CHAPTER II.

The Old Mint.


Mrs. Sheppard's habitation terminated a row of old ruinous buildings,
called Wheeler's Rents; a dirty thoroughfare, part street, and part
lane, running from Mint Street, through a variety of turnings, and along
the brink of a deep kennel, skirted by a number of petty and neglected
gardens in the direction of Saint George's Fields. The neighbouring
houses were tenanted by the lowest order of insolvent traders, thieves,
mendicants, and other worthless and nefarious characters, who fled
thither to escape from their creditors, or to avoid the punishment due
to their different offenses; for we may observe that the Old Mint,
although it had been divested of some of its privileges as a sanctuary
by a recent statute passed in the reign of William the Third, still
presented a safe asylum to the debtor, and even continued to do so until
the middle of the reign of George the First, when the crying nature of
the evil called loudly for a remedy, and another and more sweeping
enactment entirely took away its immunities. In consequence of the
encouragement thus offered to dishonesty, and the security afforded to
crime, this quarter of the Borough of Southwark was accounted (at the
period of our narrative) the grand receptacle of the superfluous
villainy of the metropolis. Infested by every description of vagabond
and miscreant, it was, perhaps, a few degrees worse than the rookery
near Saint Giles's and the desperate neighbourhood of Saffron Hill in