ABSTRACT While many historians refer to the legal presumption of marital coercion when discussing patterns of lenient judicial treatment of women in eighteenth-and nineteenth-century English criminal trials, few have analyzed the presumption in enough detail to ascertain the impact it genuinely had. This article undertakes close legal analysis of marital coercion. It argues that the presumption was not frequently referred to in nineteenth-century Old Bailey criminal trials for receiving stolen goods because of increasing judicial strictness as to the application of the presumption. A defendant had to prove her marriage, her husband’s presence at the crime scene, and, by the nineteenth century, evidence of her husband’s actual control. The presumption may have shifted from an irrebuttable presumption to one rebuttable upon proof that any of these requirements were absent. Therefore, women’s lenient court treatment during the modern period cannot be straightforwardly attributed to frequent successful recourse to marital coercion.

中文翻译：

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反驳推定：重新思考 18 世纪和 19 世纪英国婚姻胁迫的普通法原则

摘要 虽然许多历史学家在讨论 18 世纪和 19 世纪英国刑事审判中对妇女的宽大司法待遇模式时都提到了婚姻胁迫的法律推定，但很少有人对推定进行足够详细的分析，以确定它真正产生的影响。本文对婚姻胁迫进行了细致的法律分析。它争辩说，由于司法对推定的适用越来越严格，因此在 19 世纪 Old Bailey 因接收赃物而进行的刑事审判中并不经常提及该推定。被告必须证明她的婚姻、她丈夫在犯罪现场，以及在 19 世纪，她丈夫实际控制的证据。该推定可能已从不可反驳的推定转变为可在证明不存在任何这些要求的情况下进行反驳。因此，现代女性在法庭上的宽大处理，不能直接归咎于频繁成功地诉诸婚姻胁迫。