Chase the Morning

Appendix

From The Consistory of London Correction Book for 27th January 1612 …

Officium Domine contra Mariam Frithe

This day & place the sayd Mary appeared personally & then & there voluntarily confessed that she had long frequented all or most of the disorderly & licentious places in this Cittie as namely she hath vsually in the habite of a man resorted to alehowses Tavernes Tobacco shops & also to play howses there to see plaies & pryses & namely being at a playe about 3 quarters of a yeare since at the ffortune in mans apparell & in her bootes & with a sword by her syde … And also sat there vppon the stage in the publique view of all the people there presente in mans apparell & playd vppon her lute & sange a songe …

& hath also vsually associated her selfe with Ruffinly swaggering & lewd company as namely with cut purses blasphemous drunkardes & others of bad note & of most dissolute behaviour with whom she hath to the great shame of her sexe often tymes (as she sayd) dranke hard & distempered her heade with drinke

And further confesseth … she was since vpon Christmas day at night taken in Powles Church with her peticoate tucked vp about her in the fashion of a man with a mans cloake on her to the great scandal of diuers persons who understood the same & to the disgrace of all womanhood …

And then she being pressed to declare whether she had not byn dishonest of her body & hath not also drawne other women to lewdnes by her perswasions & by carrying her self lyke a bawde, she absolutly denied that she was chargeable with eyther of these imputacions … [Mulholland, R.E.S., new series xxviii (1977), 31]

Mary Frith, popularly known as ‘Mad Mall’, was remanded for further investigation, but seems to have come to no great harm – certainly not the public whipping usually reserved for ‘lewdnes’. She is last heard of almost fifty years later – having reached an astonishing age for that period – and apparently still going strong.