In spite of such cases, where guilty women have been acquitted through maudlin sentiment or in response to popular clamor, nothing could be more erroneous than the idea that few women who are brought to the bar of justice are made to suffer for their offences. Thus, although no woman has suffered the death penalty in New York County in twenty years, the average number of convictions for crime is practically the same for women as for men in proportion to the number indicted. The last unreversed conviction of a woman for murder in the first degree was that of Chiara Cignarale, in May, 1887. Her sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. Since then thirty women have been actually tried before juries for homicide with the following results:
| Convicted of murder in first degree | 0 | |
| " " murder in second degree | 3 | |
| " " manslaughter in first degree | 10 | |
| " " manslaughter in second degree | 10 | |
| Acquitted | 7 | |
| —— | ||
| Total | 30 |
The percentage of convictions to acquittals is as follows:
| Convictions | Acquittals | Convictions Per Cent | Acquittals Per Cent | |
| 1887-1907 | 23 | 7 | 77 | 23 |
It is distinctly interesting to compare this with the table showing the results of all the homicide trials for the past eight years irrespective of the sex of the defendants:
| Convictions | Acquittals | Convictions Per Cent | Acquittals Per Cent | |
| 1900 | 5 | 12 | 29 | 71 |
| 1901 | 17 | 17 | 50 | 50 |
| 1902 | 15 | 11 | 58 | 42 |
| 1903 | 24 | 8 | 75 | 25 |
| 1904 | 19 | 14 | 58 | 42 |
| 1905 | 18 | 13 | 58 | 42 |
| 1906 | 21 | 22 | 49 | 51 |
| 1907 | 16 | 10 | 62 | 38 |
| Total | 135 | 107 | Aver.55 | Aver.45 |
The reader will observe that the percentage of convictions to acquittals of women defendants averages twenty-two per cent greater than the percentage for both sexes. A more elaborate table would show that where the defendants are men there are a greater proportionate number of acquittals, but more verdicts in higher degrees. A verdict of manslaughter in the second degree in the case of a man charged with murder is infrequent, but convictions of murder in the second degree are exceedingly common.
The reason for the higher percentage of convictions of women is that fewer women who commit crime are prosecuted than men, and that they are rarely indicted unless they are clearly guilty of the degree of crime charged against them; while practically every man who is charged with homicide and who, it seems, may be found guilty is indicted for murder in the first degree.
The trial of women for crime invariably arouses keen public interest, and the dethronement of a Czar, or the assassination of an Emperor, pales to insignificance before the prosecution of a woman for murder. Some of this interest is fictitious and stimulated merely by the yellow press, but a great deal of it is genuine. The writer remembers attending a dinner of gray-headed judges and counsellors during the trial of Ann Eliza, alias "Nan," Patterson, where one would have supposed that the lightest subject of conversation would be not less weighty than the constitutionality of an income tax, and finding to his astonishment that the only topic for which they showed any zest was whether "Nan" would be found guilty.