Moll Flanders

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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.

Them 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 Flanders? They thought the devil had helped
me, they said, that I had reigned so long; they expected me
there many years ago, and was I come at last? Then they
flouted me with my dejections, welcomed me to the place,
wished me joy, bid me have a good heart, not to 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 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 ring1 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 cannot 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 #100 to go away from her mistress, and
not to appear against me, but she was so resolute, that though
she was but a servant maid at #3 a year wages or thereabouts,
she refused it, and would have refused it, as my governess
said she believed, if she had offered her #500. Then she
attacked the other maid; she was not so hard-hearted in
appearance as the other, and sometimes seemed inclined to
be merciful; but the first wench kept her up, and changed her
mind, and would not so much as let my governess talk with
her, but threatened to have her up for tampering with the
evidence.

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 recognisance.

My governess offered to find friends that should get his
recognisances 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 pursued to Uxbridge
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 Brickhill, 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.

The surprise of the thing only struck deeper into my thoughts,
any gave me stronger reflections than all that had befallen me
before. I grieved day and night for him, and the more for that
they told me he was the captain of the gang, and that he had
committed so many robberies, that Hind, or Whitney, or the
Golden Farmer were fools to him; that he would surely be
hanged if there were no more men left in the country he was
born in; and that there would abundance of people come in
against him.

I was overwhelmed with grief for him; my own case gave me
no disturbance compared to this, and I loaded myself with
reproaches on his account. I bewailed his misfortunes, and
the ruin he was now come to, at such a rate, that I relished
nothing now as I did before, and the first reflections I made
upon the horrid, detestable life I had lived began to return upon
me, and as these things returned, my abhorrence of the place
I was in, and of the way of living in it, returned also; in a word,
I was perfectly changed, and become another body.

While I was under these influences of sorrow for him, came
notice to me that the next sessions approaching there would
be a bill preferred to the grand jury against me, and that I
should be certainly tried for my life at the Old Bailey. My
temper was touched before, the hardened, wretched boldness
of spirit which I had acquired abated, and conscious in the
prison, guilt began to flow in upon my mind. In short, I began
to think, and to think is one real advance from hell to heaven.
All that hellish, hardened state and temper of soul, which I
have said so much of before, is but a deprivation of thought;
he that is restored to his power of thinking, is restored to himself.

As soon as I began, I say, to think, the first think that occurred
to me broke out thus: 'Lord! what will become of me? I shall
certainly die! I shall be cast, to be sure, and there is nothing
beyond that but death! I have no friends; what shall I do? I
shall be certainly cast! Lord, have mercy upon me! What
will become of me?' This was a sad thought, you will say, to
be the first, after so long a time, that had started into my soul
of that kind, and yet even this was nothing but fright at what
was to come; there was not a word of sincere repentance in it
all. However, I was indeed dreadfully dejected, and disconsolate
to the last degree; and as I had no friend in the world to
communicate my distressed thoughts to, it lay so heavy upon
me, that it threw me into fits and swoonings several times a
day. I sent for my old governess, and she, give her her due,
acted the part of a true friend. She left no stone unturned to
prevent the grand jury finding the bill. She sought out one or
two of the jurymen, talked with them, and endeavoured to
possess them with favourable dispositions, on account that
nothing was taken away, and no house broken, etc.; but all
would not do, they were over-ruled by the rest; the two wenches
swore home to the fact, and the jury found the bill against me
for robbery and house-breaking, that is, for felony and burglary.

I sunk down when they brought me news of it, and after I came
to myself again, I thought I should have died with the weight
of it. My governess acted a true mother to me; she pitied me,
she cried with me, and for me, but she could not help me;
and to add to the terror of it, 'twas the discourse all over the
house that I should die for it. I could hear them talk it among
themselves very often, and see them shake their heads and say
they were sorry for it, and the like, as is usual in the place.
But still nobody came to tell me their thoughts, till at last one
of the keepers came to me privately, and said with a sigh,
'Well, Mrs. Flanders, you will be tried on Friday' (this was
but a Wednesday); 'what do you intend to do?' I turned as
white as a clout, and said, 'God knows what I shall do; for my
part, I know not what to do.' 'Why,' says he, 'I won't flatter
you, I would have you prepare for death, for I doubt you will
be cast; and as they say you are an old offender, I doubt you
will find but little mercy. They say,' added he, 'your case is
very plain, and that the witnesses swear so home against you,
there will be no standing it.'

This was a stab into the very vitals of one under such a burthen
as I was oppressed with before, and I could not speak to him a
word, good or bad, for a great while; but at last I burst out into
tears, and said to him, 'Lord! Mr.----, what must I do?' 'Do!'
says he, 'send for the ordinary; send for a minister and talk
with him; for, indeed, Mrs. Flanders, unless you have very
good friends, you are no woman for this world.'

This was plain dealing indeed, but it was very harsh to me,
at least I thought it so. He left me in the greatest confusion
imaginable, and all that night I lay awake. And now I began
to say my prayers, which I had scarce done before since my
last husband's death, or from a little while after. And truly I
may well call it saying my prayers, for I was in such a confusion,
and had such horror upon my mind, that though I cried, and
repeated several times the ordinary expression of 'Lord, have
mercy upon me!' I never brought myself to any sense of my
being a miserable sinner, as indeed I was, and of confessing
my sins to God, and begging pardon for the sake of Jesus
Christ. I was overwhelmed with the sense of my condition,
being tried for my life, and being sure to be condemned, and
then I was as sure to be executed, and on this account I cried
out all night, 'Lord, what will become of me? Lord! what
shall I do? Lord! I shall be hanged! Lord, have mercy upon
me!' and the like.

My poor afflicted governess was now as much concerned as
I, and a great deal more truly penitent, though she had no
prospect of being brought to trial and sentence. Not but that
she deserved it as much as I, and so she said herself; but she
had not done anything herself for many years, other than
receiving what I and others stole, and encouraging us to steal
it. But she cried, and took on like a distracted body, wringing
her hands, and crying out that she was undone, that she
believed there was a curse from heaven upon her, that she
should be damned, that she had been the destruction of all her
friends, that she had brought such a one, and such a one, and
such a one to the gallows; and there she reckoned up ten or
eleven people, some of which I have given account of, that
came to untimely ends; and that now she was the occasion
of my ruin, for she had persuaded me to go on, when I would
have left off. I interrupted her there. 'No, mother, no,' said I,
'don't speak of that, for you would have had me left off when
I got the mercer's money again, and when I came home from
Harwich, and I would not hearken to you; therefore you have
not been to blame; it is I only have ruined myself, I have
brought myself to this misery'; and thus we spent many hours
together.

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