14
My name was as well known at the Old Baily, as a remarkable traitor is at the secretary’s office. But being now an excellent pick-pocket, as well as a strumpet, I took from a cull, after I had made him drunk, his gold watch, with his silk purse of gold, fine perriwig, sword and snuff-box; and leaping out of the coach (which stood still to let another coach pass by) I left my fool to mourn his disaster. This success made me follow the whoring again, but finding the profit of it too small to support me, I returned again to my old trade of shop-lifting.
And one time as I was going along the street through Covent Garden, there was a cry of stop thief; a mercer’s shop having been robbed, and I secured as the transgressor, and most haughtily insulted by the mercer and his servants In a little time they got the right thief, who was much in the same habit as mine. But for this affront I prosecuted him at law, made the shopkeeper come to an agreement, whereby I got one hundred and fifty pounds; so that all this, with my other substance, might have maintained me, but I having
