Plate 1: Moll Hackabout recently arrived at the Bell Inn in Cheapside, is seeking employment as a seamstress or domestic servant. She stands innocently in front of Mother Needham, the brothel keeper, who is examining her youth and beauty. Needham may be acting on behalf of Colonel Charteris, who stands in the doorway to the right, fondling himself while ogling the new arrival. The Coffin-like trunk with Moll’s initials, the preoccupied clergyman (Motifs which reappear in the final scenes) and the dead goose give a funereal and ominous cast to the scene.
Plate 2: Moll appears as the mistress of a wealthy Jewish merchant. He has just returned home as Moll overturns the table in an attempt to divert his attention while her clandestine lover makes his way out.
Plate 3: Depicts a 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; pinned to the window frame are prints of Captain Mackheath (the hero of “The Beggar’s Opera”) and Dr Sacheverell (the High Anglican clergyman impeached in 1710), the hat-box of James Dalton, highwayman, rests above the bed, and one of several beer tankards on the floor carries the name of a local tavern.
Plate 4: Moll now in Bridewell prison, shown with other 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; beyond, a man stands with his hands in a pillory.
Plate 5: 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, and a small boy turns a joint of meat roasting in front of the fire.
Plate 6: 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.
