Introduction
We gather from the anonymous Life and Character of Moll King that Moll, or Mary, King was born in the year 1696, “in a Garret in Vine-street” in the Parish of St. Giles in the Fields, Middlesex, and started her career as a very young girl selling fruits from a barrow in the streets. She died 17 September 1747 at her country house in Hampstead, the wealthy proprietor of the infamous Tom King's (later Moll King's) Coffee House in Covent Garden. Though a few of the claims in the Life that follows are either exaggerated or impossible to verify, most of the biography presented is confirmed by the historical record. The anonymous biographer presents the reader with a somewhat typical “rags to riches” narrative of a scandalous woman. Where this story is unique is in the “flash” dialogue that it preserves (likely borrowed and expanded from an undated pamphlet titled A New Flash Song-book or the Bowman Priggs Delight), and brief character sketches of several people who frequented the coffee house.
Moll King does not appear to have been a bawd, a prostitute, or a pickpocket, as she is sometimes characterized, though in her youth she may have flirted with courtesanship as the mistress of a young gentleman, and may have indulged in stealing from her drunken companions. Later in life she certainly did have run-ins with the law for keeping a disorderly house and occasionally for violent assault. On being fined for the latter on one occasion, she claimed that “if she was to pay Two Hundred Pounds to all the insolent Boys she had thrash’d for their impudence, the Bank of England would be unable to furnish her with the Cash.” She might not have been repentant at the end of her life, but at least, if we believe her biographer, she was not as contemptible as some of her contemporaries in Covent Garden. The story is told by someone who knew her well, and treats her with some regard if not fondness. She is rarely mentioned today without being prefaced by the words “notorious” or “infamous,” but here her biographer tempers her transgressions with some nuance.
Note on the Pamphlet
The Life and Character of Moll King, late Mistress of King's Coffee-House in Covent-Garden, was advertised ("This day is published") in The General Advertiser on 9 October, 1747. It was printed for “W. Price,” allegedly operating near the Sessions House in the Old Bailey, just weeks after Moll's death on Thursday the 17th of September. Until 2024, when I acquired digital images for this edition, the “Price” version was the only one catalogued by the ESTC (record ID T125312). That 25-page pamphlet, microfilmed and subsequently digitized for Eighteenth Century Collections Online, is held by the British Library.
The other known extant pamphlet, the source for this digital edition, is held by the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley. This turns out to be a different edition of The Life and Character, a 16-page pamphlet with text nearly identical to that advertised by “Price,” but printed for an otherwise unknown “G. Brice” purportedly located near Newgate. G. Brice offered no other imprints from this location, while W. Price offered only three from his: The Life and Character of Moll King (1747), The trial wherein Miss D--v--s was plaintiff, and the Rev. Dr. W-l-n, defendant (1747), and The trial of Æneas Mac Donald, banker to the pretender at Paris, who was try'd and convicted of high-treason(1748?). It seems likely that both versions of The Life and Character of Moll King were printed under false names.
Physical description: 16 p. 20 cm.
Note on the Text of this Edition
The text of the Brice edition reproduced here appears to have been hurriedly assembled: unlike the Price edition, it has no headpiece or decorated initial on the first page. In addition, some words are misspelled and there are numerous instances of letters placed upside down. The latter have not reproduced here. The original text, spelling, and punctuation in this work have been preserved, with some exceptions to aid in reading and searching: in particular, long ſ has been input as s.
—Allison Muri