Mary ‘Moll Cutpurse’ Frith: The Outrageous Outcast

Article by Meredith Evans. Edited by Stephen Woodward. Additional Research by Ellie Veryard.

When we think of crime and punishment in the early seventeenth century we are instantly consumed by images of gruesome executions and barbaric torture. However what was crime and punishment like for the criminals who were more a nuisance than a threat? The characters drawn into a life of petty crime are often overlooked in history, despite offering some weird and wonderful insights into society at the time. 

The facts surrounding Mary Frith have become blurred, exaggerated and uncertain over time, a historical ambiguity perhaps befitting such an unusual figure. Mary was born in the late 1580s to a shoemaker and a housewife. Frith grew up in a family that often struggled to provide basic necessities such as food. It was perhaps this experience of poverty and desperation that lured Mary into a world of theft and crime. 

The first record of Frith in trouble with the law comes in 1600 from Middlesex courts. The offence she was arrested for was stealing purses, and thus earned herself the name ‘Moll Cutpurse’. We can assume that she was released relatively quickly after some form of minor punishment, perhaps a fine or short custodial sentence, as she was able to re-offend several times in the next decade. Her increase in notoriety meant that by 1611 there already existed two plays based on her life. 

The motivation for these plays was not just to depict a lovable rogue, but instead to portray the madness that Frith exhibited on a daily basis. It is also these displays of socially unacceptable and generally unusual behaviour that eventually led to more legal action against Frith. The authorities acted after Frith performed on-stage wearing men’s clothes, as she usually did, despite laws forbidding it, at the Fortune Theatre. She entertained the crowd by acting, playing the lute and engaging with the audience. Her ‘bawdy’ behaviour made her performance popular with the crowd, astonished by such defiance and oddness. This acquisition of public support and awe was enough to induce a sense of fear of deliberate defiance within the authorities. She went from being considered harmless and mad, to making a mockery of the law of the time. 

The crime that is officially stated on legal record for the arrest of Frith in 1611, was that of being dressed ‘indecently’. Writing on Frith at the time of her arrest John Chamberlain referred to her as ‘a notorious baggage that used to go around in men’s apparel.’ This seemingly small act was considered a challenge to the patriarchal society and it is for this that we have the only record of an official punishment being implemented. It was ruled that Frith should perform acts of penance in public, an attempt by the authorities perhaps to discourage any encouragement she may have been receiving. Chamberlain observed that during her forced public display of penance;

‘She wept bitterly and seemed very penitent, but yt is since doubted she was maudelin drunck being discovered to have tipled three quarts of a sack before…’ 

Now an infamous woman of questionable mentality and intrigue, a play titled ‘The Roaring Girl’ was published, a comic dramatisation of Frith’s life. The title is a reference to her wild demeanour and masculine habits such as dressing in breeches and brawling. 

The following years Frith continued her everyday defiance and with no record of severe repercussions and so we can assume she was still considered to be no great threat to social order, remaining in the field of petty crime. Records show that in 1614 Frith married a man named Lewknor Markham. It has generally become accepted that the marriage was largely a sham, and merely existed to provide a counter-argument in court whenever the term spinster (considered highly undesirable at the time) was thrown at Frith in court. Regardless of the intent, her husband failed to have much of a positive influence on her life as her bizarre and unruly behaviour escalated. 

According to an account by herself, Frith states that by the 1620s she was a distinguished fence within the black-market, and also a casual form of pimp. She boasted of her ability to procure stolen goods, or women for men as they pleased.  Her final punishment, though not recorded in detail, can be assumed to be a brutal and painful procedure after which Bethlem Hospital declared her to be ‘cured of insanity’ in 1644. While this sounds relatively beneficial, in reality these ‘cures’ often consisted of violent forms of mutilation to the skull, usually resulting in brain damage. So came the end of the escapades of one of the most notorious and unusual public figures of the time. She finally met her maker in 1659 when she contracted dropsy, succumbing to the disease in July. 

And so we are left to wonder how such an extraordinary woman can go so regularly unmentioned in history? How could such a character of colour and mystery fade into the background of Stuart society? Admittedly the period saw greater issues, particularly in the field of crime (The Gunpowder Plot), and this may have contributed to the fade of Frith. Perhaps the biography of her life published three years after her death ‘The life of Mrs Mary Frith’ sensationalised and dramatised her existence. Claims, such as the fact she was a hermaphrodite, undoubtedly cheapened her significance. The book may have sought to imprint her upon the memory of England forever, but instead made her into a joke, something which we could never be sure of. With so much myth and legend to plough through, she has instead been left to individuals to form their own opinions on whether she was mad, bad or sad. 

The field of history is very critical and weary of the sources of information about her life due to their potential to be unreliable and often fictitious. Even if these harsh conclusions are true, it cannot be denied that Mary Frith, whether exaggerated or not, is truly a criminal that you can’t help but feel a little affection.

• Alongside The Roaring Girl by Thomas Middleton and Thomas Dekker, another two plays were also produced based on the escapades of Mary Frith; The Madde Prankes of Merry Mall by the Bankside, by John Day was published in 1610, though no surviving text of the play now remains and Amends for Ladies by Nathaniel Field published in 1611. 

• The Life of Mrs Mary Frith was one of the first female criminal biographies to be produced in England and was highly influential. Previously female criminals had recieved less attention n the press than their male counterparts and their actions in committing crimes were often inadequately explained. After Frith’s Life the published female lives began to increase. 

• Moll Flanders (1721) by Daniel Defoe, was believed to be based in part on the life of Mary Frith, and it was Defoe’s attempt to explain why Moll committed her crimes, which possibly changed the format of the way in which female crime was both thought about and explained in the eighteenth century.

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