The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders

This was a narrow escape to me, and I was so frighted that I ventured

no more at gold watches a great while. There was indeed a great many

concurring circumstances in this adventure which assisted to my escape;

but the chief was, that the woman whose watch I had pulled at was a

fool; that is to say, she was ignorant of the nature of the attempt,

which one would have thought she should not have been, seeing she was

wise enough to fasten her watch so that it could not be slipped up.

But she was in such a fright that she had no thought about her proper

for the discovery; for she, when she felt the pull, screamed out, and

pushed herself forward, and put all the people about her into disorder,

but said not a word of her watch, or of a pickpocket, for a least two

minutes' time, which was time enough for me, and to spare. For as I

had cried out behind her, as I have said, and bore myself back in the

crowd as she bore forward, there were several people, at least seven or

eight, the throng being still moving on, that were got between me and

her in that time, and then I crying out 'A pickpocket,' rather sooner

than she, or at least as soon, she might as well be the person

suspected as I, and the people were confused in their inquiry; whereas,

had she with a presence of mind needful on such an occasion, as soon as

she felt the pull, not screamed out as she did, but turned immediately

round and seized the next body that was 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.