Dictionary
Words, grammatical forms and meanings linked to the ontology.
plead the belly en · VERB
Pronunciation
Meanings
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(historical) To attempt to use one's claimed pregnancy to avoid execution.
Over 25 per cent of the 463 women who were sentenced to death at the Old Bailey pleaded the belly between 1674 and 1699, and 38 per cent from 1700 to 1724, though a much smaller proportion did so later.
2009, Shani D'Cruze, Louise A. Jackson, Women, Crime and Justice in England since 1660, Palgrave Macmillan, →ISBN:She isn't hanged, while in jail, because she pleads the belly.
1994, Leslie Scalapino, Defoe, Sun and Moon Press, →ISBN:I was telling them only the other day about pregnant women avoiding the Drop in the eighteenth century by pleading the belly.
2013, M.J. Trow, Maxwell's Chain, Allison & Busby, →ISBN:
Forms