in _The Annual Register_, "was ordered to
be set in the pillory three times in one month, once at the end of Cock
Lane, and after that to be imprisoned two years; Elizabeth his wife, one
year; and Mary Frazer, six months to Bridewell, and to be kept there to
hard labor." Thus, in wig and gown, did the law solemnly and severely
place the seal of disbelief on the Cock Lane ghost; which, it is worth
observing, seems to have vanished forever the moment the arrests were
made.

* * * * *

But, looking back at the case from the vantage point of chronological
distance and of recent research into kindred affairs, it is difficult to
accept as final the verdict reached by the "special jury" and concurred
in by the public opinion of the day. It is preposterous to suppose that
for so slight a cause as a dispute over twelve pounds Clerk Parsons and
his associates would conspire to ruin a man's reputation and if possible
to take his life; and still more preposterous to imagine that they would
adopt such a means to attain this end. Of course, they may have had
stronger reasons for being hostile to Knight than appears from the
published facts. Yet it is significant that when the clerk was placed in
the pillory he seemed to "be out of his mind," and so evident was his
misery that the assembled mob "instead of using him ill, made a handsome
collection for him."

The more likely, nay the only defensible solution of the problem, is
that he, his fellow sufferers, and Knight himself were one and all the
victims of the uncontrollable impulses of a hysterical child. The case
bears too strong a resemblance to the Tedworth and Epworth disturbances
to admit of any other hypothesis. Not that the Parsons girl is to be
placed on exactly the same footing as the Mompesson children and Hetty
Wesley, and held to some extent responsible for the mischievous
phenomena she produced.

On the contrary, the more one studies the evidence the stronger grows
the conviction that in her we have a striking and singular instance of
"dissociation." She was, it is very evident, strongly attached to the
unfortunate Mrs. Knight, doubtless felt keenly the separation from her,
and, whether consciously or subconsciously, would cherish a grudge
against Knight as the cause of that separation. The news of Mrs.
Knight's death would come as a great shock, and might easily act, so to
speak, as the fulcrum of the lever of mental disintegration. T