Constantia Jones

Who was Constantia Jones?

Constantia Jones was a prostitute in London, UK during the term of Prime Minister Robert Walpole, who was sentenced to hang for stealing 36 shillings and a half-guinea from one of her clients. Her accuser, describing her as "a three-penny upright," testified as follows: "As I stood against the Wall, [she] came behind me, and with one hand she took hold of . . . --and the other she thrust into my Breeches Pocket and took my Money." Based on this testimony, Jones was sentenced to hang at Tyburn.

Jones, who had been sent to the notorious prison at Newgate some twenty times before, was 30 years old upon her execution. Historian Peter Linebaugh asserts that regardless of her guilt or innocence, her conviction on such flimsy evidence indicates the bias of 18th-century English courts against the trade of prostitution and those who worked in the industry. Prostitutes are always vulnerable, and in the middle of the 18th century in England, their testimony in court was not regarded as equal to that of their clients. Jones would have been a particularly weak defendant, as she had been in Newgate on multiple occasions.