plead the belly

Definitions

1. 1

   To attempt to use one's claimed pregnancy to avoid execution.

   • She isn't hanged, while in jail, because she pleads the belly.
   • Over 25 per cent of the 463 women who were sentenced to death at the Old Bailey pleaded the belly between 1674 and 1699, and 38 per cent from 1700 to 1724, though a much smaller proportion did so later.
   • I was telling them only the other day about pregnant women avoiding the Drop in the eighteenth century by pleading the belly.

The neighborhood