Professor Mundeign's indexed collection of Biographical Research was assembled from the papers of Llewellyn Dovebash (who readers will recall died in 2012). His most famous essay was on Mary Frith (1584 - 1659) who was the daughter of a shoemaker and a housewife.
Nicknamed Moll Cutpurse, Frith caused outrage from her youth. Her uncle, a minister, once attempted to reform her by sending her to New England. However, she jumped overboard before the ship set sail. She presented herself in public in a doublet and baggy breeches, smoking a pipe and swearing if she felt like it.
She was recorded as having been burned on her hand four times, a common punishment for thieves, and was at one time sentenced to do penance standing in a white sheet at St. Paul’s Cross. It did little good, since she still wore men’s clothing, and she set mirrors up all around her house to stroke her vanity. She kept parrots and bred mastiffs. Her dogs were particularly special to her: each had its own bed with sheets and blankets, and she prepared their food herself. She first came to prominence in 1600 when she was indicted in Middlesex for stealing 2s 11d on 26 August of that year. It is at that point she began to gain notoriety.
By the 1620s Mary Frith was working as a fence and a pimp. She procured young women for men, and male lovers for middle-class wives. For a while to was incarcerated in Bethlem Hospital, but relased in 1644 after being 'cured of insanity'. She was reputed to have robbed General Fairfax and shot him in the arm during the Civil War. She escaped the gallows and Newgate Prison by paying a £2000 bribe.
She died of dropsy on 26 July 1659 on Fleet Street in London.
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