by Daniel Defoe
It was now very early in the morning, and not light, and I knew not well what course to take; for I made no doubt but I should be pursued in the morning and perhaps be taken with the things about me; so I resolved upon taking new measures. I went publicly to an inn in the town with my trunk, as I called it, and having taken the substance out, I did not think the lumber of it worth my concern; however, I gave it the landlady of the house with a charge to take care of it and lay it up safe till I should come again, and away I walked into the street.
When I was got into the town a great way from the inn, I met with an ancient woman who had just opened her door, and I fell into chat with her and asked her a great many wild questions of things all remote to my purpose and design; but in my discourse I found by her how the town was situated, that I was in a street which went out towards Hadley, but that such a street went towards the waterside, such a street went into the heart of the town, and at last, such a street went towards Colchester, and so the London road lay there.
I had soon my ends of this old woman, for I only wanted to know which was the London road, and away I walked as fast as I could; not that I intended to go on foot either to London or to Colchester, but I wanted to get quietly away from Ipswich.
I walked about two or three miles, and then I met a plain countryman, who was busy about some husbandry work, I did not know what, and I asked him a great many questions, first not much to the purpose, but at last told him I was going for London, and the coach was full, and I could not get a passage, and asked him if he could not tell me where to hire a horse that would carry double and an honest man to ride before me to Colchester, so that I might get a place there in the coaches. The honest clown looked earnestly at me and said nothing for above half a minute, when, scratching his poll, “A horse, say you, and to Colchester, to carry double? Why, yes, mistress, alack-a-day, you may have horses enough for money.” “Well, friend,” says I, “that I take for granted; I don’t expect it without money.” “Why, but, mistress,” says he, “how much are you willing to give?” “Nay,” says I again, “friend, I don’t know what your rates are in the country here, for I am a stranger; but if you can get one for me, get it as cheap as you can, and I’ll give you somewhat for your pains.”
“Why, that’s honestly said, too,” says the countryman. “Not so honest, neither,” said I to myself, “if thou knewest all.” “Why, mistress,” says he, “I have a horse that will carry double, and I don’t much care if I go myself with you, an’ you like.” “Will you?” says I. “Well, I believe you are an honest man; if you will, I shall be glad of it; I’ll pay you in reason.” “Why, look ye, mistress,” says he, “I won’t be out of reason with you; then if I carry you to Colchester, it will be worth five shillings for myself and my horse, for I shall hardly come back to-night.”
In short, I hired the honest man and his horse; but when we came to a town upon the road (I do not remember the name of it, but it stands upon a river), I pretended myself very ill, and I could go no farther that night, but if he would stay there with me, because I was a stranger, I would pay him for himself and his horse with all my heart.
This I did because I knew the Dutch gentlemen and their servants would be upon the road that day, either in the stage-coaches or riding post, and I did not know but the drunken fellow or somebody else that might have seen me at Harwich might see me again, and I thought that in one day’s stop they would be all gone by.
We lay all that night there, and the next morning it was not very early when I set out, so that it was near ten o’clock by the time I got to Colchester. It was no little pleasure that I saw the town where I had so many pleasant days, and I made many inquiries after the good old friends I had once had there, but could make little out; they were all dead or removed. The young ladies had been all married or gone to London; the old gentleman and the old lady that had been my early benefactress all dead; and which troubled me most, the young gentleman my first lover, and afterwards my brother-in law, was dead; but two sons, men grown, were left of him, but they too were transplanted to London.
I dismissed my old man here, and stayed incognito for three or four days in Colchester, and then took a passage in a waggon because I would not venture being seen in the Harwich coaches. But I needed not have used so much caution, for there was nobody in Harwich but the woman of the house could have known me; nor was it rational to think that she, considering the hurry she was in, and that she never saw me but once and that by candlelight, should have ever discovered me.
I was now returned to London, and though by the accident of the last adventure I got something considerable, yet I was not fond of any more country rambles; nor should I have ventured abroad again if I had carried the trade on to the end of my days. I gave my governess a history of my travels; she liked the Harwich journey well enough, and in discoursing of these things between ourselves she observed that a thief being a creature that watches the advantages of other people’s mistakes, ’tis impossible but that to one that is vigilant and industrious many opportunities must happen, and therefore she thought that one so exquisitely keen in the trade as I was would scarce fail of something wherever I went.
On the other hand, every branch of my story, if duly considered, may be useful to honest people and afford a due caution to people of some sort or other to guard against the like surprises and to have their eyes about them when they have to do with strangers of any kind, for ’tis very seldom that some snare or other is not in their way. The moral, indeed, of all my history is left to be gathered by the senses and judgement of the reader; I am not qualified to preach to them. Let the experience of one creature completely wicked and completely miserable be a storehouse of useful warning to those that read.
I am drawing now towards a new variety of life. Upon my return, being hardened by a long race of crime and success unparalleled, I had, as I have said, no thoughts of laying down a trade which, if I was to judge by the example of others, must, however, end at last in misery and sorrow.
It was on the Christmas Day following, in the evening, that, to finish a long train of wickedness, I went abroad to see what might offer in my way; when, going by a working silversmith’s in Foster Lane, I saw a tempting bait indeed, and not to be resisted by one of my occupation, for the shop had nobody in it, and a great deal of loose plate lay in the window and at the seat of the man, who, I suppose, worked at one side of the shop.
I went boldly in and was just going to lay my hand upon a piece of plate, and might have done it and carried it clear off, for any care that the men who belonged to the shop had taken of it; but an officious fellow in a house on the other side of the way, seeing me go in and that there was nobody in the shop, comes running over the street and, without asking me what I was or who, seizes upon me and cries out for the people of the house.
I had not touched anything in the shop, and seeing a glimpse of somebody running over, I had so much presence of mind as to knock very hard with my foot on the floor of the house, and was just calling out too when the fellow laid hands on me.
However, as I had always most courage when I was in most danger, so when he laid hands on me I stood very high upon it, that I came in to buy half a dozen of silver spoons; and to my good fortune, it was a silversmith’s that sold plate as well as worked plate for other shops. The fellow laughed at that part, and put such a value upon the service that he had done his neighbour that he would have it be that I came not to buy, but to steal; and raising a great crowd, I said to the master of the shop, who by this time was fetched home from some neighbouring place, that it was in vain to make a noise and enter into talk there of the case; the fellow had insisted that I came to steal, and he must prove it, and I desired we might go before a magistrate without any more words; for I began to see I should be too hard for the man that had seized me.
The master and mistress of the shop were really not so violent as the man from t’other side of the way; and the man said, “Mistress, you might come into the shop with a
good design for aught I know, but it seemed a dangerous thing for you to come into such a shop as mine is when you see nobody there; and I cannot do so little justice to my neighbour, who was so kind, as not to acknowledge he had reason on his side; though, upon the whole, I do not find you attempted to take anything, and I really know not what to do in it.” I pressed him to go before a magistrate with me, and if anything could be proved on me that was like a design, I should willingly submit, but if not, I expected reparation.
Just while we were in this debate, and a crowd of people gathered about the door, came by Sir T. B., an alderman of the city and justice of the peace, and the goldsmith, hearing of it, entreated his worship to come in and decide the case.
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. It came then to my turn to speak, and I told his worship that I was a stranger in London, being newly come out of the north; that I lodged in such a place, that I was passing this street, and went into a goldsmith’s shop to buy half a dozen of spoons. By great good luck I had an old silver spoon in my pocket, which I pulled out, and told him I had carried that spoon to match it with half a dozen of new ones, that it might match some I had in the country; that seeing nobody in 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; that a fellow came running into the shop out of the street, and laid hands on me in a furious manner in the very moment 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 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 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 twenty 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 to buy, for the sort of people who come upon those 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 well off 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 thought 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 a weaver to the mercers, like a broker, or factor.
That I may make short of the 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; 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.
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 what 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 a constable, indeed, struck me, 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, too, 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, 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 now fixed indeed; ’tis impossible to describe the terror of my mind when I was first brought in and when I looked round 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 afflicting things that I saw there joined 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 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 to 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 farther 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 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 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 Flanders! They thought the devil had helped me, they said, that I had reigned so long; they expected me there many years ago, they said, and was I come at last? Then they flouted me with dejections, welcomed me to the place, wished me joy, bid me have a good heart, not be cast down, things might not be so bad as I feared, and the like; then called for brandy and drank to me, but put it all up to my score, for they told me I was but just come to the college, as they called it, and sure I had money in my pocket, though they had none.
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 me, 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, “you are mistaken there, I am sure, for I am under sentence, only I pleaded my belly, but am no more with child than the judge that tried me, and I expect to be called down next session.” This “calling down” is calling down to their former judgement, 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, “and are you thus easy?” “Aye,” says she, “I can’t help myself. What signifies being sad? If I am hanged, there’s an end of me.” And away she turned, dancing, and sings as she goes, the following piece of Newgate wit:
