From Secret History of London Clubs (1709)
This little book included chapters like ‘The Beggars’ Club’ and ‘The Mollies’ Club’ (about homosexuals) – populist satires on the different groups that peopled London’s underworld. Ned Ward (1667–1731) was a journalist, an observer of contemporary London life, whose career like Defoe’s and Swift’s was built upon the newly literate lower and middle classes. Even if a labourer in London could not read, he could go to a coffee house and hear the news read out there; servants often had access to their masters’ libraries; politics and society gossip were discussed at all levels of society. In this intimate, informed world, the actions of miscreants like Jonathan Wild or Jenny Diver (Mary Young) – propagated by men like Ward – were of interest to men and women from every background. Ward’s easy, slangy style made him a popular chronicler of the rowdy, unprincipled London in which he lived.
THE THIEVES’ CLUB
This Tyburn-looked Society of Desperado’s, who commonly have the fortune to wear their destiny in their faces, formerly kept their club at a certain tavern not far from Flat Ditch, but now remov’d to a more obscure place on the north west side of London: where a remarkable thief-taker can help anybody to their stolen goods, provided the gratitude the loser offer’d amounted to about half the value of what the raparees1 had depriv’d him of; which is commonly as the rogues with safety are able to make of their booty, because the receivers, who either buy or lend money upon such cargoes, always guess by their chapmen how honestly they are come by, and therefore will not deal without reasonable advantage. This thief-takers house take their sanctuary at, and both day and night at his tipling tenement,2 where the Society of the Devil’s operators project their hellish roguries, and what they got over the Devil’s back, they spend under his belly.
Thus all sorts of villanies are daily harbour’d under this unhallow’d roof, by him who knows their practices, till they foolishly waste what they have villainously gotten; and if any of’em grow lazy, and don’t exercise their tallent, their master the thief-taker will take him up and hang him out of their way as a worthless scoundrel who was only a dabler in a misery that he knew not how to live by.
Just so reforming, stables protect,
The harlot that can bribe as they expect
But if she once grows poor through want of trade
In triumph then they flog the needy jade.
Then amidst their jollity, when the power of Bacchus had forc’d open hell’s cabbins, one to make a jest of his villiany, wou’d merrily discover that he once robb’d an old lady of three hundred pound by the confederacy of one of his misses, who was got in to be chamber maid, and would mimick how heartily the old granny begg’d, at fourscore that she might not be ravish’d. Another to show his gallantry, would boast how three of them stopp’d five gentlemen upon the road, robb’d four of them, and the other being an old parson, they drag’d him into a wood, and told him if he would preach a sermon to them, he should go unrifled. I thank you reply’d the parson; but ’tis a little too short a warning for a good sermon, however, I will do the best I can, which said one of the rogues was to this effect,
Gentlemen, you are the most like the old apostles of any men in the world, for they were wanderers upon the earth, and so are you, they had neither lands nor tenements they could call their own, neither as I presume, have you. They were despis’d of all but their own profession, and so I believe are you: they were often hurr’d into gaols and prisons, were persecuted by the people, and endured great hardships, all which circumstances, I presume, have been undergone by you; their Profession brought them all to untimely death, and so will yours bring you, if you continue in your courses.
But beloved (with permission) in this point, you will mightily differ from the apostles, for they from the tree ascended into heaven and thither I fear you will hardly ever come; and as their deaths were recompensed with eternal glory, yours will be rewarded with eternal shame and misery, unless you mend your manners. Upon which harrangue the man of God was dismist, with thanks for his favourable comparisons. And thus they made a jest of those wicked villanies, that they ought to blush every time they speak of’em much more boast and glory in.
For he that will no human laws obey,
Will ne’er be aw’d by what the priest can say,
But harden’d in his ills, will still rebel,
And hazard life and Heaven instead of Hell.
Let it, O youth, be then thy early care
To truly know what thy companions are.
That from the bad thou may’st select the good,
And shun the poys’nous converse of the lude,1
For he that rowls2 in nettles man be stung,
Nor can the fool be clean that wades in dung.
Therefore the only way to be secure
And keep an honest reputation pure
Is to show wisely, it is your care to be
Distinguished by your virtuous company.