The learned commentator Christian adds a few more cases where formerly the criminal law was harshly prejudiced against women. Thus: "By the Common Law, all women were denied the benefit of clergy; and till the 3 and 4 W. and M., c. 9 [William and Mary] they received sentence of death and might have been executed for the first offence in simple larceny, bigamy, manslaughter, etc., however learned they were, merely because their sex precluded the possibility of their taking holy orders; though a man who could read was for the same crime subject only to burning in the hand and a few months' imprisonment."
I Q.B. p. 671—in the Court of Appeal.
Married Women's Property Act, 45 and 46 V., c. 75—Aug. 18, 1882.
Note this incident, from the Westminister Review, October, 1856: "A lady whose husband had been unsuccessful in business established herself as a milliner in Manchester. After some years of toil she realised sufficient for the family to live upon comfortably, the husband having done nothing meanwhile. They lived for a time in easy circumstances after she gave up business and then the husband died, bequeathing all his wife's earnings to his own illegitimate children. At the age of 62 she was compelled, in order to gain her bread, to return to business."