The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders

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 ring

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.