behind her, she had infallibly taken me.
This is a direction not of the kindest sort to the fraternity, but
’tis certainly a key to the clue of a pickpocket’s motions, and
whoever can follow it will as certainly catch the thief as he
will be sure to miss if he does not.
I had another adventure, which puts this matter out of doubt,
and which may be an instruction for posterity in the case of a
pickpocket. My good old governess, to give a short touch at
her history, though she had left off the trade, was, as I may say,
born a pickpocket, and, as I understood afterwards, had run
through all the several degrees of that art, and yet had never
been taken but once, when she was so grossly detected, that
she was convicted and ordered to be transported; but being a
woman of a rare tongue, and withal having money in her pocket,
she found means, the ship putting into Ireland for provisions,
to get on shore there, where she lived and practised her old
trade for some years; when falling into another sort of bad
company, she turned midwife and procuress, and played a
hundred pranks there, which she gave me a little history of in
confidence between us as we grew more intimate; and it was
to this wicked creature that I owed all the art and dexterity I
arrived to, in which there were few that ever went beyond me,
or that practised so long without any misfortune.
It was after those adventures in Ireland, and when she was
pretty well known in that country, that she left Dublin and
came over to England, where, the time of her transportation
being not expired, she left her former trade, for fear of falling
into bad hands again, for then she was sure to have gone to
wreck. Here she set up the same trade she had followed in
Ireland, in which she soon, by her admirable management and
good tongue, arrived to the height which I have already
described, and indeed began to be rich, though her trade fell
off again afterwards, as I have hinted before.
I mentioned thus much of the history of this woman here, the
better to account for the concern she had in the wicked life I
was now leading, into all the particulars of which she led me,
as it were, by the hand, and gave me such directions, and I so
well followed them, that I grew the greatest artist of my time
and worked myself out of every danger with such dexterity,
that when several more of my comrades ran themselves into
Newgate presently, and by that time they had been half a year
at the trade, I had now practised upwards of five years, and
the people at Newgate did not so much as know me; they had
heard much of me indeed, and often expected me there, but I
always got off, though many times in the extremest danger.
One of the greatest dangers I was now in, was that I was too
well known among the trade, and some of them, whose hatred
was owing rather to envy than any injury I had done them,
began to be angry that I should always escape when they were
always catched and hurried to Newgate. These were they that
gave me the name of Moll Flanders; for it was no more of
affinity with my real name or with any of the name I had ever
gone by, than black is of kin to white, except that once, as
before, I called myself Mrs. Flanders; when I sheltered myself
in the Mint; but that these rogues never knew, nor could I ever
learn how they came to give me the name, or what the occasion
of it was.
I was soon informed that some of these who were gotten fast
into Newgate had vowed to impeach me; and as I knew that
two or three of them were but too able to do it, I was under
a great concern about it, and kept within doors for a good
while. But my governess–whom I always made partner in my