Moll Flanders

One day, as Moll is walking through the shopping district in London, she looks in the window of an apothecary’s shop. On a stool sits a package wrapped in white cloth. The apothecary’s apprentice is standing on the counter, reaching for something on a high shelf, and his servant is beside him, her back to the shop. Moll slips in the door, snatches the package with little thought, and exits without being seen. She walks quickly through the streets without stopping, and feels “Horror” fill her soul. She rests for a bit, and then continues walking, not returning to her lodgings until nearly nine o’clock at night. 

Back in her room, Moll opens the package and finds it full of valuable linen and lace, various silver mugs and spoons, and money totaling 18 shillings and six pence. As Moll goes through the contents of the package, she is struck with fear. She is a thief, and such things can get her sent to Newgate and hanged. Moll goes to bed, but she can’t sleep. She reflects on her sin, but she knows that she won’t starve now. Still, she has sincerely repented the sins of her life only to be “driven by the dreadful Necessity of [her] Circumstances” to thievery. Moll falls to her knees and prays to God for deliverance.

The next day, Moll goes out walking in the street and encounters a young girl walking home alone. Moll notices a handsome gold necklace around the girl’s neck, so she offers to see her home safely. The girl agrees, and Moll leads her into an empty alley, where, pretending to fix the girl’s shoe, Moll slips the necklace from the girl’s neck without her noticing. Moll turns the girl in the direction of her house and leaves her. As she walks, Moll reflects on her crimes. She isn’t too concerned with the girl. After all, Moll didn’t hurt her, and she indeed taught the girl’s parents a valuable lesson about leaving their daughter unattended. 

As Moll walks, a man runs past her and throws a package into the street. He tells her to leave the package in the gutter and continues running. Within moments, a second man runs by yelling: “Thief!” and Moll watches as the first man is caught, arrested, and carried off. When the commotion dies down, Moll retrieves the package from the street and goes back to her room. Inside the package, Moll finds pieces of expensive silk and velvet, along with various pieces of gold and diamond jewelry. Days later, Moll finds occasion to steal two more diamond rings from a shop window, but she doesn’t know how to turn her loot into money. Much of what Moll has stolen is too expensive to simply sell on the street, so she decides to go see the midwife for advice.

Luckily for Moll, the midwife happily receives her and reveals that she also works as a pawn broker, so she can help Moll turn her goods into money. Moll moves into the midwife’s house and tries to survive on only quilting work, but it isn’t long before Moll steals again. While having a drink in a bar, Moll steals the silver cup she drinks her ale from. When she returns home to the midwife and tells her what she has done, the midwife begs her not to take the cup back. The punishment for theft is harsh, the midwife reminds Moll, and they will hang her without thought. The midwife melts down the silver cup so no one will recognize it, and Moll tells her that she is running out of money and isn’t a very good thief.

The midwife sets Moll up with a “Comrade” and experienced thief, who teaches Moll to shoplift and pickpocket without getting caught. Moll puts her new skills into practice, and it isn’t long before she grows rich. At one point, Moll and her comrades have 120 gold watches between them. Moll has over £200 saved in her bank, but she continues to steal. “As Poverty brought me into the Mire,” Moll says, “so Avarice kept me in.” Before long, two of Moll’s comrades are arrested and sent to Newgate Prison, where one is sentenced to death and hanged. The other comrade is granted a reprieve, but watching a comrade hang is traumatic for Moll, and she vows to stop stealing.

Not long after, Moll wakes in the middle of the night to sounds of yelling and distress. Part of the neighborhood in which she lives is engulfed in flames, and the midwife tells Moll that the commotion of the fire is the perfect opportunity to rob the surrounding houses without notice. Moll agrees and manages to steal some silver from a nearby house, and when she returns to the midwife with their booty, she tells Moll to go out and get more. She runs out to a new house, which she finds even more lucrative, and she returns with a considerable amount of gold jewelry and a purse containing £24. 

Moll admits the “inhumanity” of her actions during the fire and tears spring to her eyes; however, she can’t force herself to make amends. Moll is quite a bit richer than she was before, and she quickly forgets all about her vow to stop stealing. Moll enjoys great success as a thief, but since the hanging of her comrade, she is leery of shoplifting, which is incredibly risky. As such, Moll sticks mostly to pickpocketing and lives with the midwife, who encourages Moll to keep stealing and introduces her to new comrades, including a couple. The couple isn’t married, but they work together and sleep together, and Moll pulls off a few jobs with them.  

One day, the comrade couple asks Moll to break into a house with them, but she refuses. Breaking into houses is something Moll won’t do, so they go ahead without her. The couple are arrested and hanged, and Moll, having so narrowly escaped joining them, again grows hesitant to continueas a thief. The midwife tries to talk Moll out of quitting and tells her about a nearby house where she knows some illegal lace from Flanders can be found. If Moll were to tell the police about the fabric, the midwife says, they would certainly give her a reward.

Moll goes to the police and tells them about the illegal lace, which is indeed valued at nearly £300. Moll negotiates a £50 reward and steals a piece of lace worth about eight or nine pounds when no one is looking. Moll divides her profits with the midwife and goes back to work. She decides to lift a gold watch off a woman on a crowded street, but as Moll grabs the watch, it doesn’t at first release from the woman’s arm. Moll is worried the woman will discover her attempt, so, just as the watch breaks free, Moll screams at the top of her lungs that someone has tried to pick her pockets. Someone tried to grab her watch, Moll lies. The woman, standing nearby, is shocked to discover that she has been robbed. Her watch is missing, the woman says. 

Suddenly, there are cries from elsewhere in the street, and as the crowd parts, Moll watches as a young man is arrested as the alleged pickpocket. Moll continues down the street, the woman’s watch in her pocket, and decides it is best not to steal anymore for a while. In the meantime, the midwife tells Moll a bit of her own story. The midwife was born a pickpocket, but she was arrested and ordered to be deported years ago. She bribed officials to send her to Ireland instead of the Colonies, and she lived there for years, working as a “Midwife and Procuress.” She left Ireland before her sentence was up, and upon returning illegally to England, she thought it best if she didn’t return to pickpocketing.

Moll marvels at the midwife’s history. Moll herself has been a thief for over five years and Newgate doesn’t even know her name. By this time, Moll is well known among the other thieves in town, and they give her the name Moll Flanders. This new name has nothing in common with Moll’s former name, except that she once went by the name Mrs. Flanders years earlier while hiding at the Mint. Moll’s success as a thief means that she is the envy of the other thieves, and she worries they may inform on her to the officials at Newgate. To ease Moll’s fears, the midwife helps Moll to disguise herself as a man and introduces her to a new male comrade. 

Moll and the male comrade work several jobs together. They stick mostly to robbing distracted shopkeepers, and Moll’s comrade never once suspects that she isn’t a man. One day, Moll’s comrade notices a preoccupied shopkeeper turn his back on several pieces of valuable silk. Moll tells him it isn’t a good idea, but the comrade won’t listen. He snatches the fabric and runs down the street with the police in hot pursuit. Moll runs back to the midwife’s house and slips inside, a group of concerned citizens chasing her. When the citizens bang on the door and claim a male thief has run inside, the midwife assures them there is no man there. If they want to come in and look, she says, they will have to bring the constable. 

Soon after, a constable knocks on the midwife’s door, and she allows him inside. He looks the house up and down for the man the citizens witnessed running in, but he finds nothing. When he gets to Moll’s door, he finds her inside, wearing only her nightclothes and surrounded by mounds of embroidery and quilting. Assuming Moll has been hard at work all day, he closes the door and goes downstairs. There is no man, the midwife says again, and if there was, he is long gone now. The constable agrees and leaves.

After the excitement with the constable, Moll refuses to let the midwife dress her up as man again. The male comrade is arrested and agrees to inform on Moll for a reduced sentence. He tells the police his accomplice is a man named Gabriel Spencer, which is the false name Moll gave him at their first meeting. The police look everywhere for Gabriel Spencer but come up emptyhanded. The authorities accuse the male comrade of lying about his accomplice to get his sentence reduced, and they punish him severely.

The male comrade’s arrest makes Moll increasingly uneasy, so she decides to leave town for a while. She goes back to Lancashire, where she stays for over a month at a boarding house. Moll tells the landlady there that she is waiting for her husband to arrive from Ireland, and after some time, she pretends to receive word that his voyage has been delayed. Moll returns to London, where the midwife promises not to make her dress up as a man anymore. Plus, the midwife points out, Molls works best alone.

Moll has almost £500 in her bank, which she could live on for quite some time, but she has no intention of retiring just yet. She goes on a job with a new momrade and manages to lift a large piece of quality damask fabric from a shop and hand it off to her comrade without drawing any attention. They leave the store and go in opposite directions, and Moll watches as this comrade is arrested, too. Moll sneaks into a nearby shop and even buys some fabric to look like a regular shopper. The comrade is taken to Newgate, where she claims the damask was originally stolen by a woman named Moll Flanders. 

In time, Moll’s name is known at Newgate and Old-Baily, but they don’t know her face. Moll’s comrade is eventually deported, and Moll again grows paranoid. Soon, however, another fire breaks out, and Moll attempts to rob another house in the chaos. Just as Moll is about to enter a house, a featherbed comes flying out of a window overhead and falls directly on top of her, pinning her to the ground. Her bones are not broken, but she is bruised and banged up, and she must wait for someone to lift the bed before she can limp away.