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 Anna 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.
One of the earliest, if not the earliest, record of a woman being held for murder is that of Agnes Archer, indicted by twelve men on April 4, 1435, sworn before the mayor and coroner to inquire as to the death of Alice Colynbourgh.

The quaint old report begins in Latin, but "the pleadings" are set forth in the language of the day, as follows: "Agnes Archer, is that thy name?
which answered, yes....