CHAPTER VII
Women in the Courts
AS WITNESSES
Women appear in the criminal courts constantly as witnesses,
although less frequently as complainants and defendants. As
complainants are always witnesses, and as defendants may,
and in point of fact generally do become so, whatever
generalizations are possible regarding women in courts of law
can most easily be drawn from their characteristics as givers
of testimony. Roughly speaking, women exhibit about the same
idiosyncrasies and limitations in the witness-chair as the
opposite sex, and at first thought one would be apt to say
that it would be fruitless and absurd to attempt to predicate
any general principles in regard to their testimony, but a
careful study of female witnesses as a whole will result in
the inevitable conclusion that their evidence has virtues and
limitations peculiar to itself.
The ancient theory that woman was man's inferior showed
itself in the tendency to reject, or at least to regard with
suspicion, her evidence in legal matters.
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