Historical Mysteries | Page 3

a midwife (who
consoled Mrs. Canning on one point), proves beyond possibility of
cavil.
The girl told her story; but what did she tell? Mr. Austin Dobson, in
The Dictionary of National Biography, says that her tale 'gradually took
shape under the questions of sympathising neighbours,' and certainly,
on some points, she gave affirmative answers to leading questions
asked by Robert Scarrat. The difficulty is that the neighbours' accounts
of what Elizabeth said in her woful condition were given when the girl
was tried for perjury in April-May 1754. We must therefore make
allowance for friendly bias and mythopoeic memory. On January 31,
1753, Elizabeth made her statement before Alderman Chitty, and the
chief count against her is that what she told Chitty did not tally with
what the neighbours, in May 1754, swore that she told them when she
came home on January 29, 1753. This point is overlooked by Mr. Paget
in his essay on the subject.[1]
[Footnote 1: Puzzles and Paradoxes, pp. 317-336, Blackwoods, 1874.]
On the other hand, by 1754 the town was divided into two factions,
believers and disbelievers in Elizabeth; and Chitty was then a
disbeliever. Chitty took but a few notes on January 31, 1753. 'I did not
make it so distinct as I could wish, not thinking it could be the subject
of so much inquiry,' he admitted in 1754. Moreover, the notes which he
then produced were not the notes which he made at the time, 'but what I
took since from that paper I took then' (January 31, 1753) 'of hers and
other persons that were brought before me.' This is not intelligible, and
is not satisfactory. If Elizabeth handed in a paper, Chitty should have
produced it in 1754. If he took notes of the evidence, why did he not
produce the original notes?
These notes, made when, and from what source, is vague, bear that

Elizabeth's tale was this: At a dead wall by Bedlam, in Moorfields,
about ten P.M., on January 1, 1753, two men stripped her of gown,
apron, and hat, robbed her of thirteen shillings and sixpence, 'struck her,
stunned her, and pushed her along Bishopsgate Street.' She lost
consciousness--one of her 'fits'--and recovered herself (near Enfield
Wash). Here she was taken to a house, later said to be 'Mother Wells's,'
where 'several persons' were. Chitty, unluckily, does not say what sort
of persons, and on that point all turns. She was asked 'to do as they did,'
'a woman forced her upstairs into a room, and cut the lace of her stays,'
told her there were bread and water in the room, and that her throat
would be cut if she came out. The door was locked on her. (There was
no lock; the door was merely bolted.) She lived on fragments of a
quartern loaf and water 'in a pitcher,' with the mince-pie bought for her
naughty little brother. She escaped about four in the afternoon of
January 29. In the room were 'an old stool or two, an old picture over
the chimney,' two windows, an old table, and so on. She forced a pane
in a window, 'and got out on a small shed of boards or penthouse,' and
so slid to the ground. She did not say, the alderman added, that there
was any hay in the room. Of bread there were 'four or five' or 'five or
six pieces.' 'She never mentioned the name of Wells.' Some one else did
that at a venture. 'She said she could tell nothing of the woman's name.'
The alderman issued a warrant against this Mrs. Wells, apparently on
newspaper suggestion.
The chief points against Elizabeth were that, when Wells's place was
examined, there was no penthouse to aid an escape, and no old picture.
But, under a wretched kind of bed, supporting the thing, was a picture,
on wood, of a Crown. Madam Wells had at one time used this loyal
emblem as a sign, she keeping a very ill-famed house of call. But, in
December 1745, when certain Highland and Lowland gentlemen were
accompanying bonny Prince Charlie towards the metropolis, Mrs.
Wells removed into a room the picture of the Crown, as being apt to
cause political emotions. This sign may have been 'the old picture.' As
to hay, there was hay in the room later searched; but penthouse there
was none.
That is the worst point in the alderman's notes, of whatever value these

enigmatic documents may be held.
One Nash, butler to the Goldsmiths' Company, was present at the
examination before Chitty on January 31, 1753. He averred, in May
1754, what Chitty did not, that Elizabeth spoke of the place of her
imprisonment as 'a little, square, darkish room,' with 'a few old
pictures.' Here the one old picture of