Fallen Women and Thieving Ladies: Historical Approaches to Women and Crime in the United States

Abstract

The study of women and crime is a relatively new area of inquiry in the field of American women's legal history. Existing scholarship on this subject suggests that it does not fit the pattern of progress that scholars have found in other areas of women's legal history during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Two areas that have received considerable attention from historians-married women's property and divorce law-indicate a steady improvement in women's legal status during this period. The passage of married women's property acts in the 19th century gave women the right to control property they brought into a marriage, as well as any money or goods they subsequently earned, while liberalized divorce laws made it easier for women to divorce husbands for desertion or cruel treatment.