also got at
Virtue Hall, or rather a sceptical Dr. Hill got at her and handed her
over to Gascoyne. She, as we saw, recanted. George Squires, the
gipsy's son, with an attorney, worked up the evidence for the gipsy's
_alibi_; she received a free pardon, and on April 29, 1754, there
began the trial of Elizabeth Canning for 'wilful and corrupt perjury.'

Mr. Davy, opening for the Crown, charitably suggested that Elizabeth
had absconded 'to preserve her character,' and had told a romantic
story to raise money! 'And, having by this time subdued all remains of
virtue, she preferred the offer of money, though she must wade through
innocent blood'--that of the gipsy--'to attain it.'

These hypotheses are absurd; her character certainly needed no saving.

Mr. Davy then remarked on the gross improbabilities of the story of
Elizabeth. They are glaring, but, as Fielding said, so are the
improbabilities of the facts. Somebody had stripped and starved and
imprisoned the girl; that is absolutely certain. She was brought
'within an inch of her life.' She did not suffer all these things to
excite compassion; that is out of the question. Had she plunged into
'gaiety' on New Year's night, the consequences would be other than
instant starvation. They might have been 'guilty splendour.' She had
been most abominably misused, and it was to the last degree improbable
that any mortal should so misuse an honest quiet lass. But the grossly
improbable had certainly occurred. It was next to impossible that, in
1856, a respectable-looking man should offer to take a little boy for
a drive, and that, six weeks later, the naked body of the boy, who had
been starved to death, should be found in a ditch near Acton. But the
facts occurred.[2] To Squires and Wells a rosy girl might prove more
valuable than a little boy to anybody.

[Footnote 2: Paget, p. 332.]

That Elizabeth could live for a month on a loaf did not surprise Mrs.
Canning. 'When things were very hard with her,' said Mrs. Canning,
'the child had lived on half a roll a day.' This is that other touch
which, with the story of the farthing, helps to make me a partisan of
Elizabeth.

Mr. Davy said that on January 31, before Chitty, Elizabeth 'did not
pretend to certainty' about Mrs. Wells. She never did at any time; she
neither knew, nor affected to know, anything about Mrs. Wells. She had
only seen a tall, swarthy woman, a dark girl, and a fair girl, whom
she recognised in the gipsy, her