“And So I Rest It in Your Hands”
May 3–May 7, 1754
[ #1 ]
THIRD DAY, AFTERNOON
“May it please you, My Lord, and you, gentlemen of the jury—”
It was a bad time to open the defence, on a Friday afternoon after dinner. The jury was torpid, the judges were bored. But there was no help for it, and accordingly the defence mustered their forces. Mr. Nares and Mr. Morton were very eloquent. Mr. Williams was not so eloquent as wise. Here is his speech verbatim:
“We shall lay our evidence before you, and begin first with Mr. Lyon, the master of this girl.”
Deaf old Mr. Lyon contributed his impressive presence, and his faith in Bet, but very little more, unless you count a witticism by Mr. Nash:
“Mr. Nash was once at my house afterwards, and as he was going out of the door, he made use of a very odd expression; he said: ‘Mr. Lyon, I hope God Almighty will destroy that model that he made that face by, and never make another by it’; a very odd expression, I remember it very well, meaning the gypsy.”
The testimony of Uncle Thomas Colley was more to the point. He bore witness to parting with Bet that night at Houndsditch. She was well and hearty, and there was no reason to believe she was a-breeding.
Mr. Willes rose to cross-examine. He wanted to know what Elizabeth had had to eat that day. The contents of Elizabeth on the fatal day, he established in a long cross-examination, comprised cold mutton and potatoes, tea and buttered toast, roast sirloin of beef, and ten-shilling beer.
Up rose the facetious Mr. Morton.
“Pray,” he began, “was the toast buttered on both sides, do you think?”
The court rocked with mirth.
But Mr. Morton knew what Mr. Willes was about. He knew why Mr. Willes was so anxious to show that when Elizabeth was carried to Enfield she was full of food, and he commented on it:
“Here have been a great many questions asked in order to force a stool.”
Uncle Thomas Colley answered the silly question seriously:
“I cannot tell.”
Mr. Morton’s silly question passed into immortality, assisted by Foote the comedian, who incorporated it in one of his farces; saddling it, of course, upon the wrong man. Mr. Morton succeeded permanently in making Mr. Willes look like a fool.
The day was drawing in as Aunt Alice confirmed Uncle Colley. Mr. Gascoyne tried to find out how Elizabeth had come by the mince pie; but Aunt Alice did not know.
Elizabeth’s adherents, waiting in the Old Bailey to cheer her, were growing impatient. The court lingered only long enough to throw a good fright into last night’s rioters whom the constables had arrested. The wretched culprits made a proper submission, and were discharged; whereupon the court adjourned.
The mob duly escorted Elizabeth from the Sessions House. Under the shadow of the Riot Act, they hurled neither clods nor invective at any of her enemies.
FOURTH DAY
“She came in in this posture,” said Mrs. Canning. She acted it out, bending almost double and walking sideways, holding her hands before her.
“She said she had been robbed—”
“Who asked her?”
“We all asked her. She gave an account, that they pulled her along, and after they gave her a blow, she could tell no more, and that she was confined where there was hay in the room; she said she lived upon bread and water; that from the Friday to the Monday she had none to subsist on; and she gave an account of the mince pie she bought for her brother.”
“How came there to be a suspicion that it was at Mother Wells’s that she was confined?”
“She nominated the name of Mother Wills or Wells that night, she did not know which; that she heard them call it very plain; I believe Mr. Wintlebury, Mr. Scarrat, Mrs. Woodward, and Polly Lyon, all were there at that time.”
“Had anybody that was there given her the least hint of Wills or Wells, or any name like it?”
“No soul spoke to her,” said Elizabeth’s mother positively, “till her own mouth mentioned it.”
Then about the trip to the Wash:
“Do you recollect anybody that met you on the road before you got down?”
“Yes; Mr. Adamson.”
“Did he give you or your daughter any description of the house of Mother Wells?”
“Upon my oath,” replied Elizabeth’s mother earnestly, “he did not. His horse would not stand still; he said: ‘Drive, coachman, I wonder you stay so long.’ He asked her what sort of a place she was in, and if she could remember it. She said she could. Then he rode on, and we came after.”
Gently handled, Mrs. Canning cut a very respectable figure. Mr. Davy did not handle her so gently. First he went after the question of Bishopsgate Street. Mrs. Canning told him in detail all about all of the advertisements, who wrote them, who carried them to the printer, who told her about Bishopsgate Street. Then he demonstrated that Mrs. Canning was all mixed up about how much money her daughter had. Then he started in upon the cunning man.
“Did you go to a conjurer?”
“I did. They call him the astrologer.”
“What is his name?”
“I don’t know his name; he had a black wig over his face.”
“Did he ask anything about Bishopsgate Street?”
“I believe I told him that; he bid me advertise her again, makes me think I did.”
“Did you mention the name of Mother Wells to him?”
“No, I did not. He said an old woman, I believe.”
“Did you tell him of a dream you had?—or a vision?—or an apparition?”
Mrs. Canning denied she had had any dream, vision, or apparition—
“But I had wandering thoughts.”
James Lord, the industrious apprentice, followed his mistess to the stand. He was exceedingly anxious to say the right thing and please everybody. He was so anxious that there is no use paying much attention to what he said.
“She said,” he reported, “she had been at Enfield Wash, and heard the name of Wills or Wells, she did not know which.”
As a summary of what Elizabeth’s friends concluded about her story, this is concise; as a direct quotation from Elizabeth, it is useless. On cross-examination, the boy shied away from the subject of the cunning man, and then stood down.
A whisper ran about the crowded court as the next witness took the oath. It was Robert Scarrat, the dashing hartshorn-rasper. In the crowd his bride of a year gazed at him with admiration, she who had been Sarah Carlton, the potter’s daughter.
Mr. Scarrat was easy and voluble; Mr. Morton did not keep him long.
Mr. Davy, however, was loaded for Scarrat. He pitched right into him. The first thing he brought out was that Scarrat had once frequented Wells’s house.
“Were you ever in the hay-loft?”
“I never was.”
“Did you never jump out at a window in that room?”
“No, I never did; I don’t,” said Mr. Scarrat insolently, “like jumping so well.”
Then Mr. Davy pressed him about what Elizabeth said before Chitty; Mr. Scarrat could not remember much.
A new point now came out: Mr. Scarrat had an alibi for the day and night of January 1: he and Sarah had taken their pleasure in company with his friend the coal-merchant and his lady. The prosecution had plenty of time over the weekend to check the alibi, and presumably they did so. It must have held, for the subject was never brought up again.
Mr. Scarrat had anticipated the question:
“I have heard that it should be alleged against me that I took the girl away.”
Scarrat denied that he had ever quarrelled with or sworn to be revenged on Wells. Nevertheless, Mr. Davy devoted a considerable amount of time to eliciting, bit by bit, like pulling teeth, that Scarrat had been at Wells’s more than twice—more than five times—well, maybe eight times. Mr. Morton looked bored.
When the questioning was finally over, Mr. Morton rose to reduce Davy, too, ad absurdum.
“Did you ever,” he began, “ride your horse in at the window where the girl jumped out at?”
“No, sir,” said Scarrat, suppressing a snicker.
“Are you sure that between the hours of nine and ten on the 1st of January you did not go to see Bedlam?”
“No, sir; I am positive of that.”
“Tell me the truth, or perhaps,” said Mr. Morton solemnly, “half Bedlam will be called to contradict you.”
“No, I did not, sir.”
“Did you take away Betty Canning that night up to Houndsditch?”
Scarrat sobered.
“No, sir,” he said emphatically.
Mr. Scarrat was followed by a knot of Betty’s good friends from the Postern: Mrs. Myers, Mrs. Woodward, Polly Lyon, Mr. Wintlebury. Each retailed what Betty had said on King Charles’s Martyrdom Eve, and what she had done at Enfield.
Mr. Willes cross-examined Mr. Wintlebury:
“Don’t you subscribe towards the support of Canning?”
“No, sir.”
“Was there any intrigue between Scarrat and her?”
“No; she would hardly go to the door to speak to anybody. I believe her quite different from an intriguing person.”
“What was the reason she left your service?”
“Because she got a better place; that was the only reason.”
Mr. Willes chevied the alehouse-keeper a bit about the Chitty statement. Wintlebury was as scared of Chitty’s prestige as Scarrat had been; he too dodged the issue:
“I heard a little, but did not take much observation of it; and she talked so low.”
Now Mr. Adamson denied that he had coached Betty in the chaise, and the medical men described her unhappy physical condition on her return. Mr. Davy succeeded in beclouding that issue a bit, by getting the doctor to admit, in a muddled sort of way, that though the girl was clearly starved, her starvation might as easily have been caused by illness as by force.
“We are now,” said Mr. Morton, “coming to Enfield Wash.”
First on that road was Robert Beals, the Stamford Hill turnpike-man. He told how two men had dragged a weeping woman past his turnpike early in January; she wore a light-coloured gown.
Cross-examining, Mr. Willes took up the question of date. Beals would not say it was the 1st; Willes prodded his memory:
“Don’t you keep New Year’s Day?”
“We don’t keep that.”
“Were you garnished out on this day with rosemary, or an orange on a skewer?”
“We don’t do no such thing,” replied Beals. I regret that; it sounds like a charming custom.
Now the defence brought to the stand Bennet, Dyer, and Mrs. Cobb, the mantua-maker, the people who had seen a miserable poor wretch making for London on the Hertford road near dusk on January 29.
These witnesses were formidable; the prosecution attacked each adroitly. They went after Bennet about the tanner’s dog: he met the girl north of the tanner’s; if she came from the Wash how could she have already encountered the tanner’s dog? Bennet was a mumbler; they succeeded in making him sound very confused.
Dyer was trapped into admitting that the girl was not blue, but pale, and had a white hand:
“She looked as if she was welly famished.”
Mrs. Cobb was pressed as to time. She said she set out about three; being in a public way of business, she stopped to chat three or four times, consuming about fifteen minutes this way; she planned to be from home about two hours, and when she came back, a quarter-hour later than she intended, the children had lighted a candle. The prosecution thought the whole time-table was inconsistent: Elizabeth said she escaped about three thirty or four or four thirty; Bennet saw a girl, not a half-mile from the Wash, between four and five; Dyer saw the same girl, a little farther on, about four; Mrs. Cobb saw the same creature creeping along, three miles nearer to London, at five o’clock.
When the figures elicited were well confused, Mr. Willes smiled and sat down. It was time for the court to adjourn over Sunday.
As the court rose, and the press started to buzz, a boy thrust a folded note into Mr. Morton’s hand. Mr. Morton glanced at it and thrust it into his pocket.
When Elizabeth passed from the Sessions House, she received a bigger ovation than ever. Things were going her way, and her adherents were in a good mood. They escorted her to her customary retreat with deafening huzzas.
Her managers were obliged to discountenance the ruffianism of the mob towards Sir Crisp Gascoyne. They permitted themselves, however, to join in the rejoicings. As soon as the girl was got into the house, the windows in general were thrown up, and the people within doors, waving their hats, joined in the huzzas and exultations of those without.
[ #3 ]
FIFTH DAY
“We shall next,” said Mr. Nares, “begin our defence to the alibi of Mary Squires.”
Again the pitiful little procession came from the outward room: old Mary trembling in the armed chair, huddled in her red cloak, with the white napkin half hiding her ravaged, hideous face; the sparkling gypsy girl in the capuchin, the trim-built son with his red waistcoat, and with them this time the dark-faced older sister.
Sir Crisp shook his head in sympathy as the armed chair was borne through the press. Elizabeth Canning from her seat in the dock turned her head and looked at the bent old figure. Mr. Davy bustled forward assiduously and escorted his client to her place at the front of the court.
Mr. Nares began to put on the stand the respectable people of Enfield: the window-light surveyor and his wife, the Duke of Portland’s tenant, the retired finisher of clock-dial faces. They all said they had seen the old gypsy in Enfield around that Christmas-time.
Somehow the farmer’s lad with the window-lead got himself called in the midst of this distinguished company; but he met with very different treatment. They asked for the lead; it was lost, the boy said. Then he told how he had seen the old gypsy on Tuesday, January 9, Waltham market day, and Friday, January 12, Epping market day.
The justices took him in hand:
“What time of the year is Christmas in? What month is it in?”
“I do not know,” said the bumpkin, “what month in particular.”
Mr. Willes picked up the suggestion, and the following interesting interchange ensued:
“How many days are there in a week?”
“There are seven, if,” said the farm-boy slyly, “if you put Sunday in.”
“What, is not Sunday one of your days?”
“Yes; but some people make but six days in the week.”
“Who are they?” inquired Mr. Willes, astounded.
“The Jews don’t,” replied the boy triumphantly.
Samuel Story, the retired finisher of clock-dial plates, was another kind of witness altogether. He told how he saw the gypsy within Wells’s open door on December 23, new style. He went close to see if she was not the same old woman that he used to see haunting the Chase in gypsy dress, and she was. That very day he was taken with rheumatism, and never stepped out of his door again until the day he rode up to London to identify the old woman in Newgate. The prosecution did not even attempt to shake his testimony.
Farmer Smith, a hundred and five pounds’ worth of respectability, also got off easy. He placed the gypsy family in his cow-house from December 15 to December 18; they came the day he was stamping apples for cider. His poor neighbours were waiting in the anteroom to confirm this, and later they did so; but they had to wait their turn. According to protocol, Loomworth Dane, the prosperous landlord of the Bell, was entitled to be heard next.
Dane told how he saw the old gypsy with the great hole in her stocking on Old Christmas Day; he knew it was Old Christmas because his man was off that day, and he had to record the matter of the horse-collar himself. Mr. Nares asked for a sight of the record, but Dane had neglected to bring it with him.
Other records were missing, and more than one. Sarah Starr told about the old woman’s visit to her house in the Marsh Lane, on the 18th or 19th of January, the day her husband went to Hertford about the pease:
“The note is in court, as far as I know, with the date on it; Mr. Miles, the former attorney, had it of me.”
But the note was not in court. It was gone with Mr. Miles.
Mrs. Starr’s servant was on hand to confirm her story of the gypsy’s call; but he was way down on the social scale, and his turn would not come for quite a while. A householder of Turkey Street was next in line. He remembered seeing the old gypsy on the causeway by his house, the day his master sent him home to keep Old Christmas; and when he got there, he found his wife had locked him out and gone off with the key. Mr. Nares asked him about the gypsy.
“Was she alone?”
“She was, without she had got anybody under her cloak,” replied the householder smartly.
Now came a group of witnesses over whom brooded the pervading influence of Squire Parsons. They had all seen the old gypsy within a day or two of that gentleman’s departure on one of his trips to London. He made the trip on January 9, they were all now certain. Mr. Willes examined the squire’s gardener on that point:
“How long had your master and mistress been down that time?”
“I cannot tell; they had been up and down very often.”
“If they had been up and down very often, how can you fix upon their going up this time, more than any other?”
“By reason my master and mistress gave me and my fellow servant leave to go out on the 1st of January.”
“Had not your master and mistress been in town between the 1st of January and the 9th?”
“Yes, they had.”
Nothing clearer was to be got out of the gardener. Nevertheless, the Parsons charwoman, as well as her husband, confirmed him.
“How do you know,” Mr. Willes asked her, “Mr. Parsons went to town on the 9th?”
“Because I was much there: I was there on New Year’s Day; they were to have gone on that day, but madam was not very well, so it was put off till Tuesday.”
The family were still home on the 9th, the handy-man contributed; the old gypsy was about the place that day. After they were gone, on the 11th, he saw her at the apothecary’s when he was there nailing up some vines. He set down the day in his pocket-book, because the apothecary was accustomed to settle accounts by the quarter.
“How came you not to bring your book here?” demanded vigilant Mr. Willes.
“I had not presence of mind to bring it with me,” said the handy-man uncomfortably.
Willes pressed him hard about the scene at the apothecary’s, and then went after him about where and when he had been previously examined, at the Fleece or at the Mansion House.
“Had you any friend with you when you was at the Mansion House?”
“I had,” said the badgered witness, “a scrub-lawyer with me, and I believe,” he added, staring at Willes, “there are a great many of them in town.”
One witness, needed to make all this testimony stick, was missing—Squire Parsons.
Now old Anne Johnson mounted the stand. She told of seeing the gypsy on the 18th of January. Two days before, on the 16th, she had carried home to Mr. Smitheram some yarn which he employed her to spin. At Mr. Smitheram’s they had set down the date in the book; and two days later she saw the gypsy.
James Pratt, Farmer Smith’s man, came next, to tell about the lost horse, and the gypsy man and woman who looked for it and accused him of having it.
“Do you think you should know that man?” asked Mr. Nares.
Pratt scratched his head: “I can’t be positive.”
“Look about,” said Mr. Nares, “and see if you see anybody like him.”
The labouring man stared about without success, until a juryman spoke up from the box.
“I see George hold his face down,” he cried, “as the witness looks towards him.”
“George,” said Mr. Davy sternly, “when witnesses are ordered to look for you, hold up your head; I myself saw you this time; it does not look well.”
George sheepishly lifted his chin. Pratt shook his head.
“It is hard saying,” he muttered, “I will not swear in that.”
But her name was on the clog, and he thought it was Mary Squires: “I am certain of it.”
“Was it not Sarah?” asked Mr. Davy.
“I am sure it was Mary Squires.”
Many other Enfielders came to the stand, to say they saw the gypsy about Christmas-time—they remembered because they were just doing their Christmas dish-washing, or their dog barked at the old woman, or it was just a month since they killed a pig. The witnesses were examined separately. Most of them were put through a catechism by the justices as to the old woman’s costume. They agreed pretty well: an old yellowish-brown or brick-coloured gown (yellow brick was then a favourite building material), a whitish cloak or shawl, a red one over that, a black hat clapped on over clouts.
As the status of the witnesses still declined on the social scale, the prosecution found it profitable to probe their skill in the almanac. The carter’s wife, she who had shaken Wells by the hand in the cart and told her she had done for herself, fared ill at the hands of Mr. Willes:
“Do you know which is Old Christmas Day, and which is New Christmas Day?”
“You must tell me,” said the witness saucily, “my memory cannot be so good.”
“What day of the week was Old Christmas Day?”
“It was of a Tuesday or a Wednesday, I can’t remember which.”
(It was in fact a Friday.)
“Is Christmas Day Holy Thursday,” asked Mr. Willes solemnly, “or Good Friday?”
All the sauce had gone out of the carter’s wife.
“I can’t resolve no such thing; I am no scholar; I can’t pretend to know such things.”
“There was a snow on the 15th at night,” said another old beldame with assurance, “and the 16th it was wet; and walking along, I had like to have fell, as my pattens were on. She stopped and looked at me, and I at her. When I came home, my neighbours said: ‘This snow is come in the right season, yesterday was the 15th’; then I said: ‘This must be the 16th’; and not only that, but I went to the almanac and looked that very day.”
She was still cock-sure when she faced Mr. Willes.
“Are you very well skilled in almanacs?”
“Why not?” she replied pertly. “I can read and write a little.”
“Do you know what day of the week it is by the almanac?”
“I can, I think so, my head is good enough for that.”
Mr. Willes was ready for her with a common sheet almanac folded up into a book.
“Look in this almanac, and tell me which day of the week it is?”
The old woman peered at it.
“I can’t see by this, it is so small,” she complained.
“Look at it again, and take your time.”
“I cannot see without my spectacles; you shall not fool me so.”
She put them on and peered again.
“Tell me by this the day of the week for the 14th of December.”
The witness started to hedge.
“This is not such an almanac as I look in; I look in a sheet almanac; I cannot tell by this.”
Mr. Williams rose to mend the matter if he could.
“Do you know which is Sunday in the almanac? Look in the month of September.”
The old dame peered through the small oval panes of her glasses and laboriously counted seven days from the 1st. Unfortunately the 7th of that month was a Tuesday. The court shouted with laughter.
“Why,” cried the unabashed witness, “is not Sunday the seventh day?”
Nevertheless, they sent her about her business.
The last of the Enfield witnesses was a forlorn old creature by the name of Elizabeth Sherrard.
“I saw the gypsy three days running before New Christmas, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.”
“Look about and see if you see her here.”
The old woman stared about. She descended from the box to prowl the courtroom, and returned to the box, and prowled again. Finally she saw the object of her search.
“Why, this is the woman!”
“Where did you see her?”
“In Mother Wells’s house. I went there, and went into her parlour, and when I came out again, I saw the gypsy stand at the kitchen door. I turned back again and asked Mrs. Wells who she had got in her house. She said: ‘Lodgers.’ On the Friday I went into the Marsh Lane and saw her standing at the window; and on Saturday I went down to Cheshunt, and she was standing then at the door.”
It was that same day, Saturday, December 23, when Samuel Story saw her in that same position, standing at Wells’s door.
“There were two young wenches in the parlour, and a young man in the kitchen; but whether they were her son and two daughters, I cannot tell.”
“Had you any conversation with her?”
“No, I never changed a word with her; I don’t like to have to do with them, I don’t like them so well.”
“Look at that man,” Mr. Davy began his cross-examination. “Is that the man?”
“I did not see his face.”
“Did you see the two young women’s faces?”
“I did; but whether I know them or not, I don’t know; for they have changed their habits, to be sure; that is one of them.”
She pointed to young Mary.
“Lucy, show your face.”
“Yes, this is the other; I think I can swear to them.”
“Do you swear they are the same?”
“They are very much like them.”
“You went down twice to look at the old woman; did you see her face the first time?”
“Yes, I did, but did not mind her till afterwards.”
“I hope you mind what you say,” said Mr. Davy sternly, “you are before God and a court of justice; therefore attend to me: Did you see that old woman upon your going down the first time from off the place you now stand?”
“I did not know her,” said the old woman sullenly, “because she is clean; she is not so nasty and dirty as she was before.”
“The man that swore you said,” Davy reminded her solemnly, “you were to swear to the whole truth, and nothing but the truth: you have one foot in the grave, and the other out; be careful,” Mr. Davy adjured her, “what you say: Was she cleaner the first time than she was the second?”
“She is all the same,” admitted Goody Sherrard, “but I did not take so much notice; and being cleaner, she is altered.”
“What day of the month is New Christmas Day?”
“I cannot tell indeed, because I can neither write nor read.”
“Was it in June, or July?”
“It might be in June, for whatever I know: I know,” said the old woman, coming back to the point, “that is the woman, to be sure.”
Mr. Davy should have stopped there. Instead he went on, and soon established that Elizabeth Sherrard had a very good reason for placing her call at Christmas-time; Mrs. Wells had asked her to call because she had not been well, and given her a penny for a Christmas box. This throws a new and softer light on the old bawd of the Wash, and stamps the witness for an ungrateful creature. What it proved about the presence of Mary Squires at the time was up to the jury.
“On Saturday night,” said Mr. Nares, “Mr. Morton received a letter in court, giving an account that there was one Mrs. Edwards who could give some light into this affair; upon that he desired she might be subpoenaed.”
Mr. Nares wanted to call her now, but the prosecution would not hear of it. It was against the agreement to call any witnesses not in the original brief. Mr. Nares shrugged.
The non-appearance of Mrs. Edwards is tantalizing; but the mystery probably has a commonplace solution in the affidavit made later by one Thomas Edwards, soap-boiler, of St. Giles’s. He had been going around telling how he went out to the Wash to see the sights, and fell in with Edward Allen, the sportive hedger who jested with the girls at the loft window. Allen, he said, pointed to the window in question, and then to the garret window above it, admitting it was the garret window, and not the little low window, that the girls were jesting at. Mr. Edwards told everybody “that he would declare the same to any one who would ask him.”
Nobody ever asked him.
“Now,” said Mr. Nares, “we will call to the confession of Mother Wells.”
“My lord,” cried Mr. Davy, “I object to that: she is a very proper evidence herself, she has been branded in the hand; if they will produce her, she is within a few yards of the court.”
There was quite a long wrangle about that. In the end Nares won out and placed Wells’s old friend John Ward on the stand. He quoted the old bawd’s words in the Bridewell:
“She was there twenty-eight days; you know the room very well.”
“Did you understand what room she meant?”
“No, sir.”
“I insist upon Mrs. Wells’s being produced,” cried Davy, “to know if he knows her.”
“That,” remarked Mr. Nares, “you never intend.”
Apparently nobody had any desire to put Mrs. Wells in a position where she could be cross-examined. She never throughout the whole case got any nearer to the witness-stand than the dock.
“I have in my brief,” said Mr. Nares, “some witnesses of character and credit that were near the gypsy when she was tried, and heard some confessions which she made at that time.”
Mr. Davy had no objection; but the justices refused to hear them. Instead, Mr. Nares called Nathaniel Crumphorne and his wife. Not above two weeks ago they had had a very interesting conversation with Judith Natus. They told the court about it.
“How can you have the conscience,” Nathaniel had taxed her, “to deny that this poor creature Betty Canning was not at Mother Wells’s when you lodged there?”
“Indeed,” he quoted her reply, “I cannot say but she was there.”
Everybody was having trouble with his negatives; but Nathaniel and his wife distinctly understood Judith to mean that Betty was at Wells’s at the same time as the Natuses.
They had more trouble with their negatives before they left the stand. Examined separately, they could not agree whether Judith’s exact words were “I cannot say but she really was there,” or “Really she was there,” or “She actually was there.” Mr. Davy made a good deal of this discrepancy.
Now Mr. Nares slipped in the publican of Clerkenwell, who had cracked a bottle with the old gypsy in the New Prison.
“She put her hands up, and said: ‘As God is my Saviour, what I am sent here for, I am innocent of; but she said she believed the person was there.”
“Did she say she saw her there?”
“She said she was in the house sure enough; she believed she was, and positively, almost, sure of it.”
It was getting late. Three men of Ware spoke their pieces briefly: Judith Natus was a drunken beast, and Fortune would perjure himself for a shilling, or just for the fun of it.
The next witness had his documents with him. He was Metcalf, the painter and glazier who had new-painted the sign of the Crown for the landlord of the White Hart and Crown. He said that the landlord could not have seen Eizabeth Canning in the loft, because he never went there until after the Monday she escaped. He dated it from the day he delivered the Crown, new-painted, and the date was in his day-book, and here was the book. Mr. Willes looked into it, and discovered the year, 1753, written into the front in fresh ink. Metcalf was going by old style:
“All that is set down is set down by my clock.”
Mr. Willes shrugged off Metcalf and his clock.
It got later and later, but the defence attorneys ploughed steadily ahead. They called the faithful cheesemonger to speak to Bet’s character.
“I am to tell the jury from the prosecutor,” said weary Mr. Davy, “I have nothing against the girl’s character, exclusive of this fact.”
“Then,” said Mr. Nares, “we need call no more to her character.”
The defence rested.
It was seven o’clock at night. The usual mob was gathering. Sir Crisp, attended by a posse of constables, vanished by a backward way. Elizabeth, in feigned guise, was smuggled into a coach by Newgate.
The country Aldridge, leaving the Sessions House, ran into Edward Allen, the playful hedger, as he passed into the yard.
“I still believe,” remarked Aldridge, “that the girl was confined there.”
Allen gave him a grin.
“So do I too, as much as you do,” he replied, “but I don’t care, for I have got money, booze, and scramm.”
[ #4 ]
SIXTH DAY
“It has been among the many misfortunes of the defendant,” said Mr. Morton coolly, “that it has been impossible for any one of her counsel to have attended through this whole trial. I mention this,” said Mr. Morton, with a bow to the Recorder, “that I may lay in my claim with Your Lordship that Your Lordship will be so kind to supply in your summing-up what we have been obliged to omit.”
The Recorder returned the bow. He was thoroughly of the opinion that Elizabeth Canning was a lying little vixen and ought to be transported.
“You may assure yourselves I shall,” he replied blandly.
His time was not yet come. First the thorough prosecutor had a handful of rebuttal witnesses—more expert testimony about the postmark, character endorsement for Fortune and Ezra Whiffin; and Mr. Smitheram with his book.
Mr. Smitheram’s book did the defence great harm. Elizabeth’s counsel had been too busy, or too negligent, or too fraudulent, to cause her witnesses to bring their records into court. The Squire’s handyman, Sarah Starr, Loomworth Dane, even old Anne Johnson, established dates by appealing to various documents; but the documents were never in court. Now the prosecution brought into court one of the documents, and instead of confirming the witness, it contradicted her.
It was Mr. Smitheram who employed Anne Johnson to spin. Two days after she returned some spun wool to his house, she had said, she saw the gypsy. The date was the 16th of January, as the entry in the wool-book would prove. Confirmed by Smitheram and his daughter, the wool-book showed that the spun wool was returned on January 23, having been issued out on January 16.
It was just a mistake, said Mr. Morton. He added:
“Now after we are done, I do think it is a great misfortune for my client that the other gentleman, who should have made a proper reply, was obliged to attend elsewhere; and was I to do so, I must do it very imperfectly; and so,” Elizabeth’s counsel threw her blandly to the wolves, “I rest it in your hands.”
Mr. Davy made capital of the defection of the defence attorneys:
“Such is the force of truth, and so strongly does it shine forth in this prosecution, that its opposers must now hide their faces!”
He then, at his leisure, spent three and one half hours tearing to bits the evidence offered for the defence.
Night was falling as he finished, but today the end was in sight. There was no thought of any further adjournment.
The Recorder gathered up a great sheaf of notes, and began his summing-up. It hardly answered Mr. Morton’s expectations as a substitute for the arguments of Elizabeth’s attorneys. Quite the contrary, as soon appeared.
Elizabeth’s lawyers had offered a half-dozen cavils against the alibi story of the Dorsetshire journey; they had also overlooked a couple of interesting, if minor, discrepancies. The Recorder slid slickly around every one. How, Elizabeth’s counsel had asked, could that decrepit old woman walk all the way to Abbotsbury, and all the way back again to Litton, before three in the afternoon? The Recorder got around that; he said she walked “towards Abbotsbury.” George said they dined on two fowl; William, on part of one; the Recorder struck an average: they dined on a boiled fowl. Where, demanded the defence of the confused George, had he come by his sister’s letter? George could not tell. The Recorder could:
“On Thursday the 11th, they all went to Dorchester, and there they had an account of his sister Mary’s illness, and then they determined to hasten to her.”
Of Ford seeing George by daylight, though George said he left Litton after dark; of Bond getting fuddled at the dancing, though by his own account he left Abbotsbury the day before, the Recorder said not one word.
“The counsel for the defendant,” said he coolly, “have made many observations upon the evidence you have heard, which it is unnecessary for me to repeat.”
He cleared his throat, which was rapidly giving out. He handed his notes to a like-minded colleague, who read on.
The rest of the summing-up made clear how little the Recorder thought of the defence witnesses. At twenty minutes past midnight, with this stuff in their ears, the jury withdrew to their deliberations.
Elizabeth’s counsel drifted away to get some sleep. Mrs. Woodward tenderly helped the accused girl down from the dock and led her to the little detention anteroom to rest. Some of the spectators curled up on the forms to await the issue; others issued forth for refreshments.
The bells of St. Sepulchre’s chimed the quarters around, and began again. When the hour struck, the waiting court lost patience. They sent a bailiff to know whether the jury had not agreed on a verdict.
The hint was effective. At fifteen minutes after two the jury brought in their verdict. Elizabeth Canning, standing in the dock, looked the foreman in the eye as he read it off:
“Guilty of perjury, but not wilful and corrupt.”
Elizabeth caught her breath. It sounded like an acquittal.
The Recorder soon undeceived her.
“I cannot receive your verdict,” he told the jury stonily, “because it is partial; you must either find her guilty of the whole indictment, or else acquit her.”
This was of doubtful legality; but not one of Elizabeth’s counsel was in court to protest. Back went the jury, with all to do again.
Too late, Elizabeth’s lawyers were in court when the jury came back, at forty-one minutes after two, with the final verdict:
“Guilty of wilful and corrupt perjury; recommended to mercy.”