Troublesome Women: Gender, Crime, and Punishment in Antebellum Pennsylvania

This book traces the lived experiences of women lawbreakers in the state of Pennsylvania from 1820 to 1860 through the records of more than six thousand criminal court cases. By following these women from the perpetration of their crimes through the state’s efforts to punish and reform them, Erica Rhodes Hayden places them at the center of their own stories.

Women constituted a small percentage of those tried in courtrooms and sentenced to prison terms during the nineteenth century, yet thei...