business in her husband's alehouse.<ref>Kermode, and Walker. 'Women, Crime and the Courts in Early Modern England. Chapel Hill London: U of North Carolina, 1994, p. 92.</ref> As of early 2018 a total of 5,664 proceedings were stored in the Old Bailey Online archive where the offence category is receiving. Of these, 1,858, nearly one-third, have a defendant gender category of female. Early modern English literature The growth of the crime of receiving in Early Modern society, combined with the increasing interest of society on reading, led to depictions of the crime in the works of writers such as Daniel Defoe's Moll Flanders and John Gay's The Beggar's Opera. Moll Flanders The novel Moll Flanders narrates the whole life of its protagonist (Moll Flanders), but a relevant part of it is about her becoming a master thief. Moll's activity as a thief relied on the protection and support of her governess, who acted also as a receiver for the goods stolen by her affiliates. She is the one who buys Moll's stolen goods the first time, as Moll narrates "I was now at a loss for a market for my goods... At last I resolved to go to my old governess." The governess character sealed Moll's fate as a thief, and eventually taught her the basics of thievery, redirecting Moll to work with other senior thieves. Defoe shows how crucial as well as subtle receiving was in building the whole of crime activity in London. The Governess is officially a pawnbroker, and she uses this legal business to also sell stolen goods. Sometimes, such as in the case of a silver inscribed mug stolen by Moll, she smelts metals, in order to avoid getting caught while re-selling. Along with receiving activity, she actively protects and supports many criminals and thieves in order to secure a steady income to her activity. The same governess protects and offers refuge to her affiliates whenever possible, or recruits thieves into small groups, always via middlemen, in order to protect their thieves' identities in case some of them were caught and willing to confess. She is also a main intelligence source and often a direct instigator to theft, such as in a case of fire in a well-off house in the neighbourhood (more vulnerable to theft because of the sudden emergency), and finally becomes a broker for goods stolen by Moll to a drunken gentleman. In