An almost Goldlike man leads a ragged band of German Protestants across Europe with the promise of a new and better life in America, only to abandon them in London where many starve and die.
Eastward in Clerkenwell lies the Mulberry Pleasure Garden: six acres of leafy walks, colonnades and pavillions. In this bosky setting parade a variety of characters of awesome granduer, innocence and evil - and all are subject to a ring of blackmail terror.
A dozen tales of apprentices in eighteenth-century England portray young boys placed in service for seven years, small wages, and chancy reward and reveal Hogarthian and Dickensian corners of their lives