Note 58 — HOGARTH ILLUSTRATED.
Reading edition
Such well-dressed females are rarely met with in our present house of correction; but her splendid appearance is sufficiently warranted by the following paragraph in the Grub Street Journal of September 14, 1730:—
"One Mary Moffat, a woman of great note in the hundreds of Drury, who about a fortnight ago was committed to hard labour in Tothill Fields Bridewell, by nine justices, brought his Majesty's writ of habeas corpus, and was carried before the Right Honourable the Lord Chief-Justice Raymond, expecting to have been either bailed or discharged; but her commitment appearing to be legal, his lordship thought fit to remand her back again to her former place of confinement, where she is now beating hemp in a gown very richly laced with silver."