“To the Carrying On the Prosecution”
February 1–19, 1753
[ #1 ]
With the taking-up of the people at Wells’s, the day’s business was but half done. Mrs. Canning had her hands full with the baby; she and her female supporters elected to take shelter and a glass of wine at Cantril’s. Aldridge was quite tired of the thing. He went to an alehouse and got some mutton chops and half a pint of wine. He did not think the scene at the magistrate’s would be worth hearing. But all the rest of the posse took horse or piled into the waiting vehicles and escorted Elizabeth Canning to the nearest justice.
The nearest justice was Mr. Merry Tyshmaker, in Edmonton, a hundred yards off the highway. Into his house they all piled, and Elizabeth had to tell her story again, while the accused waited in the anteroom. Then the magistrate sent for them one by one.
Susannah Wells denied everything. Elizabeth looked at her narrowly. She thought, now, that she had once seen her out at the window, but did not know that she belonged to the house. The old gypsy she was sure of.
Then they brought George in. She looked at his dark horseman’s greatcoat, and it seemed to touch another dubious chord in her memory:
“I verily believe he is one of the men of Moorfields,” she hazarded, “and that is the coat he had on, which he put my gown under.”
Then arrived Fortune Natus; he had been sent for from the fields. Elizabeth shook her head at him; she had never seen him before, nor Judith neither. She cleared the rest of the prisoners; even Lucy and Virtue, though they had stood by and laughed at her, had not meddled with her in any way.
Justice Tyshmaker was shocked at the story. He prepared the necessary documents at once. The Enfield people, standing about now that their examinations were over, watched him anxiously; perhaps he was going to send them all to gaol. George Squires craned his neck while the mittimus was writing, and seemed to quiver a little, to see whether there was a mittimus making for him. If he was committed for robbing Canning, he would surely hang.
There was no mittimus for the gypsy man; Elizabeth would not swear to him. The justice had to let them all go except the two old women. He committed the old gypsy to New Prison for stealing Elizabeth’s stays; and Mother Wells went to the Bridewell for being a bawd and running a disorderly house. They carried the two old women off to Clerkenwell Green in Long’s cart.
The men of the Goldsmiths’ Company rode back in the coach together. Mr. Hague, Mr. Nash, and Mr. Aldridge were puzzled about the whole thing and inclined to think there might be a mistake somewhere.
“What about the grate in the chimney?” said Mr. Hague. “There wasn’t any grate. What about the pictures the girl said she saw?”
“These things are movables,” said Mr. Lyon, “and may be moved.”
The others wanted to thrash the matter out, but they made no headway with Mr. Lyon. In the end they forgot their differences at Newington. Mr. Lyon was acquainted with Newington; he had done building jobs there. Over a beefsteak at the Three Crowns they were very jovial together; the old gypsy might hang on Tyburn Tree for all of them.
The Aldermanbury matrons took Bet home to the Postern and put her to bed. She was too worn out to care if all Enfield went to Tyburn Tree.
[ #2 ]
The next morning Elizabeth Mayle, midwife, was passing by Aldermanbury Postern on her occasions. She was well and favourably known in the neighbourhood. She had brought the Canning children into the world, and many more in Aldermanbury. As she passed by the Postern, she remembered that she had heard sad news of one of her clients: Mrs. Canning had lost her eldest girl. It occurred to her to step in a moment and inquire whether she had yet been heard of.
She had no more than opened the door when Mrs. Canning addressed her with a mixture of deep emotion and the ceremony due to so important a personage.
“Madam!” she cried, “Oh Lord, madam! Have you heard of my misfortune?”
“I read it in the newspapers in January,” replied the midwife. “Pray, have you heard of your daughter?”
“Yes,” cried Mrs. Canning, “she has come home as naked as she was born.”
“Oh Lord,” said Mrs. Mayle. “What, without a shift on?”
“She had a shift on,” said Mrs. Canning.
“Where is your daughter now?” asked Mrs. Mayle.
“Behind you,” said Mrs. Canning.
The midwife turned about and stared at Bet Canning where she lay half-concealed by the bed-curtains, emaciated and drawn.
“Lord bless me!” ejaculated the midwife at the sight. “Bet, how came this about?”
“I was coming over Moorfields one night,” Bet repeated her story, “and two men came up to me, one took my two hands and pulled me along, and the other robbed me.”
“Of what, child?”
“Of half a guinea and three shillings and some halfpence,” enumerated Elizabeth, “and my clothes.”
“My dear, don’t trouble yourself about these things, for God Almighty will raise you friends to get you more; but I hope,” Mrs. Mayle touched on a more permanent kind of loss, “I hope the men did not use you ill, so as to debauch you?”
“I cannot tell,” whispered Elizabeth, “for I had my fits.”
“Mrs. Canning,” said the practical midwife immediately, “have you got this shift your child went abroad in? I’ll tell you if anybody has debauched your child if you’ll let me see it.”
Mrs. Canning handed it to her. Mrs. Mayle examined it gravely. It was soiled about the neck and shoulders. There was a hole on the right side down one of the gussets; but there was no draggled tail at all. Mrs. Mayle saw three little spots of something nasty, about as big as a thumb end; but on the whole the shift was pretty clean.
“Mrs. Canning,” said the midwife, “is this the shift your daughter went away in?”
“Yes,” replied the mother.
“Then I suppose,” hazarded Mrs. Mayle, “it was washed since she has been gone?”
“No, how could that be? For she was in a room where nobody came to her.”
“I think the shift is too clean,” said Mrs. Mayle doubtfully, “except you have had it washed since she came home.”
“No,” said Mrs. Canning, “it hasn’t been washed here.”
“Then, my dear,” said Mrs. Mayle, “you may make yourself easy, for I see by it that no man has debauched your child.”
Incontinently Mrs. Canning plumped down on her knees and raised her hands to Heaven.
“Thank God,” she cried, “my daughter is not a whore!”
Bet Canning, weak and wan in the great bed, did not lift her lids or say Amen. Neither did Mrs. Mayle. She was shaking her head over the shift.
“It is uncommonly clean,” she said to herself, “to be wore so long.”
Mrs. Canning got off her knees.
“She never had a stool all the time she was gone,” she pointed out.
This alarmed Mrs. Mayle.
“Then she must have a glyster given to her,” she said at once. “But I can assure you,” she returned to her comfortable conclusion, “that no man has debauched your child in this shift unless it has been washed since.”
The idea of any man being so coarse as to remove Elizabeth from the shift does not seem to have entered anybody’s head.
Mrs. Canning was not very level-headed, but on this occasion she displayed considerable common sense.
“Will you examine her body,” she asked the woman of skill, “to see if she has been hurted?”
“No,” said the midwife promptly, “I never was before the face of a judge in the Old Bailey in my life, and I do not care to be in dirty work.”
This would have been her valediction if Mrs. Canning had not taken the next best step. She sent for a witness—Mrs. Woodward over the way. The little girl ran and fetched her.
“Will you say what you said before?” said Mrs. Canning.
“Yes, Mrs. Canning, with all the pleasure in life,” replied the expert majestically; “if this shift has not been washed, I’ll make an oath before a judge no man had copulation with her; for” she explained to Mrs. Woodward, “if there had, there would have been nature on one side or the other.”
With which expert opinion the lady of skill departed.
Two days later she was back to ask after her young friend. She found her still in bed, receiving callers.
“Mrs. Canning,” the wise woman accosted her, “I am come to ask if Bet has had a stool?”
“No,” said Mrs. Canning.
The midwife took the girl’s limp hand in hers.
“Now,” she uttered solemnly, “she seems as cold as death, and if she has no passage, she must die, and all the world can’t save her.”
This impressed everybody except one of Elizabeth’s young friends.
“How can you frighten the girl out of her life,” she protested, “to tell her she must die, when she has no fever?”
Mrs. Mayle ignored her.
“Reach the shift to this gentlewoman,” she instructed Mrs. Canning, indicating an elderly caller; she was a grave woman.
“Let her judge the ease and see that your child has not been debauched.”
The grave caller studied the garment.
“I don’t see anything like it,” she said. “But here is no marks of your daughter being according to the course of other women?”
“She has got cold,” said Mrs. Canning, “she has been out of order for three or four months.”
“Look it over well,” pursued Mrs. Mayle, “do you think this has been worn three weeks and three days?”
“No, I don’t think it has,” said the grave woman, “I don’t think that is likely.”
“She had no stool all the while,” said Mrs. Canning.
“Here is three spots upon it,” said Mrs. Mayle. She appealed to the company: “Behold it!”
Mrs. Canning was exasperated.
“Do you come here to set my other friends against me?” she cried angrily.
Mrs. Mayle left in a huff.
Sutherton Bakler, the apothecary, agreed with the knowledgeable Mrs. Mayle that his patient was in a bad way. He ordered her another glyster the next day, and when this had no effect by the day after, February 6, the doctor was sent for.
Dr. Eaton, the physician, was too full of business to take any other than a professional interest in the case of Elizabeth Canning. He listened to what they told him, that Elizabeth had had no stool since New Year’s Day and no evacuation of urine since her return home. She complained of colics and pains in her bowels, and could scarcely keep anything upon her stomach. Her pulse was low, flashing, and fluttering. He was very apprehensive that she would die. The man of medicine concluded that this was a case for diuretics and gentle cathartics, and wrote prescriptions for such compounds. He did not inquire how his patient came to be in this condition.
It was probably Dr. Eaton who decided that the girl was much too sick to continue the communal life of the Cannings’ one bed. That same day she was carried like a child down the stairs and across the way, where Mrs. Woodward had a bed for her.
While she was there some medical gentlemen took an interest in her case and arranged for her to be admitted as a charity patient to St. Bartholomew’s Hospital; but nothing came of it. Elizabeth decided to remain in Aldermanbury among her friends.
[ #3 ]
While Elizabeth was lying sick in London, the excitement was spreading in the suburbs like circles in water. Curiosity was rife about the gypsy; everybody began to recall how they had seen her rambling about Enfield, and what she said to them and what they said to her. She had been prowling about the lanes, trying to cadge a stray penny here or there by telling fortunes or mending china.
She had put Farmer Starr’s wife into a taking. “Don’t be scared at me,” she wheedled, “for I have been before dukes, lords, and earls, and I hurt nobody, madam; I will not hurt you.”
Goody Starr was still not so sure.
Mary Larney the shop-woman was practical about it. The first time the old woman had bought a sup of small beer at her little shop, she had put the money into a pail of water.
“Because,” she told her friends, “I had heard they could get it again.”
The old gypsy was a visitant from another world; but Enfield knew all about Mother Wells. They raked over her past with relish.
It was a past that repaid raking. It had begun, they reminded one another, in harlotry, and progressed to procuring, with a sojourn in Newgate Prison by the way.
There had been a respectable interlude during her marriage with Howit. He was an industrious carpenter; the penthouse had been built on for his workshop. But Howit died too soon, and his widow resumed her downward course with her second husband, Abraham Wells.
Wells ran a butcher-shop and public-house under the sign of the Rising Sun. Regrettable things had a way of happening under the Rising Sun.
It was unfortunate about Thomas Lattimore, for instance, Enfield remembered. Taken up for stealing a little gray horse, he confessed the crime: he had stolen the animal and sold him the same day to Abraham Wells. Wells fobbed off the feeble-minded horse-thief with 6s. 6d., and then got it right back again by selling him 5s. 6d. worth of spirituous liquor. Thus fortified, Lattimore reeled off and gave the odd shilling to Elizabeth Smith to lie with him, and his crowded hour of glorious life was over. They hanged him shortly after.
They hanged a butcher crony of Wells’s, too, for going on the highway. Susannah and Abraham did their best to get him off, by going into the Old Bailey and swearing an alibi. Unfortunately it was a false alibi, and the law found it out. Susannah went to Newgate, and Abraham stood in the pillory. It was their luck, and America’s, that they escaped transportation.
Even after Abraham Wells passed from the scene, there were queer doings at the house by Marsh Lane. Mrs. Wells called it letting lodgings. If a man and a wench had a bed for the night, and went away in the morning, was it any of her business what they did in the interval? She had their money, and they had their fun, and there was an end of the bargain.
There were even darker doings, some said, when a customer arrived unprovided for a night of joy. There was that girl from Edmonton; only last autumn she had had a narrow escape. Being benighted, she had innocently turned in at Wells’s. Before the night was over, there had been a gentleman in a laced waistcoat plying her with wine and solicitations, and the girl was hard beset. When the gentleman gave over, Wells had locked her into the room over the parlour, saying she should either pay for the wine, the supper, and the lodging or do as they did. The girl called from the window, and so obtained release; but it had been a narrow escape.
The present accusation, therefore, did not surprise Enfield at all. They were quite prepared to hear that Susannah Wells was aiding and comforting stays-stealers and imprisoning girls on the premises.
Thomas Bennet, the weaver, had had the bad luck to miss the excitement the day Wells was taken up. He had gone off to put his son apprentice to a butcher. It was not till the next day, the Friday, that he learned about the raid. He met a female friend in the gravel-pit gateway, and she told him how Wells had been taken up for keeping a poor girl prisoner for eight-and-twenty days, who had only escaped on that very Monday and found her way back to her mother’s.
“I will be hanged,” exclaimed Bennet, “if I did not meet the young woman near this very place, and told her the way to London!”
He told how it was:
“I was coming home from my shop near Wells’s house. Between her house and the ten-mile stone, between four and five in the afternoon, there was a miserable poor wretch to look to, in this gravel-pit gateway. She had neither gown nor stays nor cap nor hat on, only a ragged dirty thing, a half-handkerchief like, and a bit of something that reached down below her waist, and no apron on, and her hands lay before her; she was coming in at that gateway. She asked me the way to London; she said she was affrighted by the tanner’s dog. I told her there was no occasion for her to go near the tanner’s dog, for if she turned out of the gate and turned on her right hand, and when she came a little further, turn again on her left, it would lead her into the road to London. If she had not spoke to me, she would have gone the wrong way for London.”
This puzzled the lady a little. The tanner’s was a couple of hundred yards farther down the road, towards London. Why did the girl turn back, if indeed she came from Wells’s? She asked Bennet if he was sure he met this wretched creature on the Monday?
He was sure, right enough. The apprenticing of his son had taken up the last three days. He had seen her the last time he walked home from his shop; and that time was the Monday.
The news of the outrage at Wells’s was spreading in Edmonton, too, from a centre at the Justice’s. Mary Cobb, mantua-maker, of Silver Street, heard the news on that same Friday, February 2.
“On Monday,” she began excitedly. She told all the neighbours what happened on Monday. She didn’t miss a detail:
“On Monday I carried home a little boy’s vest that I had just finished for his mother. She was from home, and I left my errand, and I never stopped or stayed, but came away. It was about five o’clock, as I reckon it, of a cloudy evening, when I came by Duck’s Fields, being the common foot-way by the roadside, near about the seven-mile stone; and there I met her.”
Mrs. Cobb had certain professional advantages over the weaver. She inventoried the wayfarer’s costume with an accustomed eye.
“She had a handkerchief pinned over her head, it almost hid her face; she had a black petticoat, and an old bedgown on; it was either a quilted thing, or it was a printed or flowered thing; the flowers seemed faded. She wrapped her arms in it.
“The first sight I had of her, she was getting over a stile, and looked at me and made a slip, but did not fall. She came up directly towards me and looked at me, and I at her. I thought she would have asked me charity; I put my hand into my pocket and had no halfpence. I had a mind to have spoke to her; but having nothing to give her, I did not.”
Everyone thought this a great pity.
“I perceived her to have a young face; she looked very dismal and black, in a dirty way. She appeared to be in a very wretched, miserable condition, as ever I saw a person in all my life. She walked creeping along. I could not tell what to make of it, whether she was afraid of me, or what.”
“When was this?” asked someone.
“On Monday.”
Monday was the day of Elizabeth’s return.
“Ah,” said some misinformed wiseacre, “then it cannot have been the girl from Wells’s, for she escaped on the Thursday. Are you sure this wasn’t Thursday?”
But Mrs. Cobb knew it was Monday. She was very disappointed.
[ #4 ]
At noon on Wednesday, February 7, a sedan-chair turned into Bow Street. It was a hackney-chair, plain and unornamented—no Cupids, no gilded borders, no silken linings; and the stalwarts who supported the shafts were no powdered lackeys in brocade, but nondescript fellows unbuttoned as to vest, unbuckled as to knee. But it was the first time Elizabeth Canning had touched so much luxury as to ride in a sedan-chair. She leaned half-fainting against the cushions. A delegation from Aldermanbury followed along behind. They were led by Elizabeth’s new lawyer, Mr. Solicitor Salt.
At Number 4 Bow Street the bearers set down their burden. A dozen hands opened the half-door and lifted Elizabeth out. Mr. Salt superintended operations as Mr. Wintlebury and Mr. Scarrat supported little Bet Canning up the steep stair and into the presence of Justice Henry Fielding.
The great Middlesex magistrate looked worn. His legs were bandaged to the knee against the gout. But his quick sympathy was as lively as ever. He looked at the pathetic little thing before him, white and weak and thin, and his blood boiled to see such innocence so evidently maltreated.
Solicitor Salt bustled forward. The information was ready. Justice Fielding need not trouble himself to question the girl; here was her story all drawn up from her own lips, in best legal form; she had only to swear to it. They read it over before her.
Elizabeth had recalled very little more to tell her solicitor. Her statement described the ruffians of Moorfields: they had brown bob-wigs on, and drab-coloured greatcoats. They robbed her before Bedlam Gate, then dragged her up the gravel walk. Half-way up they gave her the blow that threw her into a fit. It was four o’clock, she had heard somebody say, when they dragged her into the house. There she saw an old gypsy woman, who took a knife out of a drawer and cut the lace of her stays; “and one of the said men,” the account ran, “took off her cap, and then the said two men went away with it.” Her statement did not omit the black jug, and the hay, and the several pieces of bread on the floor.
“And this Informant saith, That on Friday, the twenty-sixth day of January last past, she, this Informant, had consumed all the aforesaid Bread and Water, and continued without having any Thing to eat, or drink, until the Monday following, when she, this Informant, being almost famished with Hunger, and starved with Cold, and almost naked during the whole Time of her Confinement, about Half-an-hour after Four in the Afternoon of the said twenty-ninth Day of January, broke out at a Window of the said Room, or Place, and got to her Friends in London.…”
Elizabeth raised her pale little hand and swore that it was all true. Then she took the pen and signed. She did not sign her full name, but neither did she mark the paper with a cross, for she could write a little. She marked her initials:
THE MARK OF
E C
ELIZABETH CANNING
Then Fielding signed in his turn, and the formalities were completed. It only remained for Fielding to issue a warrant for apprehending all the rest of the inmates of Wells’s house, those whom Tyshmaker had seen fit to set at liberty, as idle and disorderly persons and persons of evil fame.
Once more the friends of Canning went down to Enfield Wash with a warrant. The gypsies were gone; but they took up Virtue Hall and Judith Natus. They carried the two women straight to Bow Street and sent up a message that Virtue Hall would confess the whole matter.
Fielding looked curiously at Virtue. She was a squatty little chit, and her queer little face was not improved by being smeared with tears. She was trembling all over.
“Child,” said the magistrate soothingly, “you need not be under this fear and apprehension; if you will tell us the whole truth of this affair, I give you my word and honour, as far as it is in my power, to protect you; you shall come to no manner of harm.”
“I will, I will tell the whole truth,” snivelled out the terrified girl, “but, pray, give me a moment or two to recover from my fright.”
“A chair,” ordered Fielding. “Pray, child, sit down.”
After a few minutes Virtue began to falter out the story of how Elizabeth Canning was brought to Enfield Wash and what happened to her there.
The story satisfied nobody. It did not jibe with Elizabeth’s, and when they questioned her, contradictions and prevarications multiplied. Mr. Justice Fielding was exasperated.
“I will examine you no longer,” he cried, “I will commit you to prison and leave you to stand or fall by the evidence against you.”
Virtue Hall began to cry again.
“Mr. Salt,” continued the magistrate solemnly, “I advise you to prosecute this woman as a felon, together with the gypsy woman.”
Virtue let out a howl of terror.
“Pray, pray, sir,” she begged, “pray hear me once more; indeed, I will tell the truth. I had done so before, but for my fears of the gypsy woman and Wells.”
Her answers to the next few questions pleased Fielding better; but he could see that Solicitor Salt’s plan with Elizabeth was much better for a busy magistrate. He recommended it for this case also.
“Pray, Mr. Salt,” he suggested, “take this girl aside and take her information in writing.”
Salt was nothing loath.
“Be a good girl,” added Fielding to Virtue, “and be sure to say neither more nor less than the whole truth.”
“Yes, sir,” said Virtue Hall, and stepped aside with Canning’s solicitor.
It took Mr. Salt a long time to deal with Virtue Hall. He was assisted by some ten or a dozen men of the law who were lounging in the anteroom, gentlemen who were less politely referred to later as thief-takers, Newgate solicitors, and others of the same stamp. They listened with great interest and sometimes took a voice in the proceedings. The Bow Street runners, booted and spurred and ready to ride, found life dull in the intervals of waiting and were glad of any diversion that arose.
Virtue had been in Bow Street six hours, and midnight had struck, when Mr. Salt returned to the presence of the magistrate. He had a confession drawn, and Virtue ready to sign it. I would give a good deal for a sight of that document, sweated out in the magistrate’s anteroom by candle light, with the solicitor’s quill scratching, and the Bow Street runners talking to the scared little whore about hell and Newgate. It was never made public. The solicitor later drew up another one which he liked better; that was the one he gave to the world.
Then it was Judith Natus’s turn. Fielding stared at her. He took her for a gypsy. She faced him defiantly.
“I and my husband,” she declared, “lay in the same room where Elizabeth Canning pretends to have been confined, during the whole time of her pretended confinement. I have never seen or heard of any such person as Elizabeth Canning in Wells’s house.”
“A lie,” cried Virtue Hall; “these two persons were introduced into that room, to lie there, by Mother Wells, to give colour to the defence which Wells was to make. In my presence they agreed to swear to it.”
“Perjury!” cried the friends of Canning; “let her be indicted for perjury!”
“Not so,” said Fielding regretfully; “such a proceeding would be contrary to law, for I might as well commit Virtue Hall on the evidence of Judith Natus.”
The little woman laughed.
“You,” said Fielding to her sternly, “had better be very sure of the truth of what you say, if you intend to give that evidence at the Old Bailey.”
Judith looked frightened. She scuttled off in a hurry when he discharged her. Nobody in Bow Street cared; she was no use to them.
Virtue Hall, on the other hand, they were prepared to guard like a jewel. Justice Fielding made sure of her by committing her to the care of Keeper Salt at the Gatehouse prison. This was handy for Mr. Solicitor Salt, since Keeper Salt was his brother.
The friends of Canning arranged to supply the wench as long as she was in the Gatehouse. Keeper Salt would see that she was provided, at their expense, with everything she needed. He would also see that she was available for interviewing by the friends of Canning.
Edward Rossiter, the baker, made a holiday of it. He carried his wife and a friend of hers down to the Gatehouse the next Sunday to interview the tart from the Wash. They drank tea together. Virtue was garrulous.
“Though I am in gaol,” she said unctuously, “I am like as if I was in heaven to what I was before I discovered the truth to Mr. Fielding.”
The Rossiters thought this a very proper sentiment. The chatty Virtue told them a lot of other interesting things, which Mr. Rossiter stored up in his memory for future use.
Virtue was very useful to the Canning cause. The first use Canning’s managers put her to was in a publicity way, to help raise the funds they would need for prosecuting the wicked old women of Enfield Wash.
Her confession pointed up the very moving broadside Case of Elizabeth Canning, which they distributed to every coffee-house. The old gentleman under the clock at Batson’s was touched to the heart by their vivid description of Bet’s scrambled inner economy; he and hundreds like him showered down copper and silver on the coffee-bars.
The case reached into purses as far off as Enfield; Mr. Aldridge, the silversmith, carried down a pocketful of dodgers when he visited his cousin the wheelwright. He came back with welcome news.
“Mr. Lyon,” wrote Gawen Nash painfully in a hand more accustomed to reckoning finjans of coffee, “I am informed by Mr. ALDRIDG whoe has been att Enfield that if a person appointed their to recivvive contribution some money would be raised in that place for the unhapy poor girl. I WISH YOU SUCCESS, and am yours Gawen Nash Feb. 10, 1753.”
Whatever doubts Mr. Nash and Mr. Aldridge had experienced in the loft at Enfield, now they had been washed away in the tidal wave of public enthusiasm for the chaste heroine of Aldermanbury Postern.
[ #6 ]
The waters of sentimental approval soon touched St. James’s. Justice Fielding had many fashionable friends in St. James’s. These exquisites were inveterate habitués of the courts, thinking them an improvement over Drury Lane or Ranelagh, and even over Bedlam, for entertainment. They felt cheated to think that they had missed the debut of Virtue Hall, and called for a repetition of the performance.
It happened that a second performance was in prospect. Mr. Salt was not entirely satisfied with the confession that Virtue Hall had sworn to on that weary midnight. He had drawn it up hastily; as a legal document, in his opinion, it left much to be desired. He was engaged in drawing up a better one at his leisure. When it was ready, the noble and gentle curiosity-seekers might see Virtue sign it.
Mr. Salt collected a full cast. Elizabeth came supported by her friends. Warrants brought the villains of the piece from Clerkenwell and the informer from the Gatehouse.
At the time appointed—it happened to be St. Valentine’s Day—the eager ladies and gentlemen of fashion trooped to Bow Street. The gilded coaches and silk-padded sedan-chairs jostled one another in the muddy street. In a cloud of otto the macaronis and their toasts trooped up the narrow stair. There was a rustling of taffety undercoats and a great display of ruffles and clouded canes as the audience settled down in the public room and the command performance started.
The appearance of the protagonists brought out the quizzing-glasses. They inventoried the pale little victim, the queer face of Virtue Hall, the sullen wrinkles of old Mother Wells. They stared in amazement at the face of Mary Squires, the most grotesque phiz they had ever seen, with its prodigious lower lip marred by the hideous purple-black scars of the King’s evil. Lady Fanny Killigrew sketched the gargoyle countenance.
Elizabeth Canning opened the performance. She was still pale and weak and plainly dressed; but already she was beginning to display a very promising talent for public appearances. Her composure was unshakable, her behaviour modest and open. Mayfair found her very appealing.
Her part was far from difficult. Mr. Fielding’s clerk droned out her statement, and Elizabeth lifted her little hand and swore that all was true.
Her performance was a great success. Solicitor Salt supported her to a chair amid murmurs of approbation and growls of indignation.
Then Virtue Hall was led forward. The clerk loosened the tapes on Mr. Salt’s second legal document and read it out:
“This Informant upon her Oath saith, That on Tuesday the second Day of January last past, about four of the Clock in the Morning, a young Woman, whose Name this Informant hath since heard is Elizabeth Canning, was brought (without any Gown, Hat, or Apron on) to the House of one Susannah Wells of Enfield Wash, Widow, by two Men, the Name of one of whom is John Squires, the reputed Son of one Mary Squires, an old Gipsy Woman, who then, and some little Time before, had lodged at the House of the said Susannah Wells, but the Name of the other of the said two Men this Informant knows not, she this Informant never having seen him before or since to the best of her Knowledge.
“And this Informant saith, That when she the said Elizabeth Canning was brought into the Kitchen of the said Wells’s House, there were present the said Mary Squires, John Squires, the Man unknown, Katharine Squires, the reputed Daughter of the said Mary Squires, and this Informant; and this Informant does not recollect that any one else was in the said Kitchen at that time:
“And saith, that immediately upon her the said Elizabeth Canning’s being brought in …
In spite of the circuitous legal phraseology, the scene in the bawdy-house kitchen began to take form for the listening beaux and belles, as seen through the eyes of Virtue Hall.
“Here, Mother, take this girl,” were the first words of the gypsy man on that occasion.
“Where,” inquired Mary Squires, “have you brought her from?”
“From Moorfields; we have taken her gown, apron, hat, and half a guinea from her.”
Now the old woman took Elizabeth Canning by the hand.
“Will you go our way?”
“No.”
No argument. The old woman whipped out the knife from the dresser drawer, cut the girl’s stay-lace, and hung the stays on the back of a chair. Immediately after, the unknown man took the cap off Elizabeth’s head, “and then he, with the said John Squires, went out of doors with it.”
Now the old crone was pushing Elizabeth Canning along the kitchen and up the stairs, when she was interrupted by the arrival of Susannah Wells, who had been sitting alone in the parlour.
“What,” inquired the mistress of the house with not unnatural curiosity, “are you going to push the girl upstairs for?”
“What is that to you?” was the old gypsy’s reply. “You have no business with it.”
Susannah Wells went back to the parlour directly.
Elizabeth’s statement had not reported the intervention of Susannah Wells. It was a new and titillating detail.
“And this Informant saith, That the said Mary Squires forced the said Elizabeth Canning up Stairs into the said Workshop, and buttoned the Door at the Bottom of the Stairs in the Kitchen upon her, and confined her there.”
There was a growl; the fashionable audience glowered anew at the impassive old crone.
About two hours after, the statement went on, somebody carried up a quantity of water in an old open-mouthed large black jug and set it on the floor by the stairs.
Now Virtue’s statement went on to tell what happened next, things that Elizabeth and her solicitor could not have known. First, back came John Squires, alone, and carried off the stays. Susannah Wells stayed in the parlour. About an hour later John Squires came back and conferred with her there. When he came back into the kitchen, Virtue went to the parlour.
“Virtue,” the old bawd greeted her, “the gypsy man has been telling me that his mother has cut the girl’s stays off her back, and that he has got them. I desire you will not make a clack of it, for fear it should be blown.”
From this time, recited Virtue, Elizabeth Canning was forgotten in the household; she was not missed or discovered to have escaped until Wednesday, January 31. It was Virtue who first missed her.
“And this Informant saith, That the said Susannah Wells harboured and continued the said Mary Squires in her aforesaid House … untill Thursday the first Day of February last past, when the said Susannah Wells, Sarah her Daughter, Mary Squires, John Squires, his two Sisters Katharine and Mary Squires, Fortune Natus and Sarah his Wife, and this Informant, were apprehended on Account thereof.…
“And this Informant saith, That Fortune Natus and Sarah his Wife, to the best of this Informant’s Recollection and Belief, have lodged in the House of the said Susannah Wells about eleven Weeks, and layed on a Bed of Hay spread in the Kitchen at Night, which was in the Day-time pushed up in a Corner thereof, and continued lying there, when at Home, untill Thursday the said first Day of February … and then that Evening the said Fortune Natus and Sarah his Wife laid up in the said Workshop where the said Elizabeth Canning had been confined, so that, as this Informant understood, it might be pretended that they had lain in the said Workshop for all the Time they had lodged in the said Susannah Wells’s House. And saith, That on the Day on which it was discovered that the said Elizabeth Canning had made her Escape out of the said Workshop, by breaking down some Boards slightly affixed across the Window-place, the said Sarah, Daughter of the said Susannah Wells, nailed up the said Window-place again with Boards, so that the said Window-place might not appear to have been broke open.”
The record of iniquity came to an end. The stubby little trollop swore to the document and scratched a cross in the place they pointed to. She had not Elizabeth’s stage presence, but in a supporting role she acquitted herself satisfactorily.
Picking up his cue, Justice Fielding then asked the accused women a few questions. They said they were innocent. They said it was all lies. They appealed to Heaven. Nobody was convinced. Finally Justice Fielding brought down the curtain by committing them both to Newgate, the main London prison, instead of the Middlesex institutions on Clerkenwell Green to which Justice Tyshmaker had sent them. There they would remain pending the action of the grand jury.
“Damn the young bitch!” muttered the badgered old gypsy darkly as they led her away.
Mayfair was enchanted with the Aldermanbury heroine. They thought she ought to be rewarded for her chastity.
The Aldermanbury men thought so too. They rushed before the public with new appeals. “Any Sum,” they cried, “however so small, would be very acceptable, and be either applied to the carrying on the Prosecution, or given to the poor Girl as a Recompence for her Virtue, and Miseries she had gone through.”
On their part, they were prepared to pay ten pounds for the arrest of George Squires, now impeached by Virtue, over and above the very considerable rewards for taking highwaymen and street robbers.
Squires was not captured. He had taken wing, no one knew whither, and he did not return till it suited him.
On February 19 the friends of Elizabeth had the satisfaction, though George had eluded them, of seeing his mother indicted, along with Susannah Wells, for her part in the outrage on Elizabeth Canning. They would be tried that very same week at the Old Bailey.