Health Of The Old Baileys Essay

In court was another sphere that women’s health was influenced. One major player to health was the prosecution of rape. In the Old Baileys records there were countless reports of rape that ended with innocent, with a few guilty scattered in for the years 1674-1699 (Old Baileys). For the most part the reason for the guilty sentence was because the man was of poor moral and gave the girls a disease. Such was the case of Sarah Southy and her rapist William Harding (Please be aware of the explicit nature of the following text):

“William Harding was tried also for Ravishing one Sarah Southy a Girl about 7 or 8 years of Age, ticeing her down into a dark Cellar by the allurement of Appels, and then accomplished his detestable Villany, not only giving the Child the foul Disease wherewith himself was infested, but likewise by forceable penetrating

The punishment for rape was death. The “Venereal Distemper” and “the Foul Disease” were terms used in the seventeenth century to mean syphilis or venereal disease (“Foul Disease”, 2018). This was bad for the health of the child as well as anyone else, since syphilis is a serious, deadly and deforming disease. Even if it was not syphilis and another venereal disease, it can easily produce life threatening complications not to mention the dangers of the cure. This would have also affected the ability of the child to marry someone if she survived to that age, and thus putting her into poverty and creating causing more risk to her health. This is not to mention the shaming she would have gotten if she were to have syphilis, limiting her possible prospects of work as well. If she were to just have a different venereal disease and not syphilis, she may be able to live a somewhat normal life if she showed no outward signs of the disease, though this would help the spread of the disease if she were to eventually get