The Chronicles of Crime or The New Newgate Calendar. v. 1/2: being a series of memoirs and anecdotes of notorious characters who have outraged the laws of Great Britain from the earliest period to 1841.Pelham, Camden
History
The Chronicles of Crime or The New Newgate Calendar. v. 1/2: being a series of memoirs and anecdotes of notorious characters who have outraged the laws of Great Britain from the earliest period to 1841.
Pelham, Camden
Crime -- Great Britain; Criminals -- Great Britain; Newgate (Prison : London, England)
The continuance of the system under which this gang pursued its labours
became now impossible, and they found it necessary to leave the
metropolis; but having committed numerous depredations in the country,
they returned, and Jenny was unfortunately apprehended on a charge of
picking a gentleman's pocket, for which she was sentenced to be
transported.
She remained nearly four months in Newgate, during which time she
employed a considerable sum in the purchase of stolen effects; and when
she went on board the transport vessel, she shipped a quantity of goods
nearly sufficient to load a waggon. The property she possessed ensured
her great respect, and every possible convenience and accommodation
during the voyage; and on her arrival in Virginia, she disposed of her
goods, and for some time lived in great splendour and elegance. She soon
found, however, that America was a country where she could expect but
little emolument from the practices she had so successfully followed in
England, and she therefore employed every art she was mistress of to
ingratiate herself with a young gentleman, who was preparing to embark
on board a vessel bound for the port of London. He became much enamoured
of her, and brought her to England; but while the ship lay at Gravesend,
she robbed him of all the property she could get into her possession,
and pretending indisposition, intimated a desire of going on shore, in
which her admirer acquiesced; but she was no sooner on land than she
made a precipitate retreat.
She now travelled through various parts of the country; and having by
her usual wicked practices obtained many considerable sums, she at
length returned to London, but was not able to find her former
accomplices. She frequented the Royal Exchange, the theatres,
London-bridge, and other places of public resort, and committed
innumerable depredations on the public; but being again detected in
picking a gentleman's pocket on London-bridge, she was taken before a
magistrate, to whom she declared that her name was Jane Webb, and by
that appellation she was committed to Newgate.
On her trial, a gentleman who had detected her in the very act of
picking the prosecutor's pocket, deposed that a person had applied to
him, offering fifty pounds, on condition that he should not appear in
support of the prosecution: and a lady swore that on the day the
prisoner committed the offence for which she stood indicted, she saw her
pick the pockets of more than twenty different people. The record of her
former conviction was not produced in court, and therefore she was
arraigned for privately stealing only, and, on the clearest evidence,
the jury pronounced her guilty. The property being valued at less than
one shilling, she was sentenced to transportation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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