The Navarre Society have also published the Complete Newgate Calendar
in five volumes (23 7s. 6d.) collated and edited by Messrs. J. L. Rayner and G. T. Cook. In the preface the editors tell us that the times of which this calendar of crime have to tell us are not so very remote from the present day, for there is still a Mrs. Newbury living near Liverpool who can remember as a child peeping out of a stage coach and seeing passengers robbed by highwaymen. Her age is one hundred and two. These records of footpads, shoplifters, cheats and malefactors make vivid and delightful reading it must be confessed, for the book is full of fascinating side- lights on English history as, it is lived by erring flesh and blood, but as it is rarely recorded in printer's ink. The authors drawn upon have a quick, full-blooded style ; of Moll Cutpurse, for instance, the masculine mistress of the underworld who lived opposite Shoe Lane, it is said that she wore her hats as handsomely as a dog would a doublet.
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