her uncle
and aunt on the 1st of January, she had been attacked by two men in
great coats, who robbed, partially stripped her, and dragged her away to
a house in the Hertfordshire road, where an old woman cut off her stays,
and shut her up in a room in which she had been imprisoned ever since,
subsisting on bread and water, and a mince pie that her assailants had
overlooked in her pocket, and ultimately, she said, she had escaped
through the window, tearing her ear in doing so.

Her story created much sympathy for her, and steps were immediately
taken to punish those who had abducted her in this outrageous manner.
The girl, who was in a very weak condition, was taken to the house
she had specified, one "Mother" Wells, who kept an establishment of
doubtful reputation at Enfield Wash, and on being asked to identify
the woman who had cut off her stays, and locked her up in the room
referred to, pointed out one Mary Squires, an old gipsy of surpassing
ugliness. Accordingly, Squires and Wells were committed for trial for
assault and felony; the result of the trial being that Squires was
condemned to death, and Wells to be burned in the hand, a sentence
which was executed forthwith, much to the delight of the excited crowd
in the Old Bailey Sessions-house.

But the Lord Mayor, Sir Crisp Gascoyne, who had presided at the trial
_ex-officio_, was not satisfied with the verdict, and caused further
and searching inquiries to be made. The verdict, on the weight of
fresh evidence obtained, was upset, and Squires was granted a free
pardon. On 29th April, 1754, Elizabeth Canning was summoned again to
the Old Bailey, but this time to take her trial for wilful and corrupt
perjury. The trial lasted eight days, and, being found guilty, she was
transported in August, "at the request of her friends, to New
England." According to the "Annual Register," she returned to this
country at the expiration of her sentence to receive a legacy of L500,
left to her three years before by an old lady of Newington Green;
whereas, later accounts affirm that she never came back, but died 22nd
July, 1773, at Weathersfield, in Connecticut, it being further stated
that she married abroad a Quaker of the name of Treat, "and for some
time followed the occupation of a schoolmistress."

The mystery of her life--her disappearance from Jan. 1st to the 29th
of that month, and what transpired in that interval--is a secret that
has never been to this day divulged. I