Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 08.djvu/423

 rant was issued for the apprehension of Wells. On 1 Feb. Canning, her mother, and a group of friends, went with an officer to Wells's house. Canning, who was still very weak, was taken from room to room. She identified (with certain discrepancies) a loft as the one in which she had been placed, and passing by Mrs. Wells, she selected one Mary Squires, an old gipsy of surpassing ugliness (there is a portrait of her in the ‘Newgate Calendar’) as the person who had cut off her stays and thrust her upstairs. The gipsy promptly declared that at the time of the occurrence she was a hundred and twenty miles away at Abbotsbury in Dorsetshire. The whole Wells household, however, including Squires's son George, a young woman named Virtue Hall, and a married couple, rejoicing in the extraordinary names of Fortune and Judith Natus, were taken before a neighbouring justice, Mr. Teshmaker of Ford's Grove. Squires and Wells were committed for trial for assault and felony; the rest of the party were discharged.

This, it has been said, took place on 1 Feb. On the 6th Canning's case was handed by Mr. Salt, a solicitor, to Henry Fielding, the novelist, then a Bow Street magistrate, for his opinion. Fielding, after giving this, was persuaded into allowing Canning to swear an information before him, and also into examining Virtue Hall. Next day Canning was brought to him, and repeated, with some variations, the tale she had already told to Alderman Chitty. The result of this was that another warrant was issued against the rest of the Wells household, and Judith Natus and Virtue Hall were brought before Fielding. Virtue Hall, after much apparent prevarication and contradictory evidence, finally told a story closely resembling that of Canning. This, with the aid of Mr. Salt, the solicitor for the prosecution (!), was embodied in an information which she signed. The curious laxity which permitted these proceedings was commented upon at the time, and would be unintelligible now (, History of the Criminal Law of England, 1883, i. 423).

On 21 Feb. Squires and Wells were tried at the Old Bailey. Canning retold her tale; Hall corroborated it. Three witnesses, Gibbons, Clarke, and Greville, were called to prove an alibi for Squires; but they were contradicted by a fourth named Iniser, and, in her statement before receiving sentence, by Squires herself. Squires was condemned to death; Wells to be burned in the hand, a sentence which was executed forthwith, to the delight of the excited crowd in the Old Bailey sessions-house.

Then began a new phase in the story. The lord mayor, Sir Crisp Gascoyne, who had presided at the trial ex officio, was not satisfied with the verdict. He made further and searching inquiries. He found that other witnesses were ready to prove the alibi of Squires. Virtue Hall, moreover, upon re-examination recanted her evidence. A respite was consequently obtained for Squires, and her case was referred to the law officers of the crown. They reported that the weight of the evidence was in her favour, and the king thereupon granted her a free pardon.

Meanwhile Fielding had published his ‘Clear State of the Case of Elizabeth Canning,’ which was immediately answered by Dr. Hill of ‘The Inspector’ in the ‘Story of Elizabeth Canning consider'd.’ Other pamphlets by authors less illustrious began to multiply rapidly. Portraits of Canning and Squires appeared in all the print-shops, and the caricaturists entered eagerly into the controversy. The fine gentlemen of White's chocolate-house made collections for the heroine of the hour, and the rabble attacked Sir Crisp Gascoyne in his coach. ‘The town was divided between the “Canningites” and “Egyptians,” or “Gipsyites,” and “Betty Canning,”’ says Churchill in the ‘Ghost,’ was at least, With Gascoyne's help, a six months' feast. Churchill might have extended the time still further, for it was not until 29 April 1754 that Canning was summoned again to the Old Bailey to take her trial for wilful and corrupt perjury. Her different and differing statements were carefully dissected by counsel, and (rather after date) evidence was now tendered by Fortune and Judith Natus, to the effect that they slept in the loft during the whole of the time that Canning was said to have been confined there. As regards the Squires alibi, thirty-eight witnesses swore that the gipsy had been seen in Dorsetshire; twenty-seven, on the other hand, as pertinaciously asserted that she had been in Middlesex. The trial lasted eight days. The bewildered jury first put in a squinting verdict—they found Canning ‘guilty of perjury, but not wilful and corrupt.’ This qualified deliverance the recorder refused to receive, and they then found her guilty with a recommendation to mercy, though subsequently two of their number made affidavits that the verdict was not according to their consciences. When, on 30 May 1754, she came up to receive judgment, eight members of the court, led by the humane Sir John Barnard, were for six months' imprisonment, while nine were for transportation for seven years. She