“The Speech of Miss Polly Baker” is a tale of sex and woe told from a woman’s point of view, a literary device often used by Franklin that displayed his ability to appreciate the other sex. It purports to recount the speech of a young woman on trial for having a fifth illegitimate child. The light humor of the piece hides the fact that it is actually a sharp attack on hypocritical customs and unfair attitudes toward women and sex. Franklin, who had fathered an illegitimate child before his marriage but taken responsibility for it, is particularly scathing about the double standard that subjects her, but not the men who had sex with her, to humiliation. First published in London, it was then frequently reprinted in England and America without people realizing that it was fiction. Only thirty years later did Franklin reveal that he had written it as a hoax.
THE GENERAL ADVERTISER, APRIL 15, 1747
The Speech of Miss Polly Baker, before a Court of Judicature,
At Connecticut near Boston in New England; where she
was prosecuted the fifth time, for having a bastard child: which
influenced the court to dispense with her punishment,
and induced one of her judges to marry her the next day.
May it please the honorable bench to indulge me in a few words: I am a poor unhappy woman, who have no money to fee lawyers to plead for me, being hard put to it to get a tolerable living. I shall not trouble your honors with long speeches; for I have not the presumption to expect, that you may, by any means, be prevailed on to deviate in your sentence from the law, in my favor. All I humbly hope is, that your honors would charitably move the governors’ goodness on my behalf, that my fine may be remitted.
This is the fifth time, gentlemen, that I have been dragged before your court on the same account; twice I have paid heavy fines, and twice have been brought to public punishment, for want of money to pay those fines. This may have been agreeable to the laws, and I don’t dispute it; but since laws are sometimes unreasonable in themselves, and therefore repealed, and others bear too hard on the subject in particular circumstances; and therefore there is left a power somewhat to dispense with the execution of them; I take the liberty to say, that I think this law, by which I am punished, is both unreasonable in itself, and particularly severe with regard to me, who have always lived an inoffensive life in the neighborhood where I was born, and defy my enemies (if I have any) to say I ever wronged man, woman, or child. Abstracted from the law, I cannot conceive (may it please your honors) what the nature of my offence is. I have brought five fine children into the world, at the risk of my life; I have maintained them well by my own industry, without burdening the township, and would have done it better, if it had not been for the heavy charges and fines I have paid.
Can it be a crime (in the nature of things I mean) to add to the number of the king’s subjects, in a new country that really wants people? I own it, I should think it a praise-worthy, rather than a punishable action. I have debauched no other woman’s husband, nor enticed any youth; these things I never was charged with, nor has any one the least cause of complaint against me, unless, perhaps, the minister, or justice, because I have had children without being married, by which they have missed a wedding fee. But, can ever this be a fault of mine? I appeal to your honors.
You are pleased to allow I don’t want sense; but I must be stupefied to the last degree, not to prefer the honorable state of wedlock, to the condition I have lived in. I always was, and still am willing to enter into it; and doubt not my behaving well in it, having all the industry, frugality, fertility, and skill in economy, appertaining to a good wife’s character. I defy any person to say, I ever refused an offer of that sort: on the contrary, I readily consented to the only proposal of marriage that ever was made me, which was when I was a virgin; but too easily confiding in the person’s sincerity that made it, I unhappily lost my own honor, by trusting to his; for he got me with child, and then forsook me: that very person you all know; he is now become a magistrate of this country; and I had hopes he would have appeared this day on the bench, and have endeavored to moderate the court in my favor; then I should have scorned to have mentioned it; but I must now complain of it, as unjust and unequal, that my betrayer and undoer, the first cause of all my faults and miscarriages (if they must be deemed such) should be advanced to honor and power in the government, that punishes my misfortunes with stripes and infamy.
I should be told, ’tis like, that were there no act of assembly in the case, the precepts of religion are violated by my transgressions. If mine, then, is a religious offence, leave it to religious punishments. You have already excluded me from the comforts of your church-communion. Is not that sufficient? You believe I have offended heaven, and must suffer eternal fire: will not that be sufficient? What need is there, then, of your additional fines and whipping? I own, I do not think as you do; for, if I thought what you call a sin, was really such, I could not presumptuously commit it. But, how can it be believed, that heaven is angry at my having children, when to the little done by me towards it, God has been pleased to add his divine skill and admirable workmanship in the formation of their bodies, and crowned it, by furnishing them with rational and immortal souls.
Forgive me, gentlemen, if I talk a little extravagantly on these matters; I am no divine, but if you, gentlemen, must be making laws, do not turn natural and useful actions into crimes, by your prohibitions. But take into your wise consideration, the great and growing number of bachelors in the country, many of whom from the mean fear of the expenses of a family, have never sincerely and honorably courted a woman in their lives; and by their manner of living, leave unproduced (which is little better than murder) hundreds of their posterity to the thousandth generation. Is not this a greater offence against the public good, than mine? Compel them, then, by law, either to marriage, or to pay double the fine of fornication every year.
What must poor young women do, whom custom have forbid to solicit the men, and who cannot force themselves upon husbands, when the laws take no care to provide them any; and yet severely punish them if they do their duty without them; the duty of the first and great command of nature, and of nature’s god, increase and multiply. A duty, from the steady performance of which, nothing has been able to deter me; but for its sake, I have hazarded the loss of the public esteem, and have frequently endured public disgrace and punishment; and therefore ought, in my humble opinion, instead of a whipping, to have a statue erected to my memory.