ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the conjunction of coverture and criminal forfeiture, with a special focus on the early modern period. Polemical comparisons of the effects of coverture and criminal convictions were new to nineteenth-century debates, but the convergence of these two legal devices for the wives of felons had a long history. A variety of sources, then, suggest that many people believed that the conflated effects of coverture and criminal forfeiture represented an unwarranted hardship or active injustice against the wife and family of a felon. An unmarried woman who committed a felony was treated the same as a man: all possessions both real and personal were forfeit. A married female felon had already lost most of her property to her husband, and thus had less to lose. In contrast, if a woman's husband committed felony, whatever separate property she may have had remained safe from forfeiture; if she had real property, it reverted to her upon her husband's execution.
