urns. She was asked
'to do as they did,' 'a woman forced her upstairs into a room, and cut
the lace of her stays,' told her there were bread and water in the
room, and that her throat would be cut if she came out. The door was
locked on her. (There was no lock; the door was merely bolted.) She
lived on fragments of a quartern loaf and water '_in a pitcher_,' with
the mince-pie bought for her naughty little brother. She escaped about
four in the afternoon of January 29. In the room were 'an old stool or
two, _an old picture_ over the chimney,' two windows, an old table,
and so on. She forced a pane in a window, 'and got out on a small shed
of boards or penthouse,' and so slid to the ground. She did not say,
the alderman added, that there was any hay in the room. Of bread there
were 'four or five' or 'five or six pieces.' '_She never mentioned the
name of Wells._' Some one else did that at a venture. 'She said she
could tell nothing of the woman's name.' The alderman issued a warrant
against this Mrs. Wells, apparently on newspaper suggestion.

The chief points against Elizabeth were that, when Wells's place was
examined, there was no penthouse to aid an escape, and no old picture.
But, under a wretched kind of bed, supporting the thing, was a
picture, on wood, of a Crown. Madam Wells had at one time used this
loyal emblem as a sign, she keeping a very ill-famed house of call.
But, in December 1745, when certain Highland and Lowland gentlemen
were accompanying bonny Prince Charlie towards the metropolis, Mrs.
Wells removed into a room the picture of the Crown, as being apt to
cause political emotions. This sign may have been 'the old picture.'
As to hay, there _was_ hay in the room later searched; but penthouse
there was none.

That is the worst point in the alderman's notes, of whatever value
these enigmatic documents may be held.

One Nash, butler to the Goldsmiths' Company, was present at the
examination before Chitty on January 31, 1753. He averred, in May
1754, what Chitty did not, that Elizabeth spoke of the place of her
imprisonment as 'a little, square, darkish room,' with 'a few old
pictures.' Here the _one_ old picture of the notes is better evidence,
if the notes are evidence, than Nash's memory. But I find that he was
harping on 'a few old pictures' as early as March 1753. Elizabeth said
she hurt her ear in getting out of the window, and, in fact, it was
freshly cut and bleeding when she arrived at home.