ore them.

'Hence, child,' says she, 'man a Newgate-bird becomes a great man, and
we have,' continued she, 'several justices of the peace, officers of
the trained bands, and magistrates of the towns they live in, that have
been burnt in the hand.'

She was going on with that part of the story, when her own part in it
interrupted her, and with a great deal of good-humoured confidence she
told me she was one of the second sort of inhabitants herself; that she
came away openly, having ventured too far in a particular case, so that
she was become a criminal. 'And here's the mark of it, child,' says
she; and, pulling off her glove, 'look ye here,' says she, turning up
the palm of her hand, and showed me a very fine white arm and hand, but
branded in the inside of the hand, as in such cases it must be.

This story was very moving to me, but my mother, smiling, said, 'You
need not think a thing strange, daughter, for as I told you, some of
the best men in this country are burnt in the hand, and they are not
ashamed to own it. There's Major ----,' says she, 'he was an eminent
pickpocket; there's Justice Ba----r, was a shoplifter, and both of them
were burnt in the hand; and I could name you several such as they are.'

We had frequent discourses of this kind, and abundance of instances she
gave me of the like. After some time, as she was telling some stories
of one that was transported but a few weeks ago, I began in an intimate
kind of way to ask her to tell me something of her own story, which she
did with the utmost plainness and sincerity; how she had fallen into
very ill company in London in her young days, occasioned by her mother
sending her frequently to carry victuals and other relief to a
kinswoman of hers who was a prisoner in Newgate, and who lay in a
miserable starving condition, was afterwards condemned to be hanged,
but having got respite by pleading her belly, dies afterwards in the
prison.

Here my mother-in-law ran out in a long account of the wicked practices
in that dreadful place, and how it ruined more young people that all
the town besides. 'And child,' says my mother, 'perhaps you may know
little of it, or, it may be, have heard nothing about it; but depend
upon it,' says she, 'we all know here that there are more thieves and
rogues made by that one prison of Newgate than by all the clubs and
societies of villains in the nation; 'tis that cursed place,' says my
mother, 'that half peopled this col