human
SHELLING THE PEAS.
gpt
ROARING GIRL
human
she was born in Barbican, City of London, in 1592. Tradition tells how she was born with clenched fists: sure sign of a wild and adventurous nature. Her muscles and her spirit alike were mannish. As a girl, she was, in the obsolete language of the seventeenth century, a
gpt
and
human
; and a
gpt
was more agreeable to her than a distaff. And not only more agreeable, but more natural, and she worsted many a pretty fellow in fair fight with that weapon, with which only the strong and the active could prevail. Her father proposed to apprentice her to a saddler, but she refused, and she was put aboard a ship bound for Virginia, to be sold into the plantations. It seems a drastic way with a rebellious daughter; but it failed, for Moll escaped before even the ship had left the Port of London. Love never entered into the career of Moll, and as she had the strength of a man and a masculine voice that procured her the name of the
human
Roaring Girl, she early concluded to wear masculine attire. In Middleton's comedy, written about her when she was still young, he makes a character declare:
gpt
She has the spirit of four great parishes, and a voice that will drown all the city. It will thus be seen that she was at an early age well known to those who lived their life in London. And for excellent reasons. She had not only become a member of a gang of thieves and pickpockets, who frequented the Bear Garden in Southwark and other popular resorts, but had graduated with amazing ease and swiftness in the art of slitting pockets and extracting purses, and from that had by force of an organising brain elevated herself into the position of a plotter of robberies and high directress of clyfakers and bung-snatchers. So well was the destination known of most of the watches and trinkets that were continually disappearing, that the owners of them were often knocking at her door in Fleet Street, ready to ransom their property for a well-recognised percentage of its value, before the thieves had returned with it; and they had to be politely requested to call again. In those halcyon days of the receivers of stolen property, before the evil career of Jonathan Wild had caused an Act of Parliament to be passed, dealing with them on the same footing as the actual thieves, much was done in this way of ransom and ready brokerage, and, so long as it was done with discretion, with advantage to all concerned. The owners got their own again, with the expenditure of a comparatively trifling sum, the gang carried on their operations with a large degree of security, and the wily Moll made an excellent income. She was witty and original, and—such was the spirit of the age—she became rather the fashion among the riotous young blades of town, who were then