The London Underworld and the Truth-Claim of Moll Flanders

When we encounter Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders (1722), we are immediately confronted with a striking and somewhat unsettling fact: the novel claims to be a faithful record of the life of a female criminal. The protagonist is not a hero in any conventional sense. She is a thief and a prostitute, and is also guilty of violence and incest. Born in the famous Newgate Prison of London, she moves through a life marked by crime, punishment, and eventual transportation to Virginia, before finally becoming, as the title ironically suggests, a “penitent.”

The moment we encounter such a narrative, a number of questions arise. Why did Defoe select a criminal as his protagonist? Why does the narrative engage so self-consciously with the minute details of crime? Given its emphasis on truth, can we ask: who was Moll Flanders? Did such a person exist, or is this a fictional construct presented as history?

To answer these questions, we must turn to the historical discourses of early eighteenth-century London. The history of England at this time can be understood in two distinct ways. On the one hand, there is the familiar history of monarchs—Queen Anne, George I, II, and III—and the political conflicts between the Whigs and the Tories. This is the official, political history, dominated by the royal and aristocratic classes.

But alongside this, there exists another history—the “other” history—marked by economic imbalances and injustices, by the emergence of prisons and courts, and by the proliferation of crime and punishment. It is the history of criminals, of the London underworld, of those who lived on the margins of society. It is this second history that Defoe is particularly concerned with in Moll Flanders.

To understand this underworld, we must imagine London before modern infrastructure: a city without electricity, where darkness dominates the streets, where travellers move by cart, and where only a few lantern-bearers guide the way. In such a world, the wealthy return from theatres carrying visible signs of affluence—gold watches, silver snuff-boxes, jewellery—while vast numbers of the poor struggle to survive without education or opportunity. The coexistence of extreme wealth and extreme poverty produces conditions in which crime becomes almost inevitable.

Under such circumstances, many poor men turn to theft, pickpocketing, and robbery, while many women are compelled to adopt prostitution as a means of survival. The underworld of thieves operates in close proximity to the world of brothels, creating a network of marginalised lives bound together by necessity. The streets of London are unsafe not only at night but often even during the day. Gentlemen carry swords and pistols for protection. Contemporary accounts, such as that of Horace Walpole, vividly describe the dangers of urban life, including encounters with highwaymen and near-fatal attacks.

But what happens when a criminal is caught? The consequences are severe. One may be taken to Newgate Prison or tried at the Old Bailey. Punishments include public hanging or transportation to the plantations of Virginia, from which return is unlikely. There are recorded instances of extreme severity—a young girl executed for stealing a petticoat. Only a few manage to escape such fates.

Within this context, figures like Jonathan Wild emerge as central representatives of the London underworld. Often described as a “thief-taker,” Wild manipulated both crime and law enforcement, embodying the blurred boundaries between legality and illegality in this world. The underworld, therefore, is not simply a space of isolated criminal acts; it is a structured and pervasive social reality.

It is precisely this reality that informs Defoe’s narrative. Moll Flanders is not an invention “out of the blue,” but a literary engagement with the socio-economic conditions of its time. By choosing a criminal protagonist, Defoe brings into focus the lives of those excluded from official history. He constructs a narrative that claims truth not by appealing to historical records in the conventional sense, but by representing the lived experiences of marginalised individuals.

The novel’s insistence on its truth-value must therefore be understood in this context. It is not simply a question of whether Moll Flanders existed as a historical individual. Rather, the narrative derives its truth from its engagement with a recognisable social world—a world shaped by poverty, inequality, and the constant threat of punishment. The “truth” of the novel lies in its capacity to represent this world with a degree of immediacy and detail that compels belief.

In this sense, Moll Flanders offers not just the story of an individual criminal, but an alternative history of early modern England. It shifts our attention from kings and parliaments to prisons and streets, from political power to economic desperation. By doing so, Defoe not only expands the scope of narrative representation but also anticipates what would later become a defining feature of the novel as a genre: its preoccupation with the realities of everyday life.

To read Moll Flanders is therefore to confront a fundamental question: what counts as history, and whose lives are considered worthy of being recorded? Defoe’s answer is both radical and enduring. The story of a criminal woman, told with the insistence of truth, becomes a means of reimagining reality itself.

Further Reading

Fergus Linnane, London’s Underworld: Three Centuries of Vice and Crime 

Fergus Linnane, Madams: Bawds and Brothel-keepers of London 

Maximillian E. Novak, Daniel Defoe: Master of Fiction 

Horace Walpole, Selected Letters