Elizabeth Canning - Views and Theories

Views and Theories

It is not an artful, but on the contrary, an exceeding ſtupid ſtory. An artful ſtory, is ſuch a ſtory as Tom Jones, where the incidents are ſo various, and yet ſo conſiſtent with themſelves, and with nature, that the more the reader is acquainted with nature, the more he is deceived into a belief of its being true; and is with difficulty recall'd from that belief by the author's confeſſion from time to time of its being all a fiction. But what is there plauſible in the adventures of Enfield Waſh? What is there ſtrange or poetically fancied in the incidents of robbing, knocking down—cry'd out murder—ſtopt my mouth with a handkerchief—you bitch, why don't you go faſter?—carrying to a bawdy houſe—offer of fine cloaths—cut your throat if you ſtir? Such is the variety of theſe incidents, which owe all their ſtrangeneſs to the ſenſeleſs manner in which they have been, with reſpect to time and place, jumbled together.
There is nothing ſurpriſing in ſuch ſtories, except their meeting with any degree of belief; and that ſurpriſe commonly ceaſes, whenever we ſet ourſelves coolly to examine into their origin, and trace them to their fountain head.

For Georgian England, the story of Elizabeth Canning was fascinating. Little attention was paid in the trial to Squires's request for Canning to "go their way"; according to Moore (1994), overtly the saga questioned Canning's chastity, while covertly it questioned whether someone of her social standing had any right to be taken notice of. The author Kristina Straub compares the case with the more general debate over the sexuality of female servants; Canning may have been either a "childlike innocent, victimized by brutally criminal outlaws", or "a wily manipulator of the justice system who uses innocent bystanders to escape the consequences of her own sexual misdeeds". The Case of Elizabeth Canning Fairly Stated posited that Canning either suffered imprisonment to protect her virtue, or lied to conceal "her own criminal Transactions in the Dark". Straub considers that the debate was not merely about Canning's guilt or innocence, but rather "the kinds of sexual identity that were attributable to women of her position in the social order."

The partisan nature of the Canningites and the Egyptians ensured that the trial of Elizabeth Canning became one of the most notorious criminal mysteries in 18th-century English law. For years the case was a regular feature in such publications as The Newgate Calendar and the Malefactor's Registers. Ramsay's A Letter to the Right Honourable the Earl of — Concerning the Affair of Elizabeth Canning was the inspiration for Voltaire's Histoire d'Elisabeth Canning, et de Jean Calas (1762), who shared Ramsay's opinion that Canning had gone missing to hide a pregnancy. The case was revisited in 1820 by James Caulfield, who retold the story but with several glaring mistakes. Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries several authors offered their own interpretations of the case. Caulfield's essay was followed in 1852 by John Paget's Elizabeth Canning. Paget's apt summary of the case read: "in truth, perhaps, the most complete and most inexplicable Judicial Puzzle on record".

Canning's trial was marked by the prosecution's inability to find any evidence whatsoever that she had been anywhere but in Wells's home, and where Canning was in January 1753 remains unknown. Similarly, mystery surrounds the precise movements of the Squires family, when it was supposed they were travelling through Dorset early in 1753. The writer F. J. Harvey Darton suspected that the family were smugglers, and that it was significant they had passed through Eggardon, where Isaac Gulliver operated (although Gulliver was, at the time, a child). The 18th-century writer Allen Ramsay claimed that Canning's initial story was "exceedingly stupid", and false. He viewed the lack of detail in her testimony as unsurprising to a more analytical mind. The US author Lillian Bueno McCue theorised that she was an amnesiac, and that her former employer, John Wintlebury, was to blame for her imprisonment at the Wells house. Treherne (1989) considers this theory very unlikely however, and instead concludes that Canning was almost certainly at Enfield Wash, but was not kept prisoner at Wells's home. He suggests that Robert Scaratt implanted the suggestion that Canning had been held at the Wells's house, as a useful decoy, and that he had somehow been involved in an unwanted pregnancy. Treherne also suggests that Canning was suffering from partial amnesia, and that she may not have lied intentionally at the trial of Squires and Wells. He calls Canning "the first media product." Although some early authors adopted the same stance as Fielding or Hill, who actively took sides in the affair, most later writers believe that Canning did not tell the truth. Moore (1994), however, believes that Canning was probably innocent, explaining the discrepancies between her and the Squires' testimonies as understandable omissions and modifications, and placing much emphasis on the ability of those men in power to follow their own pursuits—often at the expense of others.