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.