on need not be described in detail, but she was
very near her death, as the medical evidence, and that of a midwife
(who consoled Mrs. Canning on one point), proves beyond possibility of
cavil.

The girl told her story; but what did she tell? Mr. Austin Dobson, in
_The Dictionary of National Biography_, says that her tale 'gradually
took shape under the questions of sympathising neighbours,' and
certainly, on some points, she gave affirmative answers to leading
questions asked by Robert Scarrat. The difficulty is that the
neighbours' accounts of what Elizabeth said in her woful condition
were given when the girl was tried for perjury in April-May 1754. We
must therefore make allowance for friendly bias and mythopoeic
memory. On January 31, 1753, Elizabeth made her statement before
Alderman Chitty, and the chief count against her is that what she told
Chitty did not tally with what the neighbours, in May 1754, swore that
she told them when she came home on January 29, 1753. This point is
overlooked by Mr. Paget in his essay on the subject.[1]

[Footnote 1: _Puzzles and Paradoxes_, pp. 317-336, Blackwoods, 1874.]

On the other hand, by 1754 the town was divided into two factions,
believers and disbelievers in Elizabeth; and Chitty was then a
disbeliever. Chitty took but a few notes on January 31, 1753. 'I did
not make it so distinct as I could wish, not thinking it could be the
subject of so much inquiry,' he admitted in 1754. Moreover, the notes
which he then produced were _not_ the notes which he made at the time,
'but what I took since from that paper I took then' (January 31, 1753)
'of hers and other persons that were brought before me.' This is not
intelligible, and is not satisfactory. If Elizabeth handed in a paper,
Chitty should have produced it in 1754. If he took notes of the
evidence, why did he not produce the original notes?

These notes, made when, and from what source, is vague, bear that
Elizabeth's tale was this: At a dead wall by Bedlam, in Moorfields,
about ten P.M., on January 1, 1753, two men stripped her of gown,
apron, and hat, robbed her of thirteen shillings and sixpence, 'struck
her, stunned her, and pushed her along Bishopsgate Street.' She lost
consciousness--one of her 'fits'--and recovered herself (near Enfield
Wash). Here she was taken to a house, later said to be 'Mother
Wells's,' where 'several persons' were. Chitty, unluckily, does not
say what sort of persons, and on that point all t