Constantia Jones
Constantia Jones (c.1708—22 December 1738[1][2]) was a prostitute in London, United Kingdom during the term of Prime Minister Robert Walpole, who was sentenced to hang for stealing 36 shillings and a half-guinea from one of her clients.[3]
Conviction[]
Jones's accuser, describing her as "a three-penny upright," testified as follows: "As I stood against the Wall, [she] came behind me, and with one hand she took hold of . . . --and the other she thrust into my Breeches Pocket and took my Money."[3] Based on this testimony, Jones was sentenced to hang at Tyburn.[3]
Jones, who had been sent to the notorious prison at Newgate some twenty times before, was 30 years old upon her execution.[3] Historian Peter Linebaugh asserts that regardless of her guilt or innocence, her conviction on such flimsy evidence indicates the bias of 18th-century English courts against the trade of prostitution and those who worked in the industry.[4] Although officially London courts took all persons as equally worthy, class distinctions were still operative, and therefore testimony from a "gentleman," in particular, would weigh heavily against that of a prostitute.[5] Jones would have been a weak defendant, as she had been in Newgate on multiple occasions.[6]
References[]
- ^ "Deaths in History on December 22". OnThisDay.com. Retrieved 21 March 2018.
- ^ "Female executions 1735 – 1799". Capital Punishment U.K. Archived from the original on 9 June 2004. Retrieved 30 April 2019.
- ^ a b c d Linebaugh 2003, p. 147.
- ^ Linebaugh 2003, p. 144.
- ^ McEnery & Baker 2016.
- ^ Linnane 2004.
Sources[]
- Linebaugh, Peter (2003). The London Hanged: Crime and Civil Society in the Eighteenth Century. Verso. ISBN 9781859846384.
- Linnane, Fergus (2004). London's Underworld: Three Centuries of Vice and Crime. Robson. ISBN 9781861057426.
- McEnery, Anthony; Baker, Helen (2016). Corpus Linguistics and 17th-Century Prostitution: Computational Linguistics and History. Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 9781472512833.
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- 1708 births
- 1738 deaths
- 18th-century English women
- 18th-century English people
- English female prostitutes
- Crime in London
- Executed English people
- People executed for theft
- Executed people from London
- Executed English women
- People executed by the Kingdom of Great Britain
- People executed by England and Wales by hanging
- People executed at Tyburn
- Sexuality stubs
- English people stubs