Barnaby Rudge by Charles Dickens (best free ebook reader for android txt) 📕

all just mention; it was at the time whenpress warrants were issued, on the alarm about Falkland Islands.The woman's husband was pressed, their goods seized for some debtsof his, and she, with two small children, turned into the streetsa-begging. It is a circumstance not to be forgotten, that she wasvery young (under nineteen), and most remarkably handsome. Shewent to a linen-draper's shop, took some coarse linen off thecounter, and slipped it under her cloak; the shopman saw her, andshe laid it down: for this she was hanged. Her defence was (I havethe trial in my pocket), "that she had lived in credit, and wantedfor nothing, till a press-gang came and stole her husband from her;but since then, she had no bed to lie on; nothing to give herchildren to eat; and they were almost naked; and perhaps she mighthave done something wrong, for she hardly knew what she did." Theparish officers testified the truth of this story; but it seems,there had been a good deal of shop-lifting ab