Chapter
13
Once or twice I asked
what was the matter, but the people neglected answering me, and I was not very
importunate; but after the crowd was wholly past, I took my opportunity to turn
about and take up what was behind me and walk away. This, indeed, I did with
less disturbance than I had done formerly, for these things I did not steal,
but they were stolen to my hand. I got safe to my lodgings with this cargo,
which was a piece of fine black Lustring silk, and a piece of velvet; the
latter was but part of a piece of about eleven yards; the former was a whole
piece of near fifty yards. It seems it was a mercer’s shop that they had
rifled. I say rifled, because the goods were so considerable that they had
lost; for the goods that they recovered were pretty many, and I believe came to
about six or seven several pieces of silk. How they came to get so many I could
not tell; but as I had only robbed the thief, I made no scruple at taking these
goods, and being very glad of them too.
I had pretty good luck
thus far, and I made several adventures more, though with but small purchase,
yet with good success, but I went in daily dread that some mischief would
befall me, and that I should certainly come to be hanged at last. The
impression this made on me was too strong to be slighted, and it kept me from
making attempts that, for ought I knew, might have been very safely performed;
but one thing I cannot omit, which was a bait to me many a day. I walked
frequently out into the villages round the town, to see if nothing would fall
in my way there; and going by a house near Stepney, I saw on the
window-board two rings, one a small diamond ring, and the other a gold ring, to
be sure laid there by some thoughtless lady, that had more money then forecast,
perhaps only till she washed her hands.
I walked several times
by the window to observe if I could see whether there was anybody in the room
or no, and I could see nobody, but still I was not sure. It came presently into
my thoughts to rap at the glass, as if I wanted to speak with somebody, and if
anybody was there they would be sure to come to the window, and then I would
tell them to remove those rings, for that I had seen two suspicious fellows
take notice of them. This was a ready thought. I rapped once or twice and
nobody came, when, seeing the coast clear, I thrust hard against the square of
the glass, and broke it with very little noise, and took out the two rings, and
walked away with them very safe. The diamond ring was worth about
I was now at a loss for
a market for my goods, and especially for my two pieces of silk. I was very
loth to dispose of them for a trifle, as the poor unhappy thieves in general
do, who, after they have ventured their lives for perhaps a thing of value, are
fain to sell it for a song when they have done; but I was resolved I would not
do thus, whatever shift I made, unless I was driven to the last extremity.
However, I did not well know what course to take. At last I resolved to go to
my old governess, and acquaint myself with her again. I had punctually supplied
the
I now made her a visit,
and I found that she drove something of the old trade still, but that she was
not in such flourishing circumstances as before; for she had been sued by a
certain gentleman who had had his daughter stolen from him, and who, it seems,
she had helped to convey away; and it was very narrowly that she escaped the
gallows. The expense also had ravaged her, and she was become very poor; her
house was but meanly furnished, and she was not in such repute for her practice
as before; however, she stood upon her legs, as they say, and a she was a
stirring, bustling woman, and had some stock left, she was turned pawnbroker,
and lived pretty well.
She received me very
civilly, and with her usual obliging manner told me she would not have the less
respect for me for my being reduced; that she had taken care my boy was very
well looked after, though I could not pay for him, and that the woman that had
him was easy, so that I needed not to trouble myself about him till I might be
better able to do it effectually.
I told her that I had
not much money left, but that I had some things that were money’s worth, if she
could tell me how I might turn them into money. She asked me what it was I had.
I pulled out the string of gold beads, and told her it was one of my husband’s
presents to me; then I showed her the two parcels of silk, which I told her I
had from Ireland, and brought up to town with me; and the little diamond
ring. As to the small parcel of plate and spoons, I had found means to dispose
of them myself before; and as for the Childbed Linen I had, she offered me to
take it herself, believing it to have been my own. She told me that she was
turned pawnbroker, and that she would sell those things for me as pawn
to her; and so she sent presently for proper agents that bought them, being in
her hands, without any scruple, and gave good prices too.
I now began to think
this necessary woman might help me a little in my low condition to some
business, for I would gladly have turned my hand to any honest employment if I
could have got it. But here she was deficient; honest business did not come
within her reach. If I had been younger, perhaps she might have helped me to a
spark, but my thoughts were off that kind of livelihood, as being quite out of
the way after fifty, which was my case, and so I told her.
She invited me at last
to come, and be at her house till I could find something to do, and it should
cost me very little, and this I gladly accepted of. And now living a little
easier, I entered into some measures to have my little son by my last husband
taken off; and this she made easy too, reserving a payment only of
However, at last I got
some quilting work for ladies’ beds, petticoats, and the like; and this I liked
very well, and worked very hard, and with this I began to live; but the
diligent devil, who resolved I should continue in his service, continually
prompted me to go out and take a walk, that is to say, to see if anything would
offer in the old way.
One evening I blindly
obeyed his summons, and fetched a long circuit through the streets, but met
with no purchase, and came home very weary and empty; but not content with
that, I went out the next evening too, when going by an alehouse I saw the door
of a little room open, next the very street, and on the table a silver tankard,
things much in use in public-houses at that time. It seems some company had
been drinking there, and the careless boys had forgot to take it away.
I went into the box
frankly, and setting the silver tankard on the corner of the bench, I sat down
before it, and knocked with my foot; a boy came presently, and I bade him fetch
me a pint of warm ale, for it was cold weather; the boy ran, and I heard him go
down the cellar to draw the ale. While the boy was gone, another boy came into
the room, and cried, ‘D’ ye call?’ I spoke with a melancholy air, and
said, ‘No, child; the boy is gone for a pint of ale for me.’
While I sat here, I
heard the woman in the bar say, ‘Are they all gone in the five?’ which was the
box I sat in, and the boy said, ‘Yes.’ ‘Who fetched the tankard away?’ says
the woman. ‘I did,’ says another boy; ‘that’s it,’ pointing, it
seems, to another tankard, which he had fetched from another box by mistake; or
else it must be, that the rogue forgot that he had not brought it in, which
certainly he had not.
I heard all this, much
to my satisfaction, for I found plainly that the tankard was not missed, and
yet they concluded it was fetched away; so I drank my ale, called to pay, and
as I went away I said, ‘Take care of your plate, child,’ meaning a
silver pint mug, which he brought me drink in. The boy said, ‘Yes, madam,
very welcome,’ and away I came.
I came home to my
governess, and now I thought it was a time to try her, that if I might be put
to the necessity of being exposed, she might offer me some assistance. When I
had been at home some time, and had an opportunity of talking to her, I told
her I had a secret of the greatest consequence in the world to commit to her,
if she had respect enough for me to keep it a secret. She told me she had kept
one of my secrets faithfully; why should I doubt her keeping another? I told
her the strangest thing in the world had befallen me, and that it had made a
thief of me, even without any design, and so told her the whole story of the
tankard. ‘And have you brought it away with you, my dear?’ says she. ‘To
be sure I have,’ says I, and showed it her. ‘But what shall I do now,’ says
I; ‘must not carry it again?’
‘Carry it again!’ says
she. ‘Ay, if you are minded to be sent to Newgate for stealing it.’ ‘Why,’ says
I, ‘they can’t be so base to stop me, when I carry it to them again?’ ‘You
don’t know those sort of people, child,’ says she; ‘they’ll not only
carry you to Newgate, but hang you too, without any regard to the honesty of
returning it; or bring in an account of all the other tankards they have lost,
for you to pay for.’ ‘What must I do, then?’ says
This gave me a new
notion of my governess, and that since she was turned pawnbroker,
she had a sort of people about her that were none of the honest ones that I had
met with there before.
I had not been long
there but I discovered it more plainly than before, for every now and then I
saw hilts of swords, spoons, forks, tankards, and all such kind of ware brought
in, not to be pawned, but to be sold downright; and she bought everything that
came without asking any questions, but had very good bargains, as I found by
her discourse.
I found also that in
following this trade she always melted down the plate she bought, that it might
not be challenged; and she came to me and told me one morning that she was
going to melt, and if I would, she would put my tankard in, that it might not
be seen by anybody. I told her, with all my heart; so she weighed it, and
allowed me the full value in silver again; but I found she did not do the same
to the rest of her customers.
Some time after this, as
I was at work, and very melancholy, she begins to ask me what the matter was,
as she was used to do. I told her my heart was heavy; I had little work, and
nothing to live on, and knew not what course to take. She laughed, and told me
I must go out again and try my fortune; it might be that I might meet with
another piece of plate. ‘O mother!’ says I, ‘that is a trade I have no
skill in, and if I should be taken I am undone at once.’ Says she, ‘I
could help you to a School-Mistress that shall make you as dexterous as
herself.’ I trembled at that proposal, for hitherto I had had no confederates,
nor any acquaintance among that tribe. But she conquered all my modesty, and
all my fears; and in a little time, by the help of this confederate, I grew as
impudent a thief, and as dexterous as ever Moll Cut-Purse was, though,
if fame does not belie her, not half so handsome.
The comrade she helped
me to dealt in three sorts of craft, viz. shoplifting, stealing of
shop-books and pocket-books, and taking off gold watches from the ladies’
sides; and this last she did so dexterously that no woman ever arrived to the
performance of that art so as to do it like her. I liked the first and the last
of these things very well, and I attended her some time in the practice, just
as a deputy attends a midwife, without any pay.
At length she put me to
practice. She had shown me her art, and I had several times unhooked a watch
from her own side with great dexterity. At last she showed me a prize, and this
was a young lady big with child, who had a charming watch. The thing was to be
done as she came out of church. She goes on one side of the lady, and pretends,
just as she came to the steps, to fall, and fell against the lady with so much
violence as put her into a great fright, and both cried out terribly. In the
very moment that she jostled the lady, I had hold of the watch, and holding it
the right way, the start she gave drew the hook out, and she never felt it. I made
off immediately, and left my School mistress to come out of her pretended
fright gradually, and the lady too; and presently the watch was missed. ‘Ay,’
says my comrade, ‘then it was those rogues that thrust me down, I warrant ye; I
wonder the gentlewoman did not miss her watch before,then we might have taken
them.’
She humour’d the thing
so well that nobody suspected her, and I was got home a full hour before her.
This was my first adventure in company. The watch was indeed a very fine one,
and had a great many trinkets about it, and my governess allowed us
Thus the devil, who
began, by the help of an irresistible poverty, to push me into this wickedness,
brought me on to a height beyond the common rate, even when my necessities were
not so great, or the prospect of my misery so terrifying; for I had now got
into a little vein of work, and as I was not at a loss to handle my needle, it
was very probable, as acquaintance came in, I might have got my bread honestly
enough.
I must say, that if such
a prospect of work had presented itself at first, when I began to feel the
approach of my miserable circumstances—I say, had such a prospect of getting my
bread by working presented itself then, I had never fallen into this wicked
trade, or into such a wicked gang as I was now embarked with; but practice had
hardened me, and I grew audacious to the last degree; and the more so because I
had carried it on so long, and had never been taken; for, in a word, my new
partner in wickedness and I went on together so long, without being ever
detected, that we not only grew bold, but we grew rich, and we had at one time
one-and-twenty gold watches in our hands.
I remember that one day
being a little more serious than ordinary, and finding I had so good a stock
beforehand as I had, for I had near
This was doubtless the
happy minute, when, if I had hearken’d to the blessed hint, from whatsoever had
it came, I had still a cast for an easy life. But my fate was otherwise
determined; the busy devil that so industriously drew me in had too fast hold
of me to let me go back; but as poverty brought me into the mire, so avarice
kept me in, till there was no going back. As to the arguments which my reason
dictated for persuading me to lay down, avarice stepped in and said, ‘Go on, go
on; you have had very good luck; go on till you have gotten four or five
hundred pounds, and they you shall leave off, and then you may live easy
without working at all.’
Thus I, that was once in
the devil’s clutches, was held fast there as with a charm, and had no power to
go without the circle, till I was engulfed in labyrinths of trouble too great
to get out at all.
However, these thoughts
left some impression upon me, and made me act with some more caution than
before, and more than my directors used for themselves. My comrade, as I called
her, but rather she should have been called my teacher, with another of her
scholars, was the first in the misfortune; for, happening to be upon the hunt
for purchase, they made an attempt upon a linen-draper in Cheapside, but were
snapped by a hawk’s-eyed journeyman, and seized with two pieces of cambric,
which were taken also upon them.
This was enough to lodge
them both in Newgate, where they had the misfortune to have some of
their former sins brought to remembrance. Two other indictments being brought against
them, and the facts being proved upon them, they were both condemned to die.
They both pleaded their bellies, and were both voted quick with child; though
my Tutress was no more with child than I was.
I went frequently to see
them, and condole with them, expecting that it would be my turn next; but the
place gave me so much horror, reflecting that it was the place of my unhappy
birth, and of my mother’s misfortunes, and that I could not bear it, so I was
forced to leave off going to see them.
And oh! could I have but
taken warning by their disasters, I had been happy still, for I was yet free,
and had nothing brought against me; but it could not be, my measure was not yet
filled up.
My comrade, having the
brand of an old offender, was executed; the young offender was spared, having
obtained a reprieve, but lay starving a long while in prison, till at last she
got her name into what they call a circuit pardon, and so came off.
This terrible example of
my comrade frighted me heartily, and for a good while I made no excursions; but
one night, in the Neighbourhood of my governess’s house, they cried “Fire.’ My
governess looked out, for we were all up, and cried immediately that such a
gentlewoman’s house was all of a light fire atop, and so indeed it was. Here
she gives me a job. ‘Now, child,’ says she, ‘there is a rare opportunity, for
the fire being so near that you may go to it before the street is blocked up
with the crowd.’ She presently gave me my cue. ‘Go, child,’ says she,
‘to the house, and run in and tell the lady, or anybody you see, that you come
to help them, and that you came from such a gentlewoman (that is, one of her
acquaintance farther up the street).’ She gave me the like cue to the next
house, naming another name that was also an acquaintance of the gentlewoman of
the house.
Away I went, and, coming
to the house, I found them all in confusion, you may be sure. I ran in, and
finding one of the maids, ‘Lord! sweetheart,’ says I, ‘how came this
dismal accident? Where is your mistress? Any how does she do? Is she safe? And
where are the children? I come from Madam—to help you.’ Away runs the maid.
‘Madam, madam,’ says she, screaming as loud as she could yell, ‘here is a
gentlewoman come from Madam—to help us.’ The poor woman, half out of her wits,
with a bundle under her arm, an two little children, comes toward me. ‘Lord!
madam,’ says I, ‘let me carry the poor children to Madam —,’ she desires
you to send them; she’ll take care of the poor lambs;’ and immediately I takes
one of them out of her hand, and she lifts the other up into my arms. ‘Ay, do,
for God’s sake,’ says she, ‘carry them to her. Oh! thank her for her
kindness.’ ‘Have you anything else to secure, madam?’ says I; ‘she will
take care of it.’ ‘Oh dear! ay,’ says she, ‘God bless her, and thank
her. Take this bundle of plate and carry it to her too. Oh, she is a good
woman. Oh Lord! we are utterly ruined, utterly undone!’ And away she runs
from me out of her wits, and the maids after her; and away comes I with the two
children and the bundle.
I was no sooner got into
the street but I saw another woman come to me. ‘Oh!’ says she,
‘mistress,’ in a piteous tone, ‘you will let fall the child. Come, this is a
sad time; let me help you’; and immediately lays hold of my bundle to carry it
for me. ‘No,’ says I; ‘if you will help me, take the child by the hand,
and lead it for me but to the upper end of the street; I’ll go with you and
satisfy you for your pains.’
She cou’d not avoid
going, after what I said; but the creature, in short, was one of the same
business with me, and wanted nothing but the bundle; however, she went with me
to the door, for she could not help it. When we were come there I whispered
her, ‘Go, child,’ said I, ‘I understand your trade; you may meet
with purchase enough.’
She understood me and
walked off. I thundered at the door with the children, and as the people were
raised before by the noise of the fire, I was soon let in, and I said, ‘Is
madam awake? Pray tell her Mrs.—desires the favour of her to take the
two children in; poor lady, she will be undone, their house is all of a
flame,’ They took the children in very civilly, pitied the family in
distress, and away came I with my bundle. One of the maids asked me if I was
not to leave the bundle too. I said, ‘No, sweetheart, ‘tis to go to another
place; it does not belong to them.’
I was a great way out of
the hurry now, and so I went on, clear of anybody’s inquiry, and brought the
bundle of plate, which was very considerable, straight home, and gave it to my
old governess. She told me she would not look into it, but bade me go out again
to look for more.
She gave me the like cue
to the gentlewoman of the next house to that which was on fire, and I did my
endeavour to go, but by this time the alarm of fire was so great, and so many
engines playing, and the street so thronged with people, that I could not get
near the house whatever I would do; so I came back again to my governess’s, and
taking the bundle up into my chamber, I began to examine it. It is with horror
that I tell what a treasure I found there; ‘tis enough to say, that besides
most of the family plate, which was considerable, I found a gold chain, an
old-fashioned thing, the locket of which was broken, so that I suppose it had
not been used some years, but the gold was not the worse for that; also a
little box of burying-rings, the lady’s wedding-ring, and some broken bits of
old lockets of gold, a gold watch, and a purse with about
This was the greatest
and the worst prize that ever I was concerned in; for indeed, though, as I have
said above, I was hardened now beyond the power of all reflection in other
cases, yet it really touched me to the very soul when I looked into this
treasure, to think of the poor disconsolate gentlewoman who had lost so much by
the fire besides; and who would think, to be sure, that she had saved her plate
and best things; how she would be surprised and afflicted when she should find
that she had been deceived, and should find that the person that took her
children and her goods, had not come, as was pretended, from the gentlewoman in
the next street, but that the children had been put upon her without her own
knowledge.
I say, I confess the
inhumanity of this action moved me very much, and made me relent exceedingly,
and tears stood in my eyes upon that subject; but with all my sense of its
being cruel and inhuman, I could never find in my heart to make any
restitution. The reflection wore off, and I began quickly to forget the
circumstances that attended the taking them.
Now was this all; for
though by this job I was become considerably richer than before, yet the
resolution I had formerly taken, of leaving off this horrid trade when I had
gotten a little more, did not return, but I must still get farther, and more;
and the avarice joined so with the success, that I had no more thought of
coming to a timely alteration of life, though without it I could expect no
safety, no tranquillity in the possession of what I had so wickedly gained; but
a little more, and a little more, was the case still.
At length, yielding to
the importunities of my crime, I cast off all remorse and repentance, and all
the reflections on that head turned to no more than this, that I might perhaps come
to have one booty more that might complete my desires; but though I certainly
had that one booty, yet every hit looked towards another, and was so
encouraging to me to go on with the trade, that I had no gust to the thought of
laying it down.
In this condition,
hardened by success, and resolving to go on, I fell into the snare in which I
was appointed to meet with my last reward for this kind of life. But even this
was not yet, for I met with several successful adventures more in this way of
being undone.
I remained still with my
governess, who was for a while really concerned for the misfortune of my
comrade that had been hanged, and who, it seems, knew enough of my governess to
have sent her the same way, and which made her very uneasy; indeed, she was in
a very great fright.
It is true that when she
was gone, and had not opened mouth to tell what she knew, my governess was easy
as to that point, and perhaps glad she was hanged, for it was in her power to
have obtained a pardon at the expense of her friends; but on the other hand,
the loss of her, and the sense of her kindness in not making her market of what
she knew, moved my governess to mourn very sincerely for her. I comforted her
as well as I could, and she in return hardened me to merit more completely the
same fate.
However, as I have said,
it made me the more wary, and particularly I was very shy of shoplifting,
especially among the mercers and drapers, who are a set of
fellows that have their eyes very much about them. I made a venture or two among
the lace folks and the milliners, and particularly at one shop where I got
notice of two young women who were newly set up, and had not been bred to the
trade. There I think I carried off a piece of bone-lace, worth six or seven
pounds, and a paper of thread. But this was but once; it was a trick that would
not serve again.
It was always reckoned a
safe job when we heard of a new shop, and especially when the people were such
as were not bred to shops. Such may depend upon it that they will be visited once
or twice at their beginning, and they must be very sharp indeed if they can
prevent it.
I made another adventure
or two, but they were but trifles too, though sufficient to live on. After this
nothing considerable offering for a good while, I began to think that I must
give over the trade in earnest; but my governess, who was not willing to lose
me, and expected great things of me, brought me one day into company with a
young woman and a fellow that went for her husband, though as it appeared
afterwards, she was not his wife, but they were partners, it seems, in the
trade they carried on, and partners in something else. In short, they
robbed together, lay together, were taken together, and at last were hanged
together.
I came into a kind of
league with these two by the help of my governess, and they carried me out into
three or four adventures, where I rather saw them commit some coarse and
unhandy robberies, in which nothing but a great stock of impudence on their
side, and gross negligence on the people’s side who were robbed, could have
made them successful. so I resolved from that time forward to be very cautious
how I Adventur’d upon anything with them; and indeed, when two or three unlucky
projects were proposed by them, I declined the offer, and persuaded them
against it. One time they particularly proposed robbing a watchmaker of three
gold watches, which they had eyed in the daytime, and found the place where he
laid them. One of them had so many keys of all kinds, that he made no question
to open the place where the watchmaker had laid them; and so we made a kind of
an appointment; but when I came to look narrowly into the thing, I found they
proposed breaking open the house, and this, as a thing out of my way, I would
not embark in, so they went without me. They did get into the house by main
force, and broke up the locked place where the watches were, but found but one
of the gold watches, and a silver one, which they took, and got out of the
house again very clear. But the family, being alarmed, cried out ‘Thieves,’ and
the man was pursued and taken; the young woman had got off too, but unhappily
was stopped at a distance, and the watches found upon her. And thus I had a
second escape, for they were convicted, and both hanged, being old offenders,
though but young people. As I said before that they robbed together and
lay together, so now they hanged together, and there ended my new partnership.
I began now to be very
wary, having so narrowly escaped a scouring, and having such an example before
me; but I had a new tempter, who prompted me every day—I mean my governess; and
now a prize presented, which as it came by her management, so she expected a
good share of the booty. There was a good quantity of Flanders-Lace lodged in a
private house, where she had gotten intelligence of it; and Flanders-Lace being
prohibited, it was a good booty to any custom-house officer that could come at
it. I had a full account from my governess, as well of the quantity as of the
very place where it was concealed, and I went to a custom-house officer, and
told him I had such a discovery to make to him of such a quantity of lace, if
he would assure me that I should have my due share of the reward. This was so
just an offer, that nothing could be fairer; so he agreed, and taking a
constable and me with him, we beset the house. As I told him I could go
directly to the place, he left it to me; and the hole being very dark, I
squeezed myself into it, with a candle in my hand, and so reached the pieces
out to him, taking care as I gave him some so to secure as much about myself as
I could conveniently dispose of. There was near
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