Parliament, 'on Frequent Executions', made in 1777.

'Under this act,' the Shop-lifting Act, 'one Mary Jones was executed,
whose case I shall just mention; it was at the time when press warrants
were issued, on the alarm about Falkland Islands. The woman's husband
was pressed, their goods seized for some debts of his, and she, with two
small children, turned into the streets a-begging. It is a circumstance
not to be forgotten, that she was very young (under nineteen), and most
remarkably handsome. She went to a linen-draper's shop, took some coarse
linen off the counter, and slipped it under her cloak; the shopman saw
her, and she laid it down: for this she was hanged. Her defence was (I
have the trial in my pocket), "that she had lived in credit, and wanted
for nothing, till a press-gang came and stole her husband from her; but
since then, she had no bed to lie on; nothing to give her children
to eat; and they were almost naked; and perhaps she might have done
something wrong, for she hardly knew what she did." The parish officers
testified the truth of this story; but it seems, there had been a good
deal of shop-lifting about Ludgate; an example was thought necessary;
and this woman was hanged for the comfort and satisfaction of
shopkeepers in Ludgate Street. When brought to receive sentence,
she behaved in such a frantic manner, as proved her mind to be in a
distracted and desponding state; and the child was sucking at her breast
when she set out for Tyburn.'



Chapter 1


In the year 1775, there stood upon the borders of Epping Forest, at a