A London night in the first quarter of the eighteenth century had very
little rest. Until long past midnight a noisy, lawless, drunken rabble
made the streets hideous. It was quite three o'clock, when as
physiologists tell us the vital forces are at their lowest, before it
could be said that the city was asleep. And that sleep did not last
long. Soon the creaking of market cart and waggon wheels, the shouts of
drovers and waggoners, tramping horses, bellowing cattle and bleating
sheep would dispel the stillness and proclaim the beginning of another
day.

Business in the approaches to the markets was in full swing before four
o'clock. Carters and waggoners were thirsty and hungry souls and the
eating houses and saloop stalls were thronged. The Old Bailey, from its
nearness to Smithfield was crowded, and the buxom proprietress of
Fenton's coffee house was hard put to it to serve her clamorous
customers and to see that she wasn't cheated or robbed.

Mrs. Fenton had improved in appearance as well as in circumstances since
she had come from Bedfordbury to the Old Bailey. She was a good-looking
woman of the fleshly type, with a bosom such as Rowlandson loved to
depict. She was high coloured, her eyes were deep blue, full and without
a trace of softness. Her lips were red and well shaped, her teeth white
and even. She was on the shady side of forty, but looked ten years
younger. Her customers admired her and loved to exchange a little coarse
badinage in which the good woman more than held her own.

There was a Mr. Fenton somewhere in the world, but his wife was quite
indifferent to his existence. He might be in the West Indian plantations