FOREWORD

This story of Elizabeth Canning is all true. I gathered it together out of many books: forty-two accounts by her contemporaries; twenty by men who, coming after her, sought to pluck out the heart of her mystery; and many more to build the picture of what Elizabeth’s London was like.

This is the way it happened in 1753. These are the very words the people spoke. Nothing has been invented, nothing has been added.

This is what happened, all of it, the events that were dark and the events that were patent. This is the secret of Elizabeth Canning.