“We Shall Call Our Witnesses, and If We Prove Her Guilty, You Will Find Her So”
April 29–May 3, 1754
[ #1 ]
FIRST DAY
“This story,” cried Mr. Willes, counsel for the Crown, “is all of a piece, it is all witchcraft and enchantment!”
Half the courtroom burst into a guffaw.
It was the morning of Monday, April 29, 1754. The justice-hall at the Old Bailey was packed to suffocation, for the prisoner at the bar was the most notorious woman in London. She stood impassively in the dock, small and pink, and the gentlefolk in the galleries and the citizens on the herb-strewn floor stared at her, some with cynicism, some with pity, all with avidity, as the lawyers for the Crown opened the case against her.
It was Mr. Willes’s function to be merry at the expense of Elizabeth Canning’s ridiculous tale, “which,” cried he, “is as it were felo de se!”
“The two ruffians to continue with her half an hour in so public a place as Moorfields,” scoffed Willes, “and yet when she screamed out, for nobody to hear her! If their purpose was only to add this poor girl to the herd of wicked wretches at Mother Wells’s, what reason was there to begin their seducement with a robbery? Mother Wells might soon have made herself Canning’s cash-keeper, without the aid of a blow, or the terrors of a case-knife.
“Her fit likewise is of the marvellous kind; it continued on her near six hours; went away in an instant; and though she was used to have fits on any fright, yet she never had another during her long and terrifying confinement. How amazing is this! What! A girl used to fits on frights not have a fit for a month together, when she might naturally expect, during all that time, every next minute would be her last!
“But let us now follow this wonderful girl to Enfield. Is it credible, on her coming hither, that the gypsy, an artful procuress, hackneyed in the ways of women, should only slightly ask her to go their way, and, because she faintly said no, should give over all further attempts? Was this acting like the president or lady abbess of such a house as Mother Wells’s? Was this any proper trial of the prisoner’s virtue? I hope, for the honour of the female sex, that there hardly ever was a young woman not above eighteen years of age who did not say no once at least, especially,” sniggered Mr. Willes, “especially if solicited by an ugly, old, decrepit hag.
“This bread and water—was the twenty-fourth part of a sixpenny loaf a day sufficient to satisfy her hunger? If not, why should she defer the immediate gratification of her appetite in order to make provision for a precarious, uncertain future? Shall we suppose some revelation from above in favour of one of the faithful? Perhaps an angel from heaven appeared to this mirror of modern virtue and informed her, if she eat above one piece of bread a day, her small pittance would not last her till the time she was to make her escape. Her mother, we know, is a very enthusiastical woman; a consulter of conjurers; a dreamer of dreams; perhaps the daughter dreamed also what was to happen, and so, in obedience to her vision, would not eat when she was hungry, nor drink when she was thirsty.
“But another thing; how came she to make her escape so easily at last, and yet never before once attempt it? This room, what was it but a weak erection of lath and plaister? Cracks and crannies innumerable in the sides of it, and the whole building so slight that a boy of ten years old might in an hour’s time have demolished any part of it. And yet in this cage, with the door open, was this extraordinary girl confined for a month, without once trying to get out. Maybe the gypsy had put a spell upon her!”
This was good for another laugh. Foremost among the spectators, Sir Crisp Gascoyne shook his sides. On the bench the Recorder permitted himself a sour smile. The foreman of the jury sniggered openly, and leered at Elizabeth. Someone who knew him had sent a warning about him to Elizabeth’s counsel: he had been damning the girl for a lying bitch, a cheat, and an impostor. But Elizabeth’s newest man of law, like the others before him, could not bestir himself in time. The man was sworn before he got there.
The addresses of the other two counsel for the Crown were more business-like. The indictment was boiled down and clarified by junior counsel, Mr. Bamber Gascoyne, Sir Crisp’s oldest son:
“To this, gentlemen,” concluded the young man briskly, “the prisoner has pleaded not guilty; we shall call our witnesses, and if we prove her guilty, you will find her so.”
William Davy, the ex-grocer of Exeter, eyed the girl in the dock grimly. She should not make a fool of him a second time. He went straight to the heart of the matter, the alibi of the gypsy.
“It happened that in the latter end of the year 1752 this gypsy, with her son and her daughter Lucy, travelled on foot into the west of England with smuggled goods, such as they meet with in seaport towns, and sell again to people in the country. The material questions with respect to these people will be, where were they upon the 1st and 2nd of January 1753? And when did they arrive at Enfield Wash?
“In order to give you the clearest satisfaction in this matter, it will be necessary to go a little farther back than the 1st of January, and trace them down to the time of their being apprehended on the 1st of February.”
In the dock Elizabeth Canning shifted her feet wearily. She had been standing at the bar for a long time, listening to the men of the law call her names. Someone whispered to the judge. He nodded, and a chair was passed up to the girl. The transaction was not so closely observed as her motions usually were, for simultaneously a little cortège of five people entered the judgment hall. Two men were carrying in old Mary Squires, ensconced in an armchair and attended by George and Lucy. Everybody stared at the second most notorious woman in London. She was dressed in a stuff gown, having a white whittle or shawl over her shoulders, a white napkin pinned over her head, and a black bonnet on. She seemed sick and faint, her old head trembling. Lucy held her mother’s hand. Her pretty, dark face was almost hidden in the depths of a capuchin hood. George was decent in his blue-gray suit and brown bob-wig.
The procession of witnesses began with two countrywomen from Dorset. The crowd paid them scant heed; they were waiting to hear from the gypsies.
The gypsies, on the other hand, listened to their witnesses attentively. Watching from the counsel table, Elizabeth’s lawyers noticed how attentively they listened. Mr. Morton remonstrated; George and Lucy ought not to be there listening before they had testified. Mr. Davy saw the point at once; he sent Lucy out, and put George on the stand.
Mr. Davy took George in hand himself. Unfortunately he got off on the wrong foot and impaired the credit of his own witness before he started. He asked where George had been on that Christmas more than a year ago. George did not know. Davy tried to help him:
“Were you ever in South Parrot?”
This brought George on familiar ground. He remembered South Parrot, he remembered the date, December 29, 1752, because “it was after New Christmas, that made me take an account of it.…
“I put up at the sign of the Red Lion, to the best of my knowledge; her name is Hopkins; I have been there since, we stayed but one night.”
The Hopkins woman had already been on the stand and testified so much. She had been certain of the old woman and George, less certain of Lucy; and she remembered an odd bit of information they imparted to her. She asked them what they sold, and they said hardware.
“What,” Mr. Davy was pressing forward, “was the last village you came from, when you came to South Parrot?”
“I cannot recollect it,” mumbled the gypsy man.
“Where did you lie the night before you came to South Parrot?”
“I cannot tell the place’s name.”
The significance of this colloquy has escaped notice. It soon became apparent that, with one strange gap, George Squires was able to rattle off where they had been on December 29, December 30, December 31, January 1, 2, 3, 4, and so on, to the day when they arrived at Enfield Wash; but it was useless to ask him where he had been on December 28, December 27, or any earlier day, for he simply could not tell. Everybody agreed that he remembered the route from South Parrot on, because he covered it five times afterwards, in the under-sheriff’s post-chaise. The defence, of course, was quick to see in the earlier gaps in memory proof that the alibi was a lie, imperfectly memorized.
But the strange thing is that the gypsy’s own counsel, the famed trial lawyer, was the one who asked him those questions that he could not answer. Davy had been the Squireses’ lawyer from the first; he certainly did not ask out of ignorance. He must have thought that George knew the answers; he must have sincerely believed that his alibi was the truth.
Evidence was already before the court tending to show where the Squireses came from on that Friday before New Year’s Day. It escaped notice then and has done so ever since, because it came out before the question was raised. When the gypsies left the Red Lion on Saturday morning to walk to Abbotsbury, they paused for refreshment along the road at the Three Horseshoes; the girl from the inn was in court to testify to their presence. Had she seen them before, she was asked. Here is her answer: “I was coming out of South Parrot on the Friday night, and met them as they were going in, and the next morning they came to my house.”
If the inn girl came out of South Parrot, heading for home—that is, in the direction of Abbotsbury—and met the gypsies as they came towards her, making for South Parrot, then the gypsies came from the direction of Abbotsbury.
Mr. Davy did not linger to make any such deduction, but led George quickly along the route he remembered:
“I lay at Litton on the Saturday, and left my sister and mother there on the Sunday morning, and went to Abbotsbury. Mr. Clarke had then a good regard for my sister Lucy; he was a sweetheart of hers, and she of his; I went to him at Abbotsbury, and lay at Gibbons’s house one night; then in the morning, which was on a Monday the 1st of January, Clarke and I went to Litton; there we dined upon two fowls which I bought. My mother was surprised at my staying all night at Abbotsbury, and she went in pretence to see what was the matter with me, thinking I was sick; there she heard I was gone with Clarke to Litton, and she came back again to Litton before we had dined. It is three or four miles. After dinner my mother, sister, Clarke, and I walked to Abbotsbury, and we danced there that night in Mr. Gibbons’s parlour; he keeps the sign of the Ship. There were a great many of my acquaintance; I can’t call them all to mind; there was Mr. Wallace, a shopkeeper, and Mr. Bond, a schoolmaster, he got fuddled that night; Mr. Wallace generally drinks cider, he came in for a penny pot of cider. I danced with Gibbons’s sister, and Mr. Clarke with my sister Lucy; we danced country dances till about eleven or twelve at night; we danced several nights there after the first night.”
Sitting among the spectators, Sir Crisp Gascoyne nodded with satisfaction; Melchizedeck, the fiddler, had long since told him about the dancing and was here to corroborate this part of the gypsy’s account.
“How long,” Davy prompted his client, “did you continue at Abbotsbury?”
“We came there on the 1st of January, and went away on the 9th; and when we went away, Mr. Clarke went with us to a little village they called Portersham—” he pronounced it Possum—” about a mile or a mile and a half from thence.”
“What house did you go to at Portersham?”
“To the best of my knowledge, it was the Chequer, an alehouse; it is on the left hand going down the village; we lay there, Mr. Clarke lay with me, and we all went the next day to Ridgway, which was Wednesday the 10th, which is about five or six miles from Abbotsbury; we breakfasted there the next morning, and, to the best of my knowledge, went from thence about eight or nine o’clock. There was a dead horse, and a man skinning him as we came by; and I left a piece of nankeen, about three yards and a quarter, for my reckoning with my landlord. I was afraid that silver would fall short, before I came home, and desired he would take that till I fetched it. My mother, sister, and I went from Ridgway to Dorchester on Thursday the 11th, which is about three miles’ distance; we did not lie there, but went forward almost all night; for we had received a letter from my sister Mary, who was at London, that she was extremely ill, and desired us to come home as soon as possible. There was a very great water out at Dorchester, and the miller’s man carried my sister Lucy over it on horseback, behind him; for which I told him I’d give him a pint of beer; and I took my mother, and carried her on my back through the water; there is a mill just by the place; my sister stayed till we came to her, then we all three walked on together. The next day we got to a place called Tawney-Down, and we went into a little alehouse on the road, and had some bread and cheese, and a pint of beer; we lay at a place called Chettle that night, which was the Friday. We got there in the evening; my mother was very weary, and I asked a shepherd on the Downs for an alehouse, and he said there was never a one to Chettle. On the Saturday we went from thence to Martin; there I asked for an alehouse for lodging, and could get none; so a gentleman let us lie in his barn. We went from thence to Coombe on the Sunday night, to the house of Widow Greville; her son Thomas Greville is dead of the smallpox.”
“When did you leave Coombe?”
“We left that on the Monday, but I can’t recollect where we lay.”
“Where did you lie on the 15th?”
“I cannot tell—I went to Basingstoke on the Tuesday, I think.”
The Tuesday was the 16th; that meant that George had walked forty miles in two days. Mr. Davy shook his head.
“Recollect again.”
“I cannot recollect it.”
It was no use; George could not be made to recall whither he had wandered or where he had lain on a four-day ramble from Coombe to Basingstoke. Davy gave it up.
“Where did you put up at Basingstoke?”
“At the Spread Eagle; a widow woman keeps it; she wrote a letter for my sister Lucy to Mr. Clarke. We did not lie at the Spread Eagle, we could not have lodging there; but she directed us about a mile and a half farther on our way to London, it is called Old Basing, it is a little out of the way.”
“Where did you go the next day?”
“We went, I believe, to Bagshot, and lay at the Greyhound there; and on the Saturday we went to Brentford, to the house of Mrs. Edwards; I lay there one night, and on Sunday I went to London to look after sister Mary; I stayed there one night, and the next day, which was on a Monday, I brought my sister Mary to Lucy and my mother at Brentford; we all stayed there till Tuesday; we all left Brentford on the Tuesday, and went to the Seven Sisters by Tottenham, to the sign of the Two Brewers. Then we went to Mrs. Wells’s house; this was on a Wednesday.”
“How came you to go there?”
“I was recommended to her house for a lodging; they said she was a very civil woman: I never saw her in my life before this time, if I was to be racked to death. There is an acquaintance of mine that owed me seven pounds fifteen shillings in London, and I went there to stay till I could receive it, to Mrs. Wells’s house.
“We went to a woman’s house who sells pease soup at Edmonton; we would have lodged there; but my mother wanted to wash, and the woman said that was not customary, so she recommended us farther to a place called Cheshunt; upon that we went to Mrs. Wells’s house, being recommended there by Mrs. Long’s daughter. I left my mother and two sisters at Mrs. Wells’s house, and went to London to receive my money about two or three days after we got there; I lay in London one night, and came back the next day, and we all remained there till we were taken up.”
Now Mr. Davy pointed at Elizabeth Canning. George looked at her, and she looked back at him impassively.
“Did you see this young woman at the bar when you were there?”
“No, I did not; I never saw her before we were taken up in my life, if I was to be racked to death; I’ll stand with a sword put to my heart, if ever I saw her till she came in the chaise; we came there on a Wednesday, and at the end of a week and a day my mother was taken up.”
Mr. Davy sat down, and Mr. Morton rose to cross-examine. Rabid Canningites have set Mr. Morton down as stupid. Mr. Morton was not stupid. He certainly took things easy, perhaps a little too easy; but the omissions in his brief were not his fault. He had a habit of asking humorous questions with an innocent face. He faced George Squires blandly, notes in hand.
“At setting out on your examination, you said you could not tell where you were at Christmas.”
George admitted it. In answer to questions, he traced his progress as best he could—which was very badly—from the time he left his home in Newington Butts:
“I went from thence, as near as I can guess, about seven or eight weeks before Michaelmas.” He was heading for Hampshire—or Somersetshire—or Dorsetshire, said the gypsy man vaguely.
“Where did you leave your sister Mary, when you set out?”
“She was with a particular acquaintance, with Mrs. Squires’s brother-in-law; I left her in Kent; Mrs. Squires in the Borough has a brother, and his wife was very ill, and I left my sister Mary with her, to do what was in her power for her; they sell goods in the country, and travel about as we do.”
“At what house, or in what town, did you leave her?”
“I had not a thought,” said the confused gypsy man, “of being called to such questions as these.”
“I shall ask you a great many questions you have not heard yet,” said the satisfied Morton, and pressed him: “Can you give me any answer, at what house, or what town, you left your sister Mary?”
The gypsy man wrestled with his memory.
“Were your mother and sister with you when you parted with her?”
“It was in Kent,” recalled the gypsy man slowly, “we were all three together; I don’t know at what town, or whose house; when I left my lodgings, I went into Kent, and happened to meet with them” (the brother-in-law’s family, not Mary and Lucy).
Then came the questions that George Squires could not answer: Name the first great town that you went through in Kent—Can you tell the name of any town you went through between Lewes and Salisbury?—Were you at Crookherne? The gypsy man had to cry for mercy:
“Really, sir, I hope you will excuse me, be pleased to excuse me; I cannot tell indeed; please to excuse me.”
Morton had no mercy:
“Tell me the sign of an inn where you lay at beyond Shaftesbury, whether it was a fox, a goose, a dog, or a pair of compasses?”
“I don’t know the sign of any place,” replied the sweating gypsy man, “where I lay at, because it is so long ago.”
“You remember the other places,” said Morton gently, “very well?”
“That is because I have been there since.”
“Now,” said Morton with glee, “we shall be a little better acquainted; we bring you now to South Parrot.”
He began to attack another vulnerable point, the shaky old woman’s ten-mile walk, from Litton to Abbotsbury and back again, on December 31.
“What time did she come back to Litton?”
“Betwixt two and three o’clock, and dined with us, and walked with us to Abbotsbury that night.”
“What time did you all set out from Litton to go to Abbotsbury?”
“We set out between three and four in the afternoon.”
“Was it dark?”
“It was quite dark.”
Then Morton, a thorough man, took up the gypsy menu.
“Where did you buy the two fowls?”
“I bought them of one Mrs. Turner; I made a cludation [conclusion?] for the feathers, she said she would have the feathers.”
“You lived well,” said Mr. Morton cordially, “I should think two fowls a very remarkable dinner for three gypsies.”
“Fowls are bought there for sixpence apiece,” explained the gypsy, “it is cheaper than beef or mutton; that I have very often.”
“I hope,” remarked Mr. Morton, and looked at the jury, “I hope you always buy them?”
George Squires said that he did; but the effect was made.
Now Morton looked into the finances of the trip.
“You had taken a little money?”
“I had, and owed some, and returned it to London.”
“To whom?”
This proved a sticker. George boggled over it for a good while. Finally he produced the name of his creditor, one Mr. Norman, a tide-waiter (a customs official).
“Where is Mr. Norman, is he here in court?”
“No, sir, he is dead.”
“From what place did you return the money?”
“I cannot name the place.”
“When you left this piece of nankeen in pawn, because you were afraid you should want money, pray how much money had you then?”
“I had borrowed some of Mr. Clarke, and had some of my own.”
“Tell us this one thing,” said Mr. Morton persuasively, “that as Mr. Clarke was so much your friend, and your sister’s friend, why did he not pay your reckoning, and save your nankeen, that you might make your money of it?”
“He offered it,” said the gypsy man, “but I was so kind I would not let him.”
“Where did you receive the news of your sister Mary’s illness?”
“It came by the post,” puzzled the gypsy man, “sure it must.”
“Upon your oath, did you leave any directions with her to write to you in the country?”
“Yes, and I had a letter she was ill; I had it first by a letter.”
“Was it after you left Abbotsbury you received the letter?”
“I cannot say that.”
“Then, if you received it before you came there, or at the place, it is strange,” cried Mr. Morton, “that you should stay dancing there!”
“I will not swear,” muttered the witness miserably, “I received it before we came there, or not.”
“How far,” pursued Mr. Morton, “after you set out from Ridgway, where the dead horse was, might you walk with that old woman, that day and night after you had received an account of your sister Mary’s illness?”
This question is curious. It looks as if Morton really had no doubt in his mind as to when and where George Squires had received Mary’s letter. It was common knowledge that the nearest post-house for Abbotsbury was at Dorchester.
“She got no farther than Chettle,” Squires answered the question deprecatingly. He need not have apologized; twenty-six miles in two days was lively stepping for anyone.
“Where did you go,” the cross-examination went on, “to find your sister Mary?”
“To a relation’s of mine, who belongs to the customs, named Samuel Squires; he lives down in White Hart Yard.”
“How came you to go through London, and not to your lodgings?”
“Because I owed a sum of money, and was afraid of being arrested, and wanted to see Mr. Squires, who lived in the neighbourhood, to make it up for me.”
The gypsy man mopped his brow; he had been a long two hours on the stand.
“If,” said Mr. Morton, and again he looked at the jury, “if you ever did go this journey, be positive with yourself whether it was in the year 1752.”
“Yes, sir; I am sure it was then, and not at any other time.”
George Squires stood down with a sigh. Mr. Davy glared at him.
“We will not call Lucy, the sister,” he said, “she is rather more stupid than her brother; but we will call Mr. Willis, who went with George Squires about the country.”
There was a hot little argument whether Mr. Willis would be called. Mr. Morton wanted a chance at Lucy instead. There was a slight pause in the proceedings while the lawyers wrangled. It ended when the court ruled Mr. Willis out. Then Mr. Davy, being determined not to call Lucy, brought her back from the anteroom, and called the first of a group of rustics from Litton. At Litton the gypsies had put up at James Hawkins’s house; it was New Year’s Eve, and every merry-maker that used the house remembered their presence.
“We generally ring-in the new year,” said the Litton gardener. “I went to ring a peal, and the people of the parish gave us some liquor—that is, some ale and some cider—to drink; we concluded to go to the alehouse with our jug of cider that was given to us, to have something put into it; we went to Hawkins’s; the old woman sat there; I sat down close by her, and asked her if she could tell fortunes. She said no, she was no fortune-teller. I asked her if she could talk Spanish, and said I thought I had seen her abroad, somewhere or other; she said she could not. I asked her if she could talk Portuguese. She said no. Nor Dutch? No; she said she knew what I said, but could not answer me. Upon this, an old gentleman said: ‘You must cant to her, talk gypsy to her, and she’ll answer you.’ Then I said: ‘You are one of the family of scamps.’”
Scamp was cant for highway robber. Mary Squires understood it; but there was a young bumpkin there who did not; he took it for a family name.
“She said,” the gardener concluded, “‘No, I am no scamp’; and a young man in the room said her name was Squires.”
“We rang a peal,” a second bell-ringer contributed, “and in the morning concluded to go to a public-house to drink together; there we saw the old woman sitting smoking her pipe; I was there two hours, and then I was called away to go fox-hunting.”
The bell-ringer saw the old woman, not in the kitchen, but in a new apartment. The landlord remembered that circumstance also, and by it he was sure of the date, “by reason I made a fire in that little chamber on the Monday morning, when the people were ringing, where no fire had been made before.” He remembered the boiled fowls too, they were bought of Dance Turner; he remembered how old Mary had trudged off to look for her son: “In my opinion the old woman went to look for George out into the fields, somewhere or another; she did not tarry long.”
“If you design to impeach these people’s characters,” said Davy hopefully, “here is the minister we can call to confirm them.”
“We have nothing to say against their characters,” said Mr. Morton hastily. Elizabeth’s solicitor had had no time to canvass the West Country for testimony against the men of Litton.
Unimpugned, the men of Litton gave way on the stand to the men of Abbotsbury: Gibbons, the landlord, by this time an old hand in that situation; the fiddling blacksmith; old George Clements, the sailor-man, who had known Mary Squires these many years, and George was his namesake; Andrew Wake, the exciseman, now splendid in the uniform of the foot guards—he had lost his excise job for dishonesty, gauging by “writing at home instead of going abroad.” They all said that the three Squireses had spent the first nine days of the new year, 1753, at Abbotsbury. So did the carpenter, the mercer, the weaver, the schoolmaster, and the cordwainer.
The cordwainer, Clarke, smiled openly at the gypsy girl in the capuchin hood, and told all the court about her:
“I remember George coming to my house at Abbotsbury, the day before New Year’s Day, in the forenoon, last December was twelve months; he and I went to Litton together on the Monday morning; I was a sweetheart of Lucy’s; we got there some time in the afternoon, and met with Lucy about three or four o’clock; I know it was some time before it was dark.”
He remembered the old woman coming in afterwards, and the dinner of boiled fowl: “We took part of a fowl there—yes, amongst us all.” He remembered the late start to walk to Abbotsbury, after dark.
Junior counsel, Mr. Williams, cross-examined for the defence. He hammered at the old woman’s round trip on that unlucky Sunday; Clarke had to admit it would have taken her at least four hours. Williams also pressed the contradiction: George said they had had two fowls, Clarke said they had had part of one.
Uncle John Ford was on hand to testify to the presence of the gypsies in Abbotsbury. He was red-faced and vehement, and gesticulated a good deal.
“I saw her on the 1st of January, a twelvemonth ago last January, being,” Uncle John reckoned with elaborate care, “of a Monday; I shook hands with her, drank with her son, and kissed her daughter; the daughter, son, and she came all together to the excise office in our town (there they lodged); John Gibbons keeps the house; he is a nephew of mine; I drank with George,” cried the witness defiantly, “or else I am not here now.”
“Have you any particular reason for remembering the day?”
“I have,” snapped Ford, “it being the 1st of January; and Mr. Bond, a schoolmaster in our town, gives his scholars a holiday at New Year’s time; he was there on the Sunday evening, and gave them liberty; I was with him, and Mr. Wallace, and George Squires.”
Mr. Morton took Uncle John in hand.
“How early on the Monday did you see them there?”
“It was some time about one, two, or three o’clock; I am sure it was some time in the afternoon; I know it was not night,” said the witness argumentatively, “because I was looking over the hatch, and saw George coming down the street, and spoke to him. I saw him,” the witness persisted in calculating, “perhaps fifty yards—I could see a hundred—and I believe I could see a thousand yards.”
“What hour do you take it to be?”
“I am sure it was not come to three o’clock; upon my life, I kissed Lucy before three o’clock.”
Mr. Davy was scowling. Both George and William had sworn that they left Litton after dark. He rose.
“You say the first time you saw them was on Monday the 1st of January; pray,” inquired Mr. Davy dangerously, “what time of day was it?”
Uncle John ran his hand sideways across his face and began another long consultation with himself:
“I went to the alehouse between one and two o’clock for a mug of beer …”
“How many pots of beer,” demanded Mr. Davy angrily, “have you drunk today?”
“I am very sober,” replied Uncle John aggrievedly; “what I have said is all very true, I cannot help your being angry, but what I have said is matter of fact, and as true as we are all here in this place—”
Here he stopped to hiccup.
“You are drunk,” cried Mr. Davy, “and you ought to be ashamed of yourself. Be off about your business.”
Uncle John stood down, weaving slightly.
The next witness was a complete contrast, with his sober garments and his mourning ring. This was Hugh Bond, the schoolmaster, on whom George had told tales out of school, how he was at the New Year’s Eve dancing and got fuddled that night.
“I saw this old woman on the 8th and 9th of January 1753, and George and Lucy along with her; this was on a Monday and Tuesday, at the sign of the Old Ship. I had been down in Devonshire, and came home about six or seven at night. I lodged at the Old Ship, and had never seen the old woman before; this old woman is the very same person; whoever sees her once can never mistake her again: I saw George again the same night; then Clarke and he came back from Portersham.”
“When,” inquired young Mr. Gascoyne carefully, examining for the prosecution, “did you go down into Devonshire?”
“I went on the 31st of December, and came back on Monday the 8th of January.”
Then how could he get fuddled at the New Year’s dancing?
“As you are a schoolmaster,” persisted Gascoyne patiently—no use impugning his own witness—“you must know the time of your going out?”
Mr. Bond had a painful reason for remembering:
“My wife was in Devonshire; I went to see her; she was sick, and is since dead.”
“What time,” cross-examined Mr. Morton, “did you see this old woman on the 8th?”
“It was after candles were lighted; after I had shifted myself, I came and sat down by the fire, with George Squires and Mr. Wake; I had never seen George before; I asked my landlady who he was. She said his name was Squires, and that his mother and sister were in the other room; after which the old woman came out to call her son to go to bed.”
Apparently the young man of twenty-eight was used to this maternal control.
Now Mr. Morton examined another new piece of information: George Squires’s return from Portersham to Abbotsbury.
“Are you sure you saw George after he came back again from Portersham?”
“I am; he came back again in the evening, and drank a mug of beer at my door, after school-time, with William Clarke, in the street. It might be five o’clock; I saw no more of him; George said he would not stay any longer, for he must go to Portersham; I did not go out, but went to bed afterwards.”
A tailor of Portersham confirmed George’s going backwards and forwards between Abbotsbury and Portersham that day; he had seen the gypsies all three at the Chequer in Portersham, and a few hours later, making for Abbotsbury, he had met George coming back to Portersham through the fields. No one offered any reason for these mysterious journeys, but the tailor’s son confirmed his father. He added:
“They went away about nine or ten the next day; it was a very bad, rainy day.”
Now the Squireses were fairly on their road for London. The next day, the 10th, they and Clarke lodged at the Sloop Aground, at Ridgway. The landlord took his turn on the stand. He accounted for the dead horse George had seen; it had died in his stable. As to Clarke:
“A man was selling turnips with two horses about the parish; and Clarke spoke to him, as far as I heard, to come to he to carry him home on one of those horses: it was a terrible wet day as ever I knowed.”
“Before you were up in the morning, did anybody come to your bedside?”
“Yes, George Squires did, with his mother; he told me he had a pattern of a waistcoat. This is the stuff,” said the landlord. He stared at it; it was a dandified stuff.
“What did he say to you?”
“The first he said was, he asked me if I wanted a waistcoat, and said he had been to Abbotsbury, and money was short, and I should have it cheap. I said I did not understand it, and I never had such a waistcoat in my life,” the innkeeper shook his head over the remnant, “and I did not want it; with that his mother came in, and said they were short of money, and desired to leave it in my hand, and desired I’d take it for the reckoning, which I did, and have had it ever since.”
They handed the nankeen to George Squires; he would not be sure of it.
“I wrote my name on it,” said the canny landlord, “before I let it go out of my custody to anybody; my name is now on it.”
Davy passed the stuff to the jury; they spelled out the name at the edge.
“How do you remember the time particularly?”
“I am sure it was that time, by reason it was such weather, and the Blandford sessions were sitting at court; it was a flood, and the dying of the horse, and several circumstances. We know that sessions is always kept the 8th or 10th of January: many of my neighbours were at the sessions, and told me, when they came home, what a flood there was in going.”
Mr. Morton had a go at this witness:
“What trade did they carry on? Did not you know of their dealing in nankeens?”
“I never knowed they did; they brought this to me; I never saw them have a bit in my life before.”
“Were you not up here when Mary Squires was tried?”
“No, I was not. I read in the news of a Mary Squires tried for robbery, but I did not know that it was this Mary Squires; I said there were others of that name.”
“Did you ever,” struck in Mr. Davy hastily, “know a Mary Squires with such a face as this?”
The landlord looked at her.
“No, sir,” he said.
Now another landlord, mine host of the Coach and Horses by Dorchester, brought the gypsies another step forward in their journey:
“I saw them on Thursday the 11th of January, in the forenoon; they were not in my house, they were in my stable,” he explained. The weary minuter, his attention wandering, failed to punctuate at this point, thus creating an unnecessary mystification that has persisted ever since, for mine host went on: “On the 10th there was such a rain they could not pass along the road; the waters were so high they went through a neighbour’s house and my stable the back way. The old woman took up her coats and went along through it. I saw her go along part of it, I did not see it all; I had no business to watch her. The young woman was carried over by the miller’s boy on horseback.”
Others besides the minuter were weary. The day was drawing in, but there was still no thought of adjourning. It was expected that a trial at the Old Bailey should be finished the day it began. Mr. Davy was not near done with his Dorsetshire witnesses.
From Chettle they came, from Martin, from Coombe, to say that they had seen the ugly old woman and her children in Dorset that January. Now money is really short, and the pattern changes: we see the old woman begging beer, and offering to join china, and sleeping in barns. She is adept at beggar’s tricks:
“The old woman came into our back-side, to the barn door to me, and begged lodging of me; I let her lie in an outhouse on some clean oat-straw; I asked her if she had anybody belonged to her. She told me she had none but a couple of children, and immediately called: ‘Why don’t you come along?’ and immediately there came a man and a woman.”
“The old woman came a little before the others,” said another; “when master had granted lodging, she went and called them; then they came.”
The landlord of the Lamb, at Coombe, was dead of the smallpox; he had contracted it in this very courtroom when they tried him in September. His sister was there, however, to swear to the presence of the gypsies in Coombe. She might better have stayed in Coombe. Like her brother, she was susceptible to the infection in the air. Within the week she died of it.
“Your Lordship may remember,” said Mr. Davy, “that George Squires could give no account of places between Coombe and Basingstoke; so the next witness comes from Basingstoke; they were at Coombe on the 14th of January, and you will find them at Basingstoke on the 18th.”
The next witness was the landlady of the Spread Eagle, she who had written Lucy’s love-letter to William Clarke. She identified the letter, and the clerk read out the stilted phrases:
“These is to acquaint you that I am very uneasey for your troubell som Journey,” wrote the loving gypsy girl by the hand of the landlady; she was clearly thinking of that ride in the rain when her William rode off on the turnip-seller’s horse. “I desire to here from you as soone as posebell Direct it for Lucy Squires at Bramford near London.” Brentford, then, she expected would be the gypsy headquarters; though for some reason they changed their minds.
The jury looked at the folded paper. It was odd that the corner with the date should be missing; it was a corner that had been folded inside and so protected from wax and wear. A post-office clerk was there to give expert testimony about the postmark, but it was so blurred that his belief that the date might be January 19 was half conjecture.
The Squireses’ journey was almost done. The next witness was Mrs. Edwards, the woman of Brentford whom old Mary remembered as selling greens and small beer.
“We had a neighbour’s child christened at the time they were there,” said Mrs. Edwards, “This is a true copy of the register of the child when it was christened. Mr. Gascoyne went himself and took it out of the book. The old woman went away on the 23rd, being on a Tuesday; but they came to my house on the Saturday before; George went out on the Sunday and brought his other sister to the house on Monday, and they went all away together on the Tuesday morning betimes towards London. They said they were going to Epping in Essex.”
Old Mary Squires was greenish, and her head was shaking. They carried her out in her armed chair and let her rest in the outward room.
It was ten of the clock; the hour clanged and chimed from every steeple in London. The attorneys were stiff with fatigue. The judges on the bench were ossified in their places. Worse, for the prosecution, the eyes of the jury were glazing with the inattention of sleep.
The judges had had enough; they proposed to adjourn. Five of the aldermen on the bench were standing for Parliament, and the election came the next day. They proposed to adjourn until the day following, the Wednesday. Elizabeth’s counsel objected; he wanted to get things over with. The judges overruled him, and the session broke up. The jury went free, which was very pleasant for the jury. They would have thirty-six hours to be lionized in their neighbourhoods and pick up free advice on the case.
Elizabeth was admitted to bail, and her managers carried her in triumph to the retiring-room.
Sir Crisp Gascoyne rose, yawning, from the front bench and made for the door. In the yard the weary mob was milling and muttering. When they saw Sir Crisp, the mutter changed to a roar. They had been waiting long for this moment. Mud and dirt flew at him from twenty fists; women screamed scurrilous insults at him from the fringes. Friends covered his retreat, and Sir Crisp got through the menacing crowd and into the nearest tavern, bespattered as to ruffles, besmirched as to laced hat, but otherwise none the worse.
The crowd did not follow. They had other plans. First they hunted about for the old gypsy. They did not find her, but they enlivened the search by breaking some windows where they thought she might be hiding. Their minds were not really on their work, however; they were waiting for the Aldermanbury heroine.
They almost missed her. Her managers were not anxious for a demonstration. They muffled her in a cloak and smuggled her hastily through the press to a waiting coach. But somebody caught sight of a pink cheek, and with a cheer the mob charged the coach. They hung upon it, they tried to peer in, they shouted themselves hoarse. Inch by inch the coach moved up the Old Bailey, and with difficulty drew up before another house, where the girl was pushed and hauled through the acclaims of her disorderly admirers and given sanctuary. Her far-sighted managers had hired the house for just that purpose.
The crowd was not much daunted. They settled down to their cheering; they milled about the door huzzaing for a solid hour before they got tired of the sound of their own voices. Then the cheering got hoarse and faint, and died away, as one by one the rioters drifted off for sleep or the refreshment of a halfpenny of gin.
Then, finally, Elizabeth Canning went home.
[ #2 ]
SECOND DAY
The Wednesday session began with a very moving and pathetic account of Sir Crisp’s danger on the Monday night, and a tirade by the Recorder on the insolence and ill consequence of such proceedings. Then Mr. Davy returned to the attack:
“We shall call witnesses to prove that her information before Mr. Alderman Chitty, on the 31st of January, differed in many instances from what she swore afterwards; and that she at first gave a false description of the place she pretends to have been confined in, and varied in her story after she had been carried to Wells’s house at Enfield Wash. We beg leave first to examine Alderman Chitty.”
At this there was a hitch. The alderman was not in court. Another witness was fetched and sworn, only to be unceremoniously stood down again as the missing alderman appeared. Mr. Gascoyne bowed respectfully as he started to interrogate this distinguished witness:
“Be pleased, sir, to give an account of what passed before you relating to Elizabeth Canning.”
“I was the sitting alderman at that time; Elizabeth Canning was brought before me, but,” said Alderman Chitty slowly, knitting his brow, “as it is about a year and a half ago, I cannot give a distinct account of it. I remember it was on the 31st of January, about half an hour after twelve, or one o’clock. Mr. Lyon and another person—” Mr. Chitty ruminated—“I believe it was Mr. Nash—came to me. There were a few notes taken for my own memorandum, which I believe are in court—” the alderman peered about him—“which are the substance of what passed.”
“Were they signed by her?”
“No; I took it on paper, as I generally do; but not thinking it would have been the subject of so much inquiry, I did not take it so distinct as I could wish.”
A paper was handed up. Whatever was the condition of Mr. Chitty’s original notes, this paper was writ fair and legible.
“Is this your handwriting?”
“It is; this is not,” the alderman explained carefully, “what I had taken at that time, but what I took since from that paper I took then of hers, and other persons that were brought before me.”
“You may refresh your memory by looking on it, and give the court an account of it,” said Mr. Gascoyne, adding as a second and better thought: “You may read it.”
It was all the talk that this first account of Canning’s was very different from what she said later; but the general public had never before heard from the alderman on the subject. The galleries listened with great interest.
Most of it was the old story—the men in Moorfields, the blow, the unconsciousness, the arrival at “Enfield Wash, as she had learned since, to Wells’s house there, and there were several persons in the room; they said, she must do as they did, and if so, she should have fine clothes, &c. She said, she would not, but would go home, and refused compliance; and then a woman forced her upstairs into a room, and, with a case-knife she had in her hand, cut the lace of her stays, and took her stays away, and told her there was bread and water in the said room—”
This surprised the listeners. As they had always heard the story, the knife came out of the dresser in the kitchen, and the stays-cutting was done then and there, in the kitchen, after which the girl was pushed upstairs, where she never found the bread and water till morning. Further, Virtue Hall had sworn in court that the old woman carried up the water afterwards. There was no doubt about it, both girls were liars; this evidence was conclusive.
There was more to come: “There was an old stool or two, an old table, two windows in the room, one fastened up with boards, the other, part ditto and part glass, in which latter she made a hole by removing a pane, and forced part open, and got out on a small shed of boards or penthouse, and so slid down and jumped on the side of a bank on the back-side of the house—”
The listeners stared. There was no penthouse under Wells’s window; the girl was as good as pilloried.
“Did she mention the name of Wells, or whose house she had been at?”
The alderman was a little uncomfortable; he started to protest:
“I was a little unwilling, at this extraordinary account, to grant a warrant; I said to her: ‘Be sure what you say; say nothing but what you can swear to’; and as she swore all to be true, upon this information I granted her a warrant, but told her I could not believe the story she had told me.”
“Do you recollect whether, in the time she was in confinement, she heard anything by which she could discover the names of any of the people?”
“The name of Wells was not mentioned at all by her.”
“How came you to grant a warrant in particular against Wells?”
“Because they had learned the name since of the keeper of the house, and that they supposed to be this Wells.”
“Who mentioned the name of Wells, as Canning never mentioned that name?”
“I cannot remember that; it was mentioned, Mother Wells was the occupier of this house.”
“Was one Scarrat there?”
“There were above fifty people there; I did not know them. I cannot recollect who mentioned the name Wells: I apprehend they had got that name before they came to the justice-room: I asked the girl whether that was the mistress of the house or no. She said she could tell nothing of the woman’s name.”
The defence was afraid of the prestige of Alderman Chitty; they did not cross-examine him at all.
Gawen Nash followed Mr. Chitty on the stand and cast further light on the alderman’s evidence.
“The girl gave an account of the place where she had been in: Mr. Alderman Chitty asked her (how it might slip his memory, I cannot tell) what sort of a room she had been confined in? Her answer was that it was a little, square, darkish room, with boards nailed up before the windows.”
The alderman had not remembered what she said she lay upon; but Nash remembered:
“I remember very well she said she lay upon boards; which melted my heart indeed: I felt an inward affection for the girl, upon recollecting it was cold weather at that time; for I think we had a good deal of frost at that time.”
“What did she say about the bread in the room, and how many pieces were there?”
“She said there was about the value of a quartern loaf, thrown about the room in crusts, which were blue and mouldy; the number of pieces I do not remember she said.”
“Do you remember she said she slid down a penthouse?”
“I do not; she said she pulled down one of the boards of the window, after she had strove at it many times; and in getting out at the window, she tore her ear by a nail by the side of the window in turning herself about. There was a warrant granted upon this against one Wells. The alderman does not remember what it was that induced him to grant it against her in particular; I recollect it, because it was in a paragraph in the newspaper, that she had been at the house of Mother Wells at Enfield Wash.”
“What charge was there before the alderman against Mother Wells?—for he could not grant a warrant by information from the newspaper.”
“I recollect she was asked where she had been, and that she, or somebody else, said she had been at the house of Mother Wells, at Enfield Wash.”
“Recollect, if you can, whether it was she or another person who said so.”
“Upon my word, I cannot positively tell which; but it was repeated aloud that she had been at the house of Mother Wells (that is a notorious bad woman); she being asked how she came to know she had been at Mother Wells’s, she said she had heard her called so while she was under confinement in the room.”
“What has led you to recollect, at this distance of time, all these particulars?”
“It was so remarkable, it could not slip out of my head; it was at that time the subject of conversation: it is well known I told my sentiments the same night to abundance of people that came to know about it.”
From Mr. Nash, and after him the other two Goldsmiths’ men, Davy elicited the details of Elizabeth’s visit to the loft, and how it was there that they began to doubt her. Sitting straight in the dock with her hands crossed in her lap, Elizabeth looked at them. These were formerly her friends, men who had been kind to her.
The next witness was no friend to her. William White, Lord Mayor’s officer, was clear and competent, as a police officer must be. He detailed the accusation scene:
“Canning said: ‘That is the woman there,’ pointing to her: I saw her fix her eye immediately on that corner of the room.”
“Was there any showing anybody to Canning, when she came in?”
“No, sir, not as I saw; she, of her own accord, voluntarily picked out Mrs. Squires as the person that cut off her stays.”
This rather exploded the theory that Scarrat had tipped off Elizabeth, since Elizabeth had come from the kitchen, while Scarrat had not left the parlour.
“We shall now,” said Mr. Davy, “produce several witnesses, who, at various times, during the month of January 1753, were in the very room in which the defendant swore she was confined.”
Among these witnesses were Judith and Fortune Natus, who had lodged in the loft for ninepence a week.
Mr. Nares, senior counsel for Elizabeth, cross-examined Fortune:
“Why did not you lodge in the other part of the house?”
“There were no rooms empty there.”
“Was not there a garret empty?”
“I don’t know, I never was up them.”
“Were not you sometimes disturbed of your rest by people making a noise in the kitchen?”
“They could not come into the kitchen but I could hear them; I very seldom heard much noise; sometimes I slept almost all night.”
Fortune could afford to be Forgiving. He had since risen above the lowly estate of ninepenny lodger in people’s shuffle-board rooms; now he had a house of his own at Waltham Cross, and a shilling a day as ostler at the inn.
Next Mr. Davy depicted the loft as the scene of rustic gallantry.
“I was along with Edward Allen and Giles Knight,” said Larney the shopkeeper, “near the house of Susannah Wells, January 8, 1753. Giles Knight lopped a tree; he came and begged a little small beer, and said, if I would come, he would give me the lop. When we were there, Edward Allen flung some dust into the window of the workshop near the trees, to Sal Howit and Virtue Hall, who were withinside.”
“What conversation passed upon this?” asked the lawyer, interested.
“Upon my word, I can’t tell,” replied Larney, “there were words passed, but I don’t believe there were many; when he hulled the dust in, they bid him be easy.”
Examined in their turn, Knight and Allen were subject to the same loss of memory. Everyone thinks this a pity; the conversation was clearly a sportive one.
“Is there ever another window that looks the same way as this does?” the examination went on.
“There is one above upon the stairs going into the garret, that belongs to the house.”
The sleepy judges had heard enough. They were ready to adjourn. Tomorrow was a busy day for some of them. Yesterday’s viva voce election had been disputed, and as a result they were polling all that week. The sheriffs had the polling to attend, and the five aldermen who were candidates naturally wanted to be by.
Accordingly the judges agreed to hear further the day after tomorrow, Friday, May 3. Again Elizabeth Canning gave bail; again the jury went free.
From a print in the possession of the author
ELIZABETH CANNING
From a Sketch taken in the Sessions House During her Tryal
Mutterings in the Sessions House Yard gave warning that another mob was gathering. The friends of Canning had provided against this contingency; they distributed to the trouble-makers dodgers counselling moderation:
“God and her innocence,” the dodger exclaimed eloquently, “have hitherto supported her, in the opinion of many, thro’ unexampled distresses: leave it to God and her innocence only to carry her thro’ this, and all will be well.”
A number of these dodgers were wadded into missiles, in readiness for Sir Crisp Gascoyne. Many wouldn’t and most couldn’t read the elevated sentiments of Canning’s friends. What they wanted was a shot at Sir Crisp.
They were startled when a voice addressed them from the heavens. It was Sir Thomas Rawlinson, Lord Mayor of London, majestic in his robes, come out on the leads above their heads with a paper in his hand. He unfolded the paper and started to read. What he was reading was the proclamation against riots, as provided by the famous statute of 1716, more familiarly known as the Riot Act:
“Our Sovereign Lord the King chargeth and commandeth all persons being assembled immediately to disperse themselves, and peaceably to depart to their habitations or to their lawful business, upon the pains contained in the act made in the first year of King George for preventing tumultuous and riotous assemblies. God save the King.”
[ #3 ]
THIRD DAY, MORNING
On Friday morning the prosecution deployed a new contingent of witnesses from the Wash. It soon began to be evident that the loft was a very thoroughfare. There was the victualler of the White Hart and Crown rummaging for sign-irons; on January 18, that was:
“I went by the new style, for I dropped the old style, and I hope,” remarked the innkeeper virtuously, “all other people did.”
There was Elizabeth Long, Widow Long she was now; she had been at her mother’s house every day that January, and all over the house, except the garrets; she swore that Canning was not there.
There was Wells’s son, Howit the carpenter. He left his tools in the loft on the 19th of January, the day he got tired of carrying them home from his job at Breman Green; and the next day he came back to fetch his axe and saw, and saw the Natuses in their hay bed.
“Look at Elizabeth Canning.”
The young carpenter turned his head towards the dock and looked at the round pink face. Elizabeth Canning looked back; she scanned the young man intently.
“Did you ever see her there in that room?”
“No,” said John Howit, “I never did.”
Still eyeing him, Elizabeth Canning spoke.
“I never saw him before, as I know of,” she stated, and was silent again.
Mr. Davy hustled his witnesses along, sweeping up loose ends: a surveyor with a model of the loft, a prodigious long loft indeed, thirty-five foot by nine foot eight; Wells’s former attorney, mighty lukewarm towards his erstwhile client; the midwife of the Postern, full of racy talk and goodwill to all.
Though Mrs. Mayle had never been before the face of a judge at the Old Bailey, and thought she would not care to, she was delighted with herself now that she was there. She had a wonderful time on the stand, telling with gusto how she knew Elizabeth had not been debauched, and how her mother “is a fine likely woman as any, and a woman that I respect as much as any woman, and the daughter too. I never knowed any ill of the girl, or heard any in my life.”
From a witness whose business on the stand was to prove the girl a liar, and get her pilloried for it, this hearty endorsement had an odd sound.
“Now,” said Mr. Davy, “we shall prove the defendant’s information before Justice Fielding, in order to show a material variance, both in that and in her evidence at the trial, particularly in respect to the time of expending the water.”
Fielding’s clerk swore to the information. She had certainly subscribed to the statement that “on Friday the 26th day of January last past, she this informant had consumed all the aforesaid bread and water, and continued without having anything to eat or drink, until the Monday following.
Mr. Deputy Molineux and Mr. Samuel Reed were handled with kid gloves. They said they had been by when Elizabeth, about to leave the Mansion House, had rolled up the bedgown and said it was her mother’s. The defence treated them gingerly, and did not even attempt to establish the Canningite version: “I must take them to my mother’s.”
“We have several witnesses,” said Mr. Davy, “to call to the characters of those who have been examined; and desire to know the pleasure of the court, whether we shall call them now, or stay till they are attacked.”
Dinner-time was drawing on.
“Stay till they are attacked,” said the court.
“Then,” said Mr. Davy, “we have done for the present.”