Elizabeth Canning is an English maidservant who …
Years: 1753 - 1753
Elizabeth Canning is an English maidservant who claimed to have been kidnapped and held against her will in a hayloft for almost a month.
She ultimately becomes central to one of the most famous English criminal mysteries of the eighteenth century.
She disappears on January 1, 1753, before returning almost a month later to her mother's home in Aldermanbury in the City of London, emaciated and in a "deplorable condition".
After being questioned by concerned friends and neighbors she is interviewed by the local alderman, who then issues an arrest warrant for Susannah Wells, the woman who occupies the house in which Canning is supposed to have been held.
At Wells' house in Enfield Wash, Canning identifies Mary Squires as another of her captors, prompting the arrest and detention of both Wells and Squires.
London magistrate Henry Fielding becomes involved in the case, taking Canning's side.
Further arrests are made and several witness statements were taken, and Wells and Squires are ultimately tried and found guilty—Squires of the more serious and potentially capital charge of theft.
However, Crisp Gascoyne, trial judge and Lord Mayor of London, is unhappy with the verdict and begins his own investigation.
He speaks with witnesses whose testimony implies that Squires and her family could not have abducted Canning, and he interviews several of the prosecution's witnesses, some of whom recant their earlier testimony.
He orders Canning's arrest, following which she is tried and found guilty of perjury.
Squires is pardoned, and Canning sentenced to one month's imprisonment and seven years of transportation.
Canning's case pits two groups of believers against one another: the pro-Canning "Canningites", and the pro-Squires "Egyptians".
Gascoyne is openly abused and attacked in the street, while interested authors wage a fierce war of words over the fate of the young, often implacable maid.
She will die in Wethersfield, Connecticut, in 1773, but the mystery surrounding her disappearance will remain unsolved.
She ultimately becomes central to one of the most famous English criminal mysteries of the eighteenth century.
She disappears on January 1, 1753, before returning almost a month later to her mother's home in Aldermanbury in the City of London, emaciated and in a "deplorable condition".
After being questioned by concerned friends and neighbors she is interviewed by the local alderman, who then issues an arrest warrant for Susannah Wells, the woman who occupies the house in which Canning is supposed to have been held.
At Wells' house in Enfield Wash, Canning identifies Mary Squires as another of her captors, prompting the arrest and detention of both Wells and Squires.
London magistrate Henry Fielding becomes involved in the case, taking Canning's side.
Further arrests are made and several witness statements were taken, and Wells and Squires are ultimately tried and found guilty—Squires of the more serious and potentially capital charge of theft.
However, Crisp Gascoyne, trial judge and Lord Mayor of London, is unhappy with the verdict and begins his own investigation.
He speaks with witnesses whose testimony implies that Squires and her family could not have abducted Canning, and he interviews several of the prosecution's witnesses, some of whom recant their earlier testimony.
He orders Canning's arrest, following which she is tried and found guilty of perjury.
Squires is pardoned, and Canning sentenced to one month's imprisonment and seven years of transportation.
Canning's case pits two groups of believers against one another: the pro-Canning "Canningites", and the pro-Squires "Egyptians".
Gascoyne is openly abused and attacked in the street, while interested authors wage a fierce war of words over the fate of the young, often implacable maid.
She will die in Wethersfield, Connecticut, in 1773, but the mystery surrounding her disappearance will remain unsolved.
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Years: 1753 - 1753
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