Moll Flanders | Page 4

desolate girl without
friends, without clothes, without help or helper in the world, as was my fate; and by
which I was not only exposed to very great distresses, even before I was capable either of
understanding my case or how to amend it, but brought into a course of life which was
not only scandalous in itself, but which in its ordinary course tended to the swift
destruction both of soul and body.
But the case was otherwise here. My mother was convicted of felony for a certain petty
theft scarce worth naming, viz. having an opportunity of borrowing three pieces of fine
holland of a certain draper in Cheapside. The circumstances are too long to repeat, and I
have heard them related so many ways, that I can scarce be certain which is the right
account.
However it was, this they all agree in, that my mother pleaded her belly, and being found
quick with child, she was respited for about seven months; in which time having brought
me into the world, and being about again, she was called down, as they term it, to her
former judgment, but obtained the favour of being transported to the plantations, and left

me about half a year old; and in bad hands, you may be sure.
This is too near the first hours of my life for me to relate anything of myself but by
hearsay; it is enough to mention, that as I was born in such an unhappy place, I had no
parish to have recourse to for my nourishment in my infancy; nor can I give the least
account how I was kept alive, other than that, as I have been told, some relation of my
mother's took me away for a while as a nurse, but at whose expense, or by whose
direction, I know nothing at all of it.
The first account that I can recollect, or could ever learn of myself, was that I had
wandered among a crew of those people they call gypsies, or Egyptians; but I believe it
was but a very little while that I had been among them, for I had not had my skin
discoloured or blackened, as they do very young to all the children they carry about with
them; nor can I tell how I came among them, or how I got from them.
It was at Colchester, in Essex, that those people left me; and I have a notion in my head
that I left them there (that is, that I hid myself and would not go any farther with them),
but I am not able to be particular in that account; only this I remember, that being taken
up by some of the parish officers of Colchester, I gave an account that I came into the
town with the gypsies, but that I would not go any farther with them, and that so they had
left me, but whither they were gone that I knew not, nor could they expect it of me; for
though they send round the country to inquire after them, it seems they could not be
found.
I was now in a way to be provided for; for though I was not a parish charge upon this or
that part of the town by law, yet as my case came to be known, and that I was too young
to do any work, being not above three years old, compassion moved the magistrates of
the town to order some care to be taken of me, and I became one of their own as much as
if I had been born in the place.
In the provision they made for me, it was my good hap to be put to nurse, as they call it,
to a woman who was indeed poor but had been in better circumstances, and who got a
little livelihood by taking such as I was supposed to be, and keeping them with all
necessaries, till they were at a certain age, in which it might be supposed they might go to
service or get their own bread.
This woman had also had a little school, which she kept to teach children to read and to
work; and having, as I have said, lived before that in good fashion, she bred up the
children she took with a great deal of art, as well as with a great deal of care.
But that which was worth all the rest, she bred them up very religiously, being herself a
very sober, pious woman, very house- wifely and clean, and very mannerly, and with
good behaviour. So that in a word, expecting a plain diet, coarse lodging, and mean
clothes, we were brought up as mannerly and as genteelly as