This print as originally made as a subscription ticket for "A Midnight Modern Conversation." Seventeen men and boys rehearsing William Huggins's oratorio "Judith".
A scene outside the Bell Inn; a country girl, Moll Hackabout, just arrived on the York Wagon, meets an extravagantly dressed bawd (Mother Needham). A clergyman on horseback fails to notice the encounter, but a lecherous old gentleman (Colonel Charteris) eyes the girl with anticipation.
A lavishly furnished bedroom. Moll distracts her wealthy protector by exposing a breast and at the same time tipping over a tea-table so that her lover can slip quietly out of the room.
A shabby room in Drury Lane. Moll is rising late, attended by a serving-woman who has lost part of her nose to syphilis in the background, the magistrate, John Gonson, enters quietly with officers to arrest her.
Bridewell prison with inmates (including prostitutes and a card-player) beating hemp under the supervision of a warder holding a cane. Moll is still dressed in her finery, but a one-eyed female attendant fingers the lace lappet hanging from her cap and her erstwhile serving-woman is trying on her fashionable shoes and stockings.
A squalid room where Moll Hackabout, wrapped in a sheet, is dying while two doctors (Richard Rock and Jean Misaubin) argue over their remedies. Her serving-woman calls for attention for the invalid, another woman rifles through a trunk.
A dilapidated room with Moll's friends, mostly prostitutes, gathered around her open coffin. To left, a clergyman gropes beneath a woman's skirt, to right, the undertaker pays court to another who picks a handkerchief from his pocket. In the foreground sits Moll's small son playing with a spinning top.
A drinking scene with eleven men in a paneled room around a table on which is a punch-bowl decorated with Chinese figures; wine bottles on the floor and mantelpiece and an overflowing chamber pot at lower right.
A drinking scene with eleven men in a paneled room around a table on which is a punch-bowl decorated with Chinese figures; wine bottles on the floor and mantelpiece and an overflowing chamber pot at lower right.
The Jacobean interior of the house of Tom Rakewell's late father with Tom being measured for a suit as he gives a handful of coins to the pregnant Sarah Young.
The Jacobean interior of the house of Tom Rakewell's late father with Tom being measured for a suit as he gives a handful of coins to the pregnant Sarah Young.
A fashionable interior with Tom, in elegant indoor dress. He is surrounded by tradespeople and servants, such as his gardener, dancing and fencing master. To the side is a musician seated at the harpsichord. This musician has been tentatively identified as Handel.