Elizabeth Canning (married name Treat; born 17 September 1734; died June 1773) was an English servant who claimed she was kidnapped and held against her will in a hayloft for nearly a month. Her case became part of one of the most well-known criminal mysteries in 18th-century England.
She disappeared on 1 January 1753 and returned almost a month later to her mother’s home in Aldermanbury, London, very thin and in poor health. After speaking with friends and neighbors, a local official called an alderman questioned her and issued an arrest warrant for Susannah Wells, the woman who lived in the house where Canning claimed she was held. At Wells’ home in Enfield Wash, Canning identified Mary Squires as another captor, leading to the arrest of both Wells and Squires. London magistrate Henry Fielding joined the case, supporting Canning’s claims. More arrests followed, and several witness statements were taken. Wells and Squires were tried and found guilty—Squires for a serious crime that could have led to the death penalty.
However, Crisp Gascoyne, a judge and Lord Mayor of London, disagreed with the verdict and began his own investigation. He spoke with witnesses who suggested Squires and her family could not have kidnapped Canning. Some witnesses also changed their earlier statements. Gascoyne ordered Canning’s arrest, and she was tried and found guilty of lying under oath. Squires was pardoned, and Canning was sentenced to one month in prison and seven years of forced labor in a distant colony.
Canning’s case divided people into two groups: those who supported her, called the “Canningites,” and those who supported Squires, called the “Egyptians.” Gascoyne faced public attacks, and writers argued fiercely about the case. Canning died in Wethersfield, Connecticut, in 1773, but the mystery of her disappearance remains unsolved.
History
Elizabeth Canning was born on September 17, 1734, in London. She was the oldest of five children born to William, a carpenter, and Elizabeth Canning. The family lived in two small rooms in Aldermanbury Postern, a street in London that no longer exists. Aldermanbury was a neighborhood that was respected but not wealthy. Elizabeth was born into poverty. Her father died in 1751, and her mother and four siblings shared a two-room home with James Lord, an apprentice. Lord lived in the front room, while Elizabeth’s family stayed in the back room. Elizabeth had only a few months of schooling at a writing school. At age 15 or 16, she worked as a maidservant for John Wintlebury, a local publican, who described her as honest but shy. From October 1752, she lived with Edward Lyon, a carpenter, who also thought highly of her. Elizabeth was described as a 18-year-old girl who was about 5 feet tall, had a face marked by smallpox, a long nose, and wide eyes.
Elizabeth disappeared on January 1, 1753. That day, she had no work and spent time with her family. She planned to go shopping with her mother after visiting her aunt and uncle, Alice and Thomas Colley, but changed her mind and stayed with them for the evening. Around 9 p.m., she left with her aunt and uncle, traveling two-thirds of the way to her lodgings in Aldermanbury.
When Elizabeth did not return to Edward Lyon’s home, her employer went to her mother’s house twice to look for her. Mrs. Canning sent her other three children to Moorfields to search for Elizabeth, while James Lord went to the Colleys. The Colleys told him that Elizabeth had left near Aldgate church in Houndsditch around 9:30 p.m. The next morning, Mrs. Canning visited the Colleys but found no clues. Neighbors were asked if they had seen Elizabeth, but weeks passed with no progress. Mrs. Canning searched the neighborhood, and relatives searched the city. An advertisement was placed in newspapers, and prayers were read in churches, but the only clue was a report of a “woman’s shriek” from a hackney coach on January 1.
Elizabeth reappeared around 10 p.m. on January 29, 1753. Her mother fainted when she saw her daughter. After recovering, Mrs. Canning sent James Lord to get neighbors. Elizabeth was described as being in very poor condition: her face and hands were covered in dirt, and she wore a shift, petticoat, and bedgown. A blood-soaked rag was tied around her head. She claimed two men had attacked her near Bedlam Hospital, stripped her, robbed her, and hit her in the temple, knocking her unconscious. She awoke near a road with water, where the men were still present. They forced her to walk to a house, where an old woman asked if she would become a prostitute. Elizabeth refused, and the woman cut off her corset, slapped her, and pushed her into a loft. She stayed there for nearly a month, surviving only on bread and water. She scavenged clothing from a fireplace in the loft. She eventually escaped by removing boards from a window and walking five hours home. She remembered hearing the name “Wills or Wells” and thought she had been held on the Hertford Road. Based on this, John Wintlebury and Robert Scarrat identified the house as that of Susannah Wells at Enfield Wash, about 10 miles away.
The next day, Elizabeth’s story was printed in the London Daily Advertiser. She was visited by an apothecary, but she was too weak to take medicine and vomited it. He gave her clysters until he was satisfied with the results. Then, her friends and neighbors took her to the Guildhall to see Alderman Thomas Chitty, who issued a warrant for Susannah Wells’s arrest.
On February 1, Elizabeth’s friends took her to Enfield Wash. Despite her poor health, they wanted her to identify her captors and the room she claimed to have been held in. Wintlebury, Scarrat, and Joseph Adamson arrived on horseback and met the warrant officer and peace officers. They waited for Susannah Wells to appear. Wells’s house had been used for many purposes, including a carpenter’s shop, a butcher’s, and an ale-house. She had kept animals in the house and had lodgers. She had been married twice: her first husband was a carpenter, and her second husband was hanged for theft. She had also been imprisoned in 1736 for perjury. Her daughter, Sarah Howit, had lived there for about two years. Howit’s brother, John, was a carpenter who lived nearby.
At about 9 a.m., Wells entered her house. The officers secured the building and found Wells, an old woman named Mary Squires, her children, Virtue Hall, and a woman they thought was Wells’s daughter. Another woman, Judith Natus, was brought down from the loft to be questioned. The warrant officer was puzzled because the loft did not match Elizabeth’s description, and he found no evidence of her jumping from the window. Others who arrived in a hired coach and chaise were also surprised.
Elizabeth, who had arrived in the chaise with her mother and two others, was carried into the house by Adamson. She identified Mary Squires as the woman who had cut off her stays and claimed Virtue Hall and a woman presumed to be Squires’s daughter had been present. Elizabeth was taken upstairs and identified the loft as the room where she had been imprisoned, though it had more hay than she remembered. Boards covering the window appeared to have been recently fastened. With this evidence, the suspects were taken to Justice of the Peace Merry Tyshemaker. Squires and Wells were charged: Squires for removing Elizabeth’s stays and Wells for “keeping a disorderly house.” George Squires and Virtue Hall denied involvement and were released. Elizabeth and her supporters returned home.
In 18th-century England, assault was not seen as a crime against the state but as a civil matter between disputing parties. This meant Elizabeth had to take legal action herself and investigate the crime, which was expensive.
Views and theories
The story of Enfield Wash is not well-written or clever. A well-written story, like Tom Jones, has many different events that still make sense and feel real. The more a reader knows about the world, the more they might believe the story is true, even when the author says it is made up. However, the events in Enfield Wash are not believable or interesting. They include things like being robbed, being hit, being told to be quiet, and being taken to a bad place. These events are strange not because they are unusual, but because they are mixed up in a confusing way. The only surprising thing about such stories is that people believe them at all. This surprise usually stops when people carefully look at the story and find its real source.
In 18th-century Britain, the story of Elizabeth Canning was very important. During her trial, little attention was given to a request by someone named Squires for Canning to "go their way." According to Moore (1994), the story openly questioned whether Canning had acted properly, and secretly questioned whether someone of her social class deserved to be noticed. Kristina Straub compared the case to larger debates about the behavior of female servants. Some believed Canning was a harmless person who was harmed by criminals, while others thought she might have lied to avoid punishment for her own mistakes. A book called The Case of Elizabeth Canning Fairly Stated suggested that Canning was either kept safe to protect her honor or lied to hide her own wrong actions. Straub said the debate was not just about whether Canning was guilty or innocent, but about what kinds of sexual roles were expected of women like her.
The strong opinions of the people who supported Canning and those who opposed her made her trial one of the most famous mysteries in 18th-century English law. For many years, the case was often written about in books like The Newgate Calendar and The Malefactor's Registers. An artist named Allan Ramsay wrote a letter about the case, which inspired Voltaire’s book Histoire d'Elisabeth Canning, et de Jean Calas (1762). Ramsay and Voltaire believed Canning had disappeared to hide a pregnancy. In 1820, James Caulfield wrote about the case again, but made several mistakes. Many authors in the 19th and 20th centuries also wrote their own versions of the story. In 1852, John Paget wrote a book called Elizabeth Canning, and he called the case "the most complete and most inexplicable Judicial Puzzle on record."
During Canning’s trial, the people who accused her could not find any proof that she had been anywhere other than at Wells’s home. It is still unknown where she was in January 1753. The movements of the Squires family during early 1753 are also unclear. F. J. Harvey Darton guessed that the Squires were smugglers and that their travel through Eggardon, where a man named Isaac Gulliver lived, was important. However, Gulliver was a child at the time. Allan Ramsay said Canning’s story was "exceedingly stupid" and not true. He thought the lack of details in her testimony was normal for someone who did not think carefully. Lillian Bueno McCue thought Canning might have forgotten things and that her former employer, John Wintlebury, was responsible for her being at Wells’s home. John Treherne (1989) disagreed and believed Canning was likely at Enfield Wash but not held at Wells’s home. He suggested that someone named Robert Scarrat spread the idea that Canning was at Wells’s home to distract from his own problems, such as an unwanted pregnancy. Treherne also thought Canning might have forgotten parts of her story and did not intentionally lie during the trial. He called Canning "the first media product." While some early writers took sides, like Fielding or Hill, most later writers believed Canning did not tell the truth. Moore (1994) believed Canning was probably innocent and explained differences in her and the Squires’ stories as simple mistakes or omissions. He also said that powerful men often acted in their own interests, sometimes harming others.