“Unsuccessful in her object, however, and leaving Richard in Gloucester, she occupied some time in travelling about, chiefly in Yorkshire.
“She went to Hull to meet her eldest brother John on his discharge from prison there.
“‘I waited till he came out,’ said she, ‘and then he leathered me for being away from home.’
“Ellen Clarke, indeed, possessed a natural disposition which, had she been blessed with Christian parents, might have contributed to their and her own credit and happiness.
“Her narrative throughout betrays the wish to palliate their conduct, and at her interview with them after her conviction she appeared quite forgetful of herself, and only solicitous to assuage their anxiety about her, and to warn her brother Edward from his dangerous courses.
“This determined and skilful girl-thief of seventeen, who at the latter period of her short run of crime was not satisfied with less than a weekly booty of £10 or £20, trembled very much when she made her first successful essay upon the pocket of a young woman, from which she abstracted eighteenpence.
“‘I met,’ said she, ‘the young woman again in a short time, and she was crying; I heard her say the money was her mother’s. I cried too, and would have given her the money back, but I was afraid of being took up.’
“What an affecting contrast between this girl’s character and fate as they were and as they might have been.
“And how sad to think that our backward civilisation possesses as yet no means of saving from moral destruction thousands who, like this poor child, possess natural qualities which by God’s blessing would amply repay the labour of cultivation.
“As I have said, after sentence was pronounced upon the gang, the reserve and hardihood which the different members of it had previously exhibited, gave way.