by Daniel Defoe
When we came to the justice, which was an ancient gentleman in Bloomsbury, the constable giving first a summary account of the matter, the justice bade me speak and tell what I had to say. And first he asked my name, which I was very loath to give, but there was no remedy; so I told him my name was Mary Flanders, that I was a widow, my husband, being a sea-captain, died on a voyage to Virginia; and some other circumstances I told which he could never contradict, and that I lodged at present in town with such a person, naming my governess; but that I was preparing to go over to America, where my husband’s effects lay, and that I was going that day to buy some clothes to put myself into second mourning, but had not yet been in any shop when that fellow, pointing to the mercer’s journeyman, came rushing upon me with such fury as very much frighted me, and carried me back to his master’s shop, where, though his master acknowledged I was not the person, yet he would not dismiss me, but charged a constable with me.
Then I proceeded to tell how the journeymen treated me; how they would not suffer me to send for any of my friends; how afterwards they found the real thief and took the goods they had lost upon her, and all the particulars as before.
Then the constable related his case: his dialogue with the mercer about discharging me, and at last his servant’s refusing to go with him when I had charged him with him, and his master encouraging him to do so, and at last his striking the constable, and the like, all as I have told it already.
The justice then heard the mercer and his man. The mercer indeed made a long harangue of the great loss they have daily by the lifters and thieves; that it was easy for them to mistake, and that when he found it, he would have dismissed me, etc., as above. As to the journeyman, he had very little to say but that he pretended other of the servants told him that I was really the person.
Upon the whole, the justice first of all told me very courteously I was discharged; that he was very sorry that the mercer’s man should in his eager pursuit have so little discretion as to take up an innocent person for a guilty; that if he had not been so unjust as to detain me afterwards, he believed I would have forgiven the first affront; that, however, it was not in his power to award me any reparation other than by openly reproving them, which he should do; but he supposed I would apply to such methods as the law directed; in the meantime he would bind him over.
But as to the breach of the peace committed by the journeyman, he told me he should give me some satisfaction for that, for he should commit him to Newgate for assaulting the constable and for assaulting of me also.
Accordingly he sent the fellow to Newgate for that assault, and his master gave bail, and so we came away; but I had the satisfaction of seeing the mob wait upon them both as they came out, hallooing and throwing stones and dirt at the coaches they rode in; and so I came home.
After this hustle, coming home and telling my governess the story, she falls a-laughing at me. “Why are you so merry?” says I. “The story has not so much laughing-room in it as you imagine. I am sure I have had a great deal of hurry and fright too, with a pack of ugly rogues.” “Laugh!” says my governess. “I laugh, child, to see what a lucky creature you are; why, this job will be the best bargain to you that ever you made in your life if you manage it well. I warrant you, you shall make the mercer pay five hundred pounds for damages, besides what you shall get of the journeyman.”
I had other thoughts of the matter than she had; and especially because I had given in my name to the justice of peace; and I knew that my name was so well known among the people at Hicks’s Hall, the Old Bailey, and such places that if this cause came to be tried openly and my name came to be inquired into, no court would give much damages for the reputation of a person of such a character. However, I was obliged to begin a prosecution in form, and accordingly my governess found me out a very creditable sort of a man to manage it, being an attorney of very good business and of good reputation, and she was certainly in the right of this; for had she employed a pettifogging hedge solicitor or a man not known, I should have brought it to but little.
I met this attorney and gave him all the particulars at large, as they are recited above; and he assured me it was a case, as he said, that he did not question but that a jury would give very considerable damages; so taking his full instructions, he began the prosecution, and the mercer, being arrested, gave bail. A few days after his giving bail, he comes with his attorney to my attorney to let him know that he desired to accommodate the matter; that it was all carried on in the heat of an unhappy passion; that his client, meaning me, had a sharp, provoking tongue and that I used them ill, gibing at them and jeering them even while they believed me to be the very person, and that I had provoked them, and the like.
My attorney managed as well on my side; made them believe I was a widow of fortune, that I was able to do myself justice and had great friends to stand by me too, who had all made me promise to sue to the utmost if it cost me £1000, for that the affronts I had received were insufferable.
However, they brought my attorney to this: that he promised he would not blow the coals; that if I inclined to an accommodation, he would not hinder me, and that he would rather persuade me to peace than to war, for which they told him he should be no loser; all which he told me very honestly, and told me that if they offered him any bribe, I should certainly know it; but upon the whole, he told me very honestly that if I would take his opinion, he would advise me to make it up with them, for that as they were in a great fright and were desirous above all things to make it up, and knew that, let it be what it would, they must bear all the costs, he believed they would give me freely more than any jury would give upon a trial. I asked him what he thought they would be brought to; he told me he could not tell as to that, but he would tell me more when I saw him again.
Some time after this they came again to know if he had talked with me. He told them he had; that he found me not so averse to an accommodation as some of my friends were, who resented the disgrace offered me and set me on; that they blowed the coals in secret, prompting me to revenge or to do myself justice, as they called it; so that he could not tell what to say to it; he told them he would do his endeavour to persuade me, but he ought to be able to tell me what proposal they made. They pretended they could not make any proposal because it might be made use of against them; and he told them that by the same rule he could not make any offers, for that might be pleaded in abatement of what damages a jury might be inclined to give. However, after some discourse and mutual promises that no advantage should be taken on either side by what was transacted then or at any other of those meetings, they came to a kind of a treaty, but so remote and so wide from one another that nothing could be expected from it; for my attorney demanded £500 and charges, and they offered £50 without charges; so they broke off, and the mercer proposed to have a meeting with me myself; and my attorney agreed to that very readily.
My attorney gave me notice to come to this meeting in good clothes and with some state, that the mercer might see I was something more than I seemed to be that time they had me. Accordingly I came in a new suit of second mourning, according to what I had said at the justice’s. I set myself out, too, as well as a widow’s dress would admit; my governess also furnished me with a good pearl necklace that shut in behind with a locket of diamonds, which she had in pawn; and I had a very good gold watch by my side; so that I made a very good figure; and as I stayed till I was sure they were come, I came in a coach to the door with my maid with me.
When I came into the room, the mercer was surprised. He stood up and made his bow, which I took a little notice of, and but a little, and went and sat down where my own attorney had appointed me to sit, for it was his house. After a while the mercer said he did not know me again, and began to make some compliments. I told him I believed he did not know me at first, and that if he had, he would have not treated me as he did.
He told me he was very sorry for what had happened, and that it was to testify the willingness he had to make
all possible reparation that he had appointed this meeting; that he hoped I would not carry things to extremity, which might be not only too great a loss to him, but might be the ruin of his business and shop, in which case I might have the satisfaction of repaying an injury with an injury ten times greater but that I would then get nothing, whereas he was willing to do me any justice that was in his power without putting himself or me to the trouble or charge of a suit of law.
I told him I was glad to hear him talk so much more like a man of sense than he did before; that it was true, acknowledgement in most cases of affronts was counted reparation sufficient, but this had gone too far to be made up so; that I was not revengeful, nor did I seek his ruin or any man’s else, but that all my friends were unanimous not to let me so far neglect my character as to adjust a thing of this kind without reparation; that to be taken up for a thief was such an indignity as could not be put up; that my character was above being treated so by any that knew me, but because in my condition of a widow I had been careless of myself, I might be taken for such a creature; but that for the particular usage I had from him afterward—and then I repeated all as before; it was so provoking, I had scarce patience to repeat it.
He acknowledged all and was mighty humble indeed; he came up to £100 and to pay all the law charges, and added that he would make me a present of a very good suit of clothes. I came down to £300 and demanded that I should publish an advertisement of the particulars in the common newspapers.
This was a clause he never could comply with. However, at last he came up, by good management of my attorney, to £150 and a suit of black silk clothes; and there, as it were, at my attorney’s request, I complied, he paying my attorney’s bill and charges, and gave us a good supper into the bargain.
When I came to receive the money, I brought my governess with me, dressed like an old duchess, and a gentleman very well dressed, who we pretended courted me, but I called him cousin, and the lawyer was only to hint privately to them that this gentleman courted the widow.
He treated us handsomely indeed, and paid the money cheerfully enough; so that it cost him £200 in all or rather more. At our last meeting, when all was agreed, the case of the journeyman came up, and the mercer begged very hard for him; told me he was a man that had kept a shop of his own and been in good business, had a wife and several children and was very poor; that he had nothing to make satisfaction with, but should beg my pardon on his knees. I had no spleen at the saucy rogue, nor were his submissions anything to me, since there was nothing to be got by him, so I thought it was as good to throw that in generously as not; so I told him I did not desire the ruin of any man, and therefore at his request I would forgive the wretch; it was below me to seek any revenge.
When we were at supper, he brought the poor fellow in to make his acknowledgement, which he would have done with as much mean humility as his offence was with insulting pride; in which he was an instance of a complete baseness of spirit, imperious, cruel, and relentless when uppermost, abject and low-spirited when down. However, I abated his cringes, told him I forgave him, and desired he might withdraw, as if I did not care for the sight of him, though I had forgiven him.
I was now in good circumstances indeed, if I could have known my time for leaving off, and my governess often said I was the richest of the trade in England; and so I believe I was, for I had £700 by me in money, besides clothes, rings, some plate, and two gold watches, and all of them stolen; for I had innumerable jobs besides these I have mentioned. Oh! had I even now had the grace of repentance, I had still leisure to have looked back upon my follies and have made some reparation; but the satisfaction I was to make for the public mischiefs I had done was yet left behind; and I could not forbear going abroad again, as I called it now, any more than I could when my extremity really drove me out for bread.
It was not long after the affair with the mercer was made up that I went out in an equipage quite different from any I had ever appeared in before. I dressed myself like a beggar-woman, in the coarsest and most despicable rags I could get, and I walked about peering and peeping into every door and window I came near; and, indeed, I was in such a plight now that I knew as ill how to behave in as ever I did in any. I naturally abhorred dirt and rags; I had been bred up tight and cleanly, and could be no other, whatever condition I was in, so that this was the most uneasy disguise to me that ever I put on. I said presently to myself that this would not do, for this was a dress that everybody was shy and afraid of; and I thought everybody looked at me as if they were afraid I should come near them lest I should take something from them, or afraid to come near me lest they should get something from me. I wandered about all the evening the first time I went out and made nothing of it, and came home again wet, draggled, and tired. However, I went out again the next night, and then I met with a little adventure which had like to have cost me dear. As I was standing near a tavern door there comes a gentleman on horse-back and lights at the door, and wanting to go into the tavern, he calls one of the drawers to hold his horse. He stayed pretty long in the tavern, and the drawer heard his master call, and thought he would be angry with him. Seeing me stand by him, he called to me. “Here, woman,” says he, “hold this horse awhile till I go in; if the gentleman comes, he’ll give you something.” “Yes,” says I, and takes the horse, and walks off with him soberly, and carried him to my governess.
This had been a booty to those that had understood it; but never was poor thief more at a loss to know what to do with anything that was stolen; for when I came home, my governess was quite confounded, and what to do with the creature we neither of us knew. To send him to a stable was doing nothing, for it was certain that notice would be given in the gazette, and the horse described, so that we durst not go to fetch it again.
All the remedy we had for this unlucky adventure was to go and set up the horse at an inn, and send a note by a porter to the tavern that the gentleman’s horse that was lost at such a time was left at such an inn, and that he might be had there; that the poor woman that held him, having led him about the street, not being able to lead him back again, had left him there. We might have waited till the owner had published and offered a reward, but we did not care to venture the receiving the reward.
So this was a robbery and no robbery, for little was lost by it and nothing was got by it, and I was quite sick of going out in a beggar’s dress; it did not answer at all, and besides, I thought it ominous and threatening.
While I was in this disguise I fell in with a parcel of folks of a worse kind than any I ever sorted with, and I saw a little into their ways too. These were coiners of money, and they made some very good offers to me as to profit; but the part they would have had me embarked in was the most dangerous. I mean that of the very working of the die, as they call it, which, had I been taken, had been certain death, and that at a stake; I say, to be burnt to death at a stake; so that though I was to appearance but a beggar, and they promised mountains of gold and silver to me to engage, yet it would not do. ’Tis true, if I had been really a beggar or had been desperate as when I began, I might, perhaps, have closed with it; for what care they to die that cannot tell how to live? But at present that was not my condition; at least I was for no such terrible risks as those; besides, the very thoughts of being burnt at a stake struck terror to my very soul, chilled my blood, and gave me the vapours to such a degree as I could not think of it without trembling.
This put an end to my disguise too, for though I did not like the proposal, yet I did not tell them so, but seemed to relish it, and promised to meet again. But I durst see them no more; for if I had seen them and not complied, though I had declined it with the greatest assurances of secrecy in the world, they would have gone near to have murdered me, to make sure work and make themselves easy, as they call it. What kind of easiness that is, they may best judge that understand how easy men are that can murder people to prevent danger.
This and horse-stealing were things quite out of my way, and I m
ight easily resolve I would have no more to say to them. My business seemed to lie another way, and though it had hazard enough in it too, yet it was more suitable to me, and what had more of art in it and more chances for a coming off if a surprise should happen.
I had several proposals made also to me about that time to come into a gang of housebreakers; but that was a thing I had no mind to venture at neither, any more than I had at the coining trade. I offered to go along with two men and a woman that made it their business to get into houses by stratagem. I was willing enough to venture, but there were three of them already, and they did not care to part nor I to have too many in a gang; so I did not close with them, and they paid dear for their next attempt.
But at length I met with a woman that had often told me what adventures she had made, and with success, at the waterside, and I closed with her, and we drove on our business pretty well. One day we came among some Dutch people at St. Catherine’s, where we went on pretence to buy goods that were privately got on shore. I was two or three times in a house where we saw a good quantity of prohibited goods, and my companion once brought away three pieces of Dutch black silk that turned to good account, and I had my share of it; but in all the journeys I made by myself, I could not get an opportunity to do anything, so I laid it aside, for I had been there so often that they began to suspect something.
This balked me a little, and I resolved to push at something or other, for I was not used to come back so often without purchase; so the next day I dressed myself up fine and took a walk to the other end of the town. I passed through the Exchange in the Strand, but had no notion of finding anything to do there, when on a sudden I saw a great clutter in the place, and all the people, shopkeepers as well as others, standing up and staring; and what should it be but some great duchess come into the Exchange, and they said the queen was coming. I set myself close up to a shop-side with my back to the counter, as if to let the crowd pass by, when, keeping my eye upon a parcel of lace which the shopkeeper was showing to some ladies that stood by me, the shopkeeper and her maid were so taken up with looking to see who was a-coming and what shop they would go to that I found means to slip a paper of lace into my pocket and come clear off with it; so the lady-milliner paid dear enough for her gaping after the queen.
