I now set out for Newmarket; and, on my return home, hired a horse, under pretence of going express for a certain lord, well known on the turf, and came full gallop to the Blue Boar inn in Whitechapel, where I instantly ordered twelve stalls for the horses of my lord, which was to be there that night; telling the landlord, I was going to Hyde-park-corner for a running horse, and my haste occasioned me to come from my lord, without a sufficiency of money to defray all expences, and therefore begged him to let me have twelve guineas, to pay the charges of the horse and servant, and let his own servant go with me, to assist in bringing to the Blue Boar the running horse this night; all this he readily complied with; but the inn-keeper’s servant I took French leave of in Piccadilly, put my horse up in the usual stable and then went home to my lodgings. Shortly afterwards, I took upon me to go about the town in a genteel dress, with a green apron on, as a watch-maker, under pretence of buying pieces of handkerchiefs to send abroad to my friends; I commonly found fault with the thinness of them, holding them up with one hand, and putting a dozen, or a piece, with the other into my apron: generally in these expeditions, after a sufficient quantity was obtained, I went into the country, and what could not immediately be sold, were raffled for.——In practicing one of these tricks upon a good worthy woman, who kept shop in the Borough of Southwark, I was detected putting a piece into my apron; I immediately flattered the honest woman, that I was a weaver in Spitalfields, telling her, my uncle had a journeyman who had stole four pieces, and had sent me with that piece to match the other, upon information my uncle had, that the pieces were sold by his man at this shop; by this means I got clear off, the unsuspecting woman not knowing her own. In genteel apparel I next went among the silver-smiths and jewellers, where my dexterity and success was so great, that I used among them in their respective branches, it is almost incredible what quantities of spoons, rings, buttons, buckles, stones, &c. I stole; the robberies of this kind are so numerous, that I cannot particularize them, but I made bold to borrow something from every silver-smith and jeweller in the bills of mortality, and not only in all these attempts had the good fortune to escape, but on many occasions, had the most lavish encomiums passed on me, for the honesty of my looks, and the humanity expressed in the lineaments of the countenance. Alas! how seldom is it, that the outward appearance corresponds with the inward disposition. I am a shocking instance that my face was the most deceitful in the world. Of this kind of fraud and robberies, I believe I have not perpetrated less than two hundred.