Chapter 17
Give the goldsmith his
due, he told his story with a great deal of justice and moderation, and the
fellow that had come over, and seized upon me, told his with as much heat and
foolish passion, which did me good still, rather than harm. It came then to my
turn to speak, and I told his worship that I was a stranger in
That seeing nobody I the
shop, I knocked with my foot very hard to make the people hear, and had also
called aloud with my voice; ’tis true, there was loose plate in the shop, but
that nobody could say I had touched any of it, or gone near it; that a fellow
came running into the shop out of the street, and laid hands on me in a furious
manner, in the very moments while I was calling for the people of the house;
that if he had really had a mind to have done his Neighbour any service, he
should have stood at a distance, and silently watched to see whether I had
touched anything or no, and then have clapped in upon me, and taken me in the
fact. ‘That is very true,’ says Mr. Alderman, and turning to the fellow
that stopped me, he asked him if it was true that I knocked with my foot? He
said, yes, I had knocked, but that might be because of his coming. ‘Nay,’ says
the alderman, taking him short, ‘now you contradict yourself, for just now
you said she was in the shop with her back to you, and did not see you till you
came upon her.’ Now it was true that my back was partly to the street, but yet
as my business was of a kind that required me to have my eyes every way, so I
really had a glance of him running over, as I said before, though he did not
perceive it.
After a full hearing,
the alderman gave it as his opinion that his Neighbour was under a mistake, and
that I was innocent, and the goldsmith acquiesced in it too, and his wife, and
so I was dismissed; but as I was going to depart, Mr. Alderman said,
‘But hold, madam, if you were designing to buy spoons, I hope you will
not let my friend here lose his customer by the mistake.’ I readily answered,
‘No, sir, I’ll buy the spoons still, if he can match my odd spoon, which I
brought for a pattern’; and the goldsmith showed me some of the very same
fashion. So he weighed the spoons, and they came to five-and- thirty shillings,
so I pulls out my purse to pay him, in which I had near 20 Guineas, for I never
went without such a sum about me, whatever might happen, and I found it of use
at other times as well as now.
When Mr. Alderman
saw my money, he said, ‘Well, madam, now I am satisfied you were
wronged, and it was for this reason that I moved you should buy the spoons, and
stayed till you had bought them, for if you had not had money to pay for them,
I should have suspected that you did not come into the shop with an intent to
buy, for indeed the sort of people who come upon these designs that you have
been charged with, are seldom troubled with much gold in their pockets, as I
see you are.’
I smiled, and told his
worship, that then I owed something of his Favour to my money, but I hoped he
saw reason also in the justice he had done me before. He said, yes, he had, but
this had confirmed his opinion, and he was fully satisfied now of my having
been injured. So I came off with flying Colours, though from an affair in which
I was at the very brink of destruction.
It was but three days
after this, that not at all made cautious by my former danger, as I used to be,
and still pursuing the art which I had so long been employed in, I ventured into
a house where I saw the doors open, and furnished myself, as I though verily
without being perceived, with two pieces of flowered silks, such as they call
brocaded silk, very rich. It was not a mercer’s shop, nor a warehouse of a
mercer, but looked like a private dwelling-house, and was, it seems, inhabited
by a man that sold goods for the weavers to the mercers, like a broker or
factor.
That I may make short of
this black part of this story, I was attacked by two wenches that came open-
mouthed at me just as I was going out at the door, and one of them pulled me
back into the room, while the other shut the door upon me. I would have given
them good words, but there was no room for it, two fiery dragons could not have
been more furious than they were; they tore my clothes, bullied and roared as
if they would have murdered me; the mistress of the house came next, and then
the master, and all outrageous, for a while especially.
I gave the master very
good words, told him the door was open, and things were a temptation to me,
that I was poor and distressed, and poverty was when many could not resist, and
begged him with tears to have pity on me. The mistress of the house was moved
with compassion, and inclined to have let me go, and had almost persuaded her husband
to it also, but the saucy wenches were run, even before they were sent, and had
fetched a constable, and then the master said he could not go back, I must go
before a justice, and answered his wife that he might come into trouble himself
if he should let me go.
The sight of the
constable, indeed, struck me with terror, and I thought I should have sunk into
the ground. I fell into faintings, and indeed the
people themselves thought I would have died, when the woman argued again for
me, and entreated her husband, seeing they had lost nothing, to let me go. I
offered him to pay for the two pieces, whatever the value was, though I had not
got them, and argued that as he had his goods, and had really lost nothing, it
would be cruel to pursue me to death, and have my blood for the bare attempt of
taking them. I put the constable in mind that I had broke no doors, nor carried
anything away; and when I came to the justice, and pleaded there that I had
neither broken anything to get in, nor carried anything out, the justice was
inclined to have released me; but the first saucy jade that stopped me,
affirming that I was going out with the goods, but that she stopped me and
pulled me back as I was upon the threshold, the justice upon that point
committed me, and I was carried to Newgate;
that horrid place! my very blood chills at the mention of its name; the place
where so many of my comrades had been locked up, and from whence they went to
the fatal tree; the place where my mother suffered so deeply, where I was brought
into the world, and from whence I expected no redemption but by an infamous
death: to conclude, the place that had so long expected me, and which with so
much art and success I had so long avoided.
I was not fixed indeed;
’tis impossible to describe the terror of my mind, when I was first brought in,
and when I looked around upon all the horrors of that dismal place. I looked on
myself as lost, and that I had nothing to think of but of going out of the
world, and that with the utmost infamy: the hellish noise, the roaring,
swearing, and Clamour, the stench and nastiness, and all the dreadful crowd of
afflicting things that I saw there, joined together to make the place seem an
emblem of hell itself, and a kind of an entrance into it.
Now I reproached myself
with the many hints I had had, as I have mentioned above, from my own
reason, from the sense of my good circumstances, and of the many dangers I had
escaped, to leave off while I was well, and how I had withstood them all, and
hardened my thoughts against all fear. It seemed to me that I was hurried on by
an inevitable and unseen fate to this day of misery, and that now I was to
expiate all my Offences at the gallows; that I was now to give satisfaction to
justice with my blood, and that I was come to the last hour of my life and of
my wickedness together. These things poured themselves in upon my thoughts in a
confused manner, and left me overwhelmed with melancholy and despair.
Then I repented heartily
of all my life past, but that repentance yielded me no satisfaction, no peace,
no, not in the least, because, as I said to myself, it was repenting
after the power of further sinning was taken away. I seemed not to mourn that I
had committed such crimes, and for the fact as it was an Offence against God
and my Neighbour; but I mourned that I was to be punished for it. I was a
penitent, as I thought, not that I had sinned, but that I was to suffer, and
this took away all the comfort, and even the hope of my repentance in my own
thoughts.
I got no sleep for
several nights or days after I came into that wretched place, and glad I would
have been for some time to have died there, though I did not consider dying as
it ought to be considered neither; indeed, nothing could be filled with more
horror to my imagination than the very place, nothing was more odious to me
than the company that was there. Oh! if I had but been
sent to any place in the world, and not to Newgate,
I should have thought myself happy.
In the next place, how
did the hardened wretches that were there before me triumph over me! What! Mrs.
Flanders come to Newgate
at last? What! Mrs. Mary, Mrs. Molly, and after
that plain Moll
I asked one of this crew
how long she had been there. She said four months. I asked her how the place
looked to her when she first came into it. ‘Just as it did now to you,’ says
she, dreadful and frightful’; that she thought she was in hell; ‘and I
believe so still,’ adds she, ‘but it is natural to me now, I don’t disturb
myself about it.’ ‘I suppose,’ says I, ‘you are in no danger of what is to
follow?’ ‘Nay,’ says she, ‘for you are mistaken there, I assure you, for
I am under sentence, only I pleaded my belly, but I am no more with child than
the judge that tried me, and I expect to be called down next sessions.’ This
‘calling down’ is calling down to their former judgment, when a woman has
been respited for her belly, but proves not to be
with child, or if she has been with child, and has been brought to bed.
‘Well,’ says I, ‘are you thus easy?’ ‘Ay,’ says she, ‘I can’t help
myself; what signifies being sad? If I am hanged, there’s an end of me,’ says
she; and away she turns dancing, and sings as she goes the following piece
of Newgate wit —
If I swing by the string
I shall hear the bell ring.
And then there’s an end of poor Jenny.
I mention this because
it would be worth the observation of any prisoner, who shall hereafter fall
into the same misfortune, and come to that dreadful place of Newgate, how time, necessity, and conversing with
the wretches that are there familiarizes the place to them; how at last they
become reconciled to that which at first was the greatest dread upon their
spirits in the world, and are as impudently cheerful and merry in their misery
as they were when out of it.
I can not say, as some
do, this devil is not so black as he is painted; for indeed no Colours can
represent the place to the life, not any soul conceive aright of it but those
who have been suffers there. But how hell should become by degree so natural,
and not only tolerable, but even agreeable, is a thing unintelligible but by
those who have experienced it, as I have.
The same night that I
was sent to Newgate, I sent the news of it to
my old governess, who was surprised at it, you may be sure, and spent the night
almost as ill out of Newgate, as I did in it.
The next morning she
came to see me; she did what she could to comfort me, but she saw that was to
no purpose; however, as she said, to sink under the weight was but to increase
the weight; she immediately applied herself to all the proper methods to
prevent the effects of it, which we feared, and first she found out the two
fiery jades that had surprised me. She tampered with them, offered them money,
and, in a word, tried all imaginable ways to prevent a prosecution; she offered
one of the wenches
Then she applied to the
master, that is to say, the man whose goods had been stolen, and particularly
to his wife, who, as I told you, was inclined at first to have some compassion
for me; she found the woman the same still, but the man alleged he was bound by
the justice that committed me, to prosecute, and that he should forfeit his
Recognizance.
My governess offered to
find friends that should get his Recognizances off of
the file, as they call it, and that he should not suffer; but it was not
possible to convince him that could be done, or that he could be safe any way
in the world but by appearing against me; so I was to have three witnesses of
fact against me, the master and his two maids; that is to say, I was as certain
to be cast for my life as I was certain that I was alive, and I had nothing to
do but to think of dying, and prepare for it. I had but a sad foundation to
build upon, as I said before, for all my repentance appeared to me to be only
the effect of my fear of death, not a sincere regret for the wicked life that I
had lived, and which had brought this misery upon me, for the offending my
Creator, who was now suddenly to be my judge.
I lived many days here
under the utmost horror of soul; I had death, as it were, in view, and thought
of nothing night and day, but of gibbets and halters, evil spirits and devils;
it is not to be expressed by words how I was harassed, between the dreadful
apprehensions of death and the terror of my conscience reproaching me with my
past horrible life.
The ordinary Of Newgate came to me, and talked a little in his way,
but all his divinity ran upon confessing my crime, as he called it (though he
knew not what I was in for), making a full discovery, and the like, without
which he told me God would never forgive me; and he said so little to the
purpose, that I had no manner of consolation from him; and then to observe the
poor creature preaching confession and repentance to me in the morning, and
find him drunk with brandy and spirits by noon, this had something in it so
shocking, that I began to nauseate the man more than his work, and his work too
by degrees, for the sake of the man; so that I desired him to trouble me no
more.
I know not how it was,
but by the indefatigable application of my diligent governess I had no bill
preferred against me the first sessions, I mean to the grand jury, at GuildHall; so I had another month or five
weeks before me, and without doubt this ought to have been accepted by me, as
so much time given me for reflection upon what was past, and preparation for
what was to come; or, in a word, I ought to have esteemed it as a space given
me for repentance, and have employed it as such, but it was not in me. I was
sorry (as before) for being in Newgate,
but had very few signs of repentance about me.
On the contrary, like
the waters in the cavities and hollows of mountains, which petrify and turn
into stone whatever they are suffered to drop on, so the continual conversing
with such a crew of hell-hounds as I was, had the same
common operation upon me as upon other people. I degenerated into stone; I
turned first stupid and senseless, then brutish and thoughtless, and at last
raving mad as any of them were; and, in short, I became as naturally pleased
and easy with the place, as if indeed I had been born there.
It is scarce possible to
imagine that our natures should be capable of so much degeneracy, as to make
that pleasant and agreeable that in itself is the most complete misery. Here
was a circumstance that I think it is scarce possible to mention a worse: I was
as exquisitely miserable as, speaking of common cases,
it was possible for any one to be that had life and health, and money to help
them, as I had.
I had weight of guilt
upon me enough to sink any creature who had the least
power of reflection left, and had any sense upon them of the happiness of this
life, of the misery of another; then I had at first remorse indeed, but no repentance;
I had now neither remorse nor repentance. I had a crime charged on me, the
punishment of which was death by our law; the proof so evident, that there was
no room for me so much as to plead not guilty. I had the name of an old
offender, so that I had nothing to expect but death in a few weeks’ time,
neither had I myself any thoughts of escaping; and yet a certain strange
lethargy of soul possessed me. I had no trouble, no apprehensions, no sorrow
about me, the first surprise was gone; I was, I may well say, I know not how;
my senses, my reason, nay, my conscience, were all asleep; my course of life
for forty years had been a horrid complication of wickedness, Whoredom,
adultery, incest, lying, theft; and, in a word, everything but murder and treason
had been my practice from the age of eighteen, or thereabouts, to three-score;
and now I was engulfed in the misery of punishment, and had an infamous death
just at the door, and yet I had no sense of my condition, no thought of heaven
or hell at least, that went any farther than a bare flying touch, like the
stitch or pain that gives a hint and goes off. I neither had a heart to ask
God’s mercy, nor indeed to think of it. And in this, I think, I have given a
brief description of the completest misery on earth.
All my terrifying
thoughts were past, the horrors of the place were become familiar, and I felt
no more uneasiness at the noise and Clamours of the prison, than they did who
made that noise; in a word, I was become a mere Newgate-bird,
as wicked and as outrageous as any of them; nay, I scarce retained the habit
and custom of good breeding and manners, which all along till now ran through
my conversation; so thorough a degeneracy had possessed me, that I was no more
the same thing that I had been, than if I had never been otherwise than what I
was now.
In the middle of this
hardened part of my life I had another sudden surprise, which called me back a
little to that thing called sorrow, which indeed I began to be past the sense
of before. They told me one night that there was brought into the prison late
the night before three highwaymen, who had committed robbery somewhere on the
road to Windsor, Hounslow-Heath, I think it was, and were pursu’d to Uxhridge by the
country, and were taken there after a gallant resistance, in which I know not
how many of the country people were wounded, and some killed.
It is not to be wondered
that we prisoners were all desirous enough to see these brave, topping
gentlemen, that were talked up to be such as their fellows had not been known,
and especially because it was said they would in the morning be removed into
the press-yard, having given money to the head master of the prison, to be
allowed the liberty of that better part of the prison. So we that were women
placed ourselves in the way, that we would be sure to see them; but nothing
could express the amazement and surprise I was in, when the very first man that
came out I knew to be my Lancashire husband, the same who lived so well
at Dunstable, and the same who I afterwards saw at Brickill,
when I was married to my last husband, as has been related.
I was struck dumb at the
sight, and knew neither what to say nor what to do; he did not know me, and
that was all the present relief I had. I quitted my company, and retired as
much as that dreadful place suffers anybody to retire, and I cried vehemently
for a great while. ‘Dreadful creature that I am,’ said I, ‘how may poor people have I made miserable? How many desperate
wretches have I sent to the devil?’ He had told me at Chester he was
ruined by that match, and that his fortunes were made desperate on my account;
for that thinking I had been a fortune, he was run into debt more than he was
able to pay, and that he knew not what course to take; that he would go into the
army and carry a musket, or buy a horse and take a tour, as he called it; and
though I never told him that I was a fortune, and so did not actually deceive
him myself, yet I did encourage the having it thought that I was so, and by
that means I was the occasion originally of his Mischief.
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