Women of the Old Bailey

Domestic Lives on Trial in Victorian London

Seven Victorian cases. Seven women. One court that turned private life into public evidence.

Women of the Old Bailey follows a nurse in the sickroom, a servant inside the house, a respectable wife under scrutiny, a sensational defendant made into warning, a poisoner explained through obsession, a baby-farmer in a hidden economy of shame, and a household where cruelty was made routine.

Drawn from the Old Bailey record, this narrative history traces how the Victorian courtroom judged women—by class, by respectability, by domestic role—long before any verdict was spoken.