Ada: So the court did something that had no precedent in the colonies. It ordered a jury of women empaneled — not to hear arguments, but to physically examine Judith's body for signs of childbirth.
Theo: Hold on. An all-woman jury, in sixteen fifty-six? I thought that was a Wild West thing — Wyoming, wasn't it?
Ada: Wyoming, Laramie, eighteen seventy — that's the one usually crowned the first. This beats it by more than two centuries. But let's be precise about what happened and why.
Theo: Right — was this some grand statement about women's judgment?
Ada: No, and that's the honest heart of it. It wasn't a feminist gesture. It was a practical evidence problem. Only women were deemed competent to judge a woman's body — so only women could settle the one question that mattered.
Theo: Expert witnesses, essentially. Just called a jury.
Ada: That's exactly the logic. Now, most accounts say the jury numbered eleven — seven married women and four single. Some sources just say a jury of women was impaneled, without the count.
Theo: Why does the marital mix matter?
Ada: Because married women had borne children; they knew what a body that had given birth looked like. That was their expertise — lived, physical knowledge no judge on that bench possessed.
Theo: So these eleven women hold this stranger's life in their hands, based on what her body does or doesn't show.
Ada: They examined her — carefully, by the standards of the day — and then delivered a verdict that undid the whole case.