Historical Mysteries | Page 4

the notes is better evidence, if the
notes are evidence, than Nash's memory. But I find that he was harping
on 'a few old pictures' as early as March 1753. Elizabeth said she hurt
her ear in getting out of the window, and, in fact, it was freshly cut and
bleeding when she arrived at home.
All this of Nash is, so far, the better evidence, as next day, February 1,
1753, when a most tumultuous popular investigation of the supposed
house of captivity was made, he says that he and others, finding the
dungeon not to be square, small, and darkish, but a long, narrow slit of
a loft, half full of hay, expressed disbelief. Yet it was proved that he
went on suggesting to Lyon, Elizabeth's master, that people should give
money to Elizabeth, and 'wished him success.' The proof was a letter of
his, dated February 10, 1753. Also, Nash, and two like-minded friends,
hearing Elizabeth perjure herself, as they thought, at the trial of Mrs.
Wells (whom Elizabeth never mentioned to Chitty), did not give
evidence against her--on the most absurdly flimsy excuses. One man
was so horrified that, in place of denouncing the perjury, he fled
incontinent! Another went to a dinner, and Nash to Goldsmiths' Hall, to
his duties as butler. Such was then the vigour of their scepticism.
On the other hand, at the trial in 1754 the neighbours reported
Elizabeth's tale as told on the night when she came home, more dead
than alive. Mrs. Myers had known Elizabeth for eleven years, 'a very
sober, honest girl as any in England.' Mrs. Myers found her livid, her
fingers 'stood crooked;' Mrs. Canning, Mrs. Woodward, and Polly Lyon
were then present, and Mrs. Myers knelt beside Elizabeth to hear her
story. It was as Chitty gave it, till the point where she was carried into a
house. The 'several persons' there, she said, were 'an elderly woman
and two young ones.' Her stays were cut by the old woman. She was
then thrust upstairs into a room, wherein was hay, a pitcher of water,

and bread in pieces. Bread may have been brought in, water too, while
she slept, a point never noted in the trials. She 'heard the name of
Mother Wills, or Wells, mentioned.'
Now Scarrat, in 1754, said that he, being present on January 29, 1753,
and hearing of the house, 'offered to bet a guinea to a farthing that it
was Mother Wells's.' But Mrs. Myers believed that Elizabeth had
mentioned hearing that name earlier; and Mrs. Myers must have heard
Scarrat, if he suggested it, before Elizabeth named it. The point is
uncertain.
Mrs. Woodward was in Mrs. Canning's room a quarter of an hour after
Elizabeth's arrival. The girl said she was almost starved to death in a
house on the Hertfordshire road, which she knew by seeing the
Hertford coach, with which she was familiar, go by. The woman who
cut her stays was 'a tall, black, swarthy woman.' Scarrat said 'that was
not Mrs. Wells,' which was fair on Scarrat's part. Elizabeth described
the two young women as being one fair, the other dark; so Scarrat
swore. Wintlebury, her old master, and several others corroborated.
If these accounts by Mrs. Myers, Mrs. Woodward, Scarrat, Wintlebury,
and others are trustworthy, then Elizabeth Canning's narrative is true,
for she found the two girls, the tall, swarthy woman, the hay, and the
broken water-pitcher, and almost everything else that she had
mentioned on January 29, at Mother Wells's house when it was visited
on February 1. But we must remember that most accounts of what
Elizabeth said on January 29 and on January 31 are fifteen months after
date, and are biassed on both sides.
To Mother Wells's the girl was taken on February 1, in what a company!
The coach, or cab, was crammed full, some friends walked, several
curious citizens rode, and, when Elizabeth arrived at the house, Nash,
the butler, and other busybodies had made a descent on it. The officer
with the warrant was already there. Lyon, Aldridge, and Hague were
with Nash in a cab, and were met by others 'riding hard,' who had
seized the people found at Mrs. Wells's. There was a rabble of persons
on foot and on horse about the door.

On entering the doorway the parlour was to your left, the house
staircase in front of you, on your right the kitchen, at the further end
thereof was a door, and, when that was opened, a flight of stairs led to a
long slit of a loft which, Nash later declared, did not answer to
Elizabeth's description, especially as there was hay, and, before Chitty,
Elizabeth had mentioned none. There was a filthy kind of bed, on
which now slept