggested, may, like prosecutions for scolding and defamation, reflect anxiety about the harm women could do with words. Sabbath-breaking, games-playing, and vagabondage were apparently predominantly male offenses, all being concerned to some extent with men's work. That reinforces Jones's contention that men were seen as acting in ways deserving punishment, while women were characterized as being habitually deviant. She draws upon all her evidence in the book's conclusion, where she posits that while age, class, and marital status all played a role, there was "a heavily gendered construction of misconduct" (196).

A few comments are problematic. For example, to suggest that male thieves were sometimes dealt with civilly by the action of trespass while women thieves were far more often dealt with criminally by presentment or indictment because "Married women, of course, could not be sued" (37) overlooks the fact that a husband was in most cases liable in damages for his wife's torts. (If there was a local custom to the contrary, it is not mentioned.) Overall, the book is probably of most interest to those working in gender history, the audience it was no doubt intended for. (It won the Women's History Network Book Prize for 2007). But it is useful to legal historians for its very detailed and careful examination of how societal attitudes about men and women were reflected in the behavior of local courts.

Janet S. Loengard

Moravian College (Emerita)

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