Historical Mysteries | Page 5

a labourer and his wife, Fortune and Judith Natus.
Nash kept talking about the hay, and one Adamson rode to meet
Elizabeth, and came back saying that she said there was hay. By
Adamson's account he only asked her, 'What kind of place was it?' and
she said, 'A wild kind of place with hay in it,' as in the neighbours'
version of her first narrative. Mrs. Myers, who was in the coach,
corroborated Adamson.
The point of the sceptics was that till Adamson rode back to her on her
way to Wells's house she had never mentioned hay. They argued that
Adamson had asked her, 'Was there hay in the room?' and that she,
taking the hint, had said 'Yes!' By May 1754 Adamson and Mrs. Myers,
who was in the cab with Elizabeth, would believe that Adamson had
asked 'What kind of place is it?' and that Elizabeth then spoke, without
suggestion, of the hay. The point would be crucial, but nobody in 1754
appears to have remembered that on February 21, three weeks after the
event, at the trial of Mother Wells, Adamson had given exactly the
same evidence as in May 1754. 'I returned to meet her, and asked her
about the room. She described the room with some hay in it ... an odd
sort of an empty room.'
Arriving at Mother Wells's, Elizabeth, very faint, was borne in and set
on a dresser in the kitchen. Why did she not at once say, 'My room was
up the stairs, beyond the door at the further end of the room'? I know
not, unless she was dazed, as she well might be. Next she, with a mob
of the curious, was carried into the parlour, where were all the inmates
of the house. She paid no attention to Mrs. Wells, but at once picked
out a tall old woman huddled over the fire smoking a pipe. She did this,
by the sceptical Nash's evidence, instantly and without hesitation. The
old woman rose. She was 'tall and swarthy,' a gipsy, and according to
all witnesses inconceivably hideous, her underlip was 'the size of a

small child's arm,' and she was marked with some disease. 'Pray look at
this face,' she said; 'I think God never made such another.' She was
named Mary Squires. She added that on January 1 she was in
Dorset--'at Abbotsbury,' said her son George, who was present.
In 1754 thirty-six people testified to Mary Squires's presence in Dorset,
or to meeting her on her way to London, while twenty-seven, at Enfield
alone, swore as positively that they had seen her and her daughter at or
near Mrs. Wells's, and had conversed with her, between December 18,
1752, and the middle of January. Some of the Enfield witnesses were of
a more prosperous and educated class than the witnesses for the gipsy.
Many, on both sides, had been eager to swear, indeed, many had made
affidavits as early as March 1753.
This business of the cross-swearing is absolutely inexplicable; on both
sides the same entire certainty was exhibited, as a rule, yet the woman
was unmistakable, as she justly remarked. The gipsy, at all events, had
her alibi ready at once; her denial was as prompt and unhesitating as
Elizabeth's accusation. But, if guilty, she had enjoyed plenty of time
since the girl's escape to think out her line of defence. If guilty, it was
wiser to allege an alibi than to decamp when Elizabeth made off, for
she could not hope to escape pursuit. George Squires, her son, so
prompt with his 'at Abbotsbury on January 1,' could not tell, in May
1754, where he had passed the Christmas Day before that New Year's
Day, and Christmas is a notable day. Elizabeth also recognised in Lucy
Squires, the gipsy's daughter, and in Virtue Hall, the two girls, dark and
fair, who were present when her stays were cut.
After the recognition, Elizabeth was carried through the house, and,
according to Nash, in the loft up the stairs from the kitchen she said, in
answer to his question, 'This is the room, for here is the hay I lay upon,
but I think there is more of it.' She also identified the pitcher with the
broken mouth, which she certainly mentioned to Chitty, as that which
held her allowance of water. A chest, or nest, of drawers she declared
that she did not remember. An attempt was made to suggest that one of
her party brought the pitcher in with him to confirm her account. This
attempt failed; but that she had mentioned the pitcher was admitted.

Mrs. Myers, in May 1754, quoted Elizabeth's words as to there being
more hay exactly in the terms of Nash. Mrs. Myers was present in the
loft, and