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