 The use of matrons’ juries in a criminal context was documented as early as 1387, in language which suggests that it was already a customary procedure.By the sixteenth century, women who successfully pleaded their belly, as the practice was colloquially known, were frequently either pardoned or granted a lesser sentence, such as penal transportation.With the decline of capital offences and the rise of a more sophisticated medical understanding of pregnancy, the practice was increasingly regarded as obsolete, and was generally regarded as archaic and ridiculed in the press on the rare occasions it was employed in the 19th century.