Mary Jones lived on the square a meek life
a comely maid
Scarce nineteen, a content and thrifty wife
until the raid
Warrants were issued to impress raw recruits
ranks were swollen
Her children’s father frog-marched by galloots
press-ganged, stolen!
She had no snooze for darkies, not a sop
toddlers starving
How would she earn blunt, reckon accompts, cope?
go a-begging
Bushed and banded, thrown on the streets, frantic
queerly togged
young’uns napped the bib with sickly antics
blone for the logs?
The needy-mizzler spied a draper’s ken
cants of dobbin
duds, driz pure as snow driven
fammed the linen
Wistful, Mary ran rough hands through fine silks
fogles, shifts, lawn
Grabbed at some coarse stuff she slipped neath her cloak
linen to pawn
The fly cove touting the stricken titter
copped the pinch-gloak
Put that bolt of linen on the counter!
she unsloured her cloak
Parish officers, runners, shop-keepers
all were afraid
The rise in theft in the Ludgate area
they boned this maid
‘Fore the hard-arsed beak, she grew spoony wild
condemned to death
What fate’d befall her babe, her young child?
Newgate’s chill breath
Harsh bells clanged Mary’s drag to Tyburn Fair
noose bound to chest
She faced the rising sun, the wooden mare
babe at her breast
Michael Small
April 24-May 9, 2004
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