The Return of Dr. Sam Johnson, Detector

by Lillian de la Torre

  These lines were roughly printed in the form of a handbill. My friend Dr. Sam: Johnson, detector of crime and chicane, produced the dog’s-eared scrap of paper from the accumulations in his untidy book-garret in his house in Johnson’s Court. I perused it with care.

  “Pray, sir,” I ventured, “have you still, in April, hopes of finding the girl? Sure the thing is all too plain. The lass has been caught up and carried off by some rakish fellow, and now ten to one she plies a shameful trade by Covent Garden, and shames to return to her mother.”

  “No, sir, there you are out. The girl has returned to her home long since.”

  “Why then, sir, the girl has told her tale, and there’s an end on’t.”

  “Yes, sir, the girl has told her tale indeed, and thence arises the puzzle.”

  “Pray tell it me.”

  “Why, thus sir: ’Twas King Charles’s Martyrdom Eve, eight and twenty days after that fatal New Year’s Day, and the sawyer’s ’prentice was just upon locking the door for the night, when there comes a faint knocking. ’Tis Elizabeth Canning! She is sodden, and starving, and exhausted and blue, and her cloathes are gone. Good lack, cries Goody Canning, Bet, what has happened to you? And Bet tells her tale. Stay, you shall hear it as she told it in Bow Street.”

  From a mass of old printed papers my bulky friend drew a thin pamphlet, and from it began to read out in his sonorous voice:

  “The INFORMATION of Elizabeth Canning of Aldermanbury Postern, London, Spinster.

  “This Informant, upon her Oath, saith, that on Monday, the First Day of January last past, she, this Informant, went to see her Uncle and Aunt, who live at Salt-Petre Bank, near Rosemary-Lane, in the County of Middlesex, and continued with them until the Evening; and saith, That upon her Return home, about Half an Hour after Nine, being opposite Bethlehem-gate in Moorfields, she, this Informant, was seized by two men (whose Names are unknown to her, this Informant) who both had brown Bob-wigs on, and drab-coloured Great-coats; one of whom held her, this Informant, whilst the other, feloniously and violently, took from her one Shaving Hat, one Stuff Gown, and one Linen Apron, which she had on; and also, Half a Guinea in Gold, and three Shillings in Silver; and then he that held her threatened to do for this Informant. And this Informant saith, That, immediately after, they, the same two Men, violently took hold of her, and dragged her up into the Gravel-walk that leads down to the said Gate, and about the Middle thereof he the said Man, that first held her, gave her, with his Fist, a very violent Blow upon the right Temple, which threw her into a Fit, and deprived her of her Senses (which Fits, she, this Informant, saith she is accustomed and subject to, upon being frighted, and that they often continue for six or seven Hours …)”

  “Stay, stay, sir,” I implored, “for here is such a foyson of this Informant, and the said Informanat, as carries me back to the Court of Session, whence I am newly a truant; so pray, sir, give me the straight of the story without circumlocution.”

  “Well, then, sir: Bet Canning told a horrid tale, how these pandours in bob-wigs snatched her up by Bedlam Gate, and carried her off in her fit. They carried her off to a bawdy-house in the suburbs, said Bet; and there an old woman took her by the hand, and My dear, says she, will you go our way? For if you do, you shall have fine clothes. No, says Bet. Straightway the old woman takes up a carving-knife, and cuts the lace of the girl’s stays, which the men in bob-wigs had overlooked, and takes them from her. Then she feels of the girl’s petticoats. These are of no use, says she, I’ll give you them. With that she gives the girl a great slap in the chops, and turns her up a pair of stairs, half-naked as she was, into a kind of loft or shuffleboard room. There, said Betty, she found some old mouldy bread and a broken jug full of water; but for which, and a penny minced pye which she happened to have by her, she had starved to death. For eight-and-twenty days no soul came nigh her. On the five-and-twentieth day the bread was all gone. On the eight-and-twentieth day she broke out at the window and ran away home.”

  “Sure, sir,” I cried, “these were no Christians, but heathen Turks, so to misuse a poor innocent girl!”

  “Yet you will allow, sir, that ’tis an excess of Christianity, thus to suffer for eight-and-twenty days an unnecessary martyrdom; for she who can break out at a window on the eight-and-twentieth day of fasting, might have done so with less fatigue on the first.”

  “Heathen Turks,” I reiterated hotly, “and I heartily wish they may have been laid by the heels.”

  “As to Turks, Bozzy, you are not so far out; and as to laying by the heels, they were so. And a precious crew they proved to be, being the old bawd, Susannah Wells by name, and a parcel of gipsies, her lodgers. They carried the girl to the suburbs to identify the people and the place. This is the house, says Bet; this is the shuffleboard room; and these are the miscreants, says she, pointing at the gipsies. It was the old gipsy woman cut my stays; and I think, says she, I think the gipsy man her son was one of the men in bob-wigs; while as to the two gipsy wenches her daughters, though they laughed at me they did nothing to me. As to the old bawd, I don’t know that ever I saw her in my life before.”

  “I hope,” cried I, “that the whole precious crew have long since had their just deserts.”

  “No, sir,” replied my friend coolly, “’tis true, the world was once of your mind; Wells was branded in the hand, and the old gipsy woman was to hang for the stays. But the old woman found friends, who have so managed, that she had the King’s pardon, and placed the girl in the dock in her stead.”

  “Upon what charge?” I cried.

  “Upon a charge of perjury.”

  “Monstrous!” I exclaimed angrily. “How mean you, friends? The publican of some ale-house under a hedge?”

  “No, sir,” replied Dr. Johnson. “I will name but one: the Lord Mayor of London.”

  I gaped.

  “You have wished to see the sights of London,” remarked my friend. “Here is one you are not to pass by. The girl takes her trial today.”

  Now it was clear why my friend had caused me to hear the girl’s story. The curtain was about to rise on a new act of the drama.

  “Will you come, sir?”

  “No, sir. I am too old and too thick in the middle to batter my way into the press at the Old Bailey.”

  I was young and spry. I clapped on my three-cornered hat and made off down Fleet Street to the Sessions House in the ancient street known as the Old Bailey.

  Before I had turned the corner a muttering sound told me of the crowd that was milling uneasily in the paved court-yard. I was not to be daunted. I butted and pushed my way until I stood, half-suffocated, under the balcony and close by the dock.

  On the long bench at the front sat the Justices of Oyer and Terminer, the lawyers in robes, the aldermen with their chains of office about their necks. On the floor before them a spry man with his bag-wig pushed back was talking in brisk tenor tones. But I had no eyes for them.

  On the raised platform of the dock, clinging to the rail that fenced it, stood the girl. She was a stocky chit, no higher than five feet, drest in a clean linnen gown. She wore buckled shoes and a decent lawn kerchief, and her plain cap was fastened under her chin. The light fell on her pink, expressionless face. The spry lawyer was describing her in unflattering terms as a liar for profit; but the large blue eyes never flickered. Elizabeth Canning looked at him as if he weren’t there at all.

  Then her eyes shifted, and I followed her gaze. Seated to one side, in a large armed chair, sat the most hideous old hag I had ever had the misfortune to see. She was bent, and tremulous, and swarthy. Swathing clouts half-hid a face like a night-mare. She had a great frog’s mouth smeared all over the lower half of her face. Her chin was aflame with the purple scars of an old disease, and her swarthy hooked nose jutted over all. This was Mary Squires, the gipsy beldame. She was attended by a sparkling dark girl and a trim-built young gipsy man.

  I could not read the stolid girl’s expression, as she looked at her enemy. It held neither i
ndignation nor remorse, but something more like puzzlement.

  For ten mortal hours I stood on my feet as the gipsy’s witnesses followed one another on the stand.

  “How is it with Canning?” asked Dr. Johnson as I supped with him. “Is she cast?”

  “No, sir,” I replied. “There are prosecution witnesses still to come, spare the defence; for length this trial bids fair to make history.”

  “Pray, how will it go?”

  “Sir,” I replied, “ill, I fear. Here have been forty witnesses come up from Dorset to swear an alibi for yonder gipsy hag. She was strolling, they will stand to it, through the Dorset market-towns peddling such smuggled goods as she might come by in the sea-ports. Here has been a most respectable witness, an exciseman, who will swear it, that they lay in the excise office at Abbotsbury on the very night. Here have been landlords of inns from Abbotsbury to London to trace them on their way, bar only a four-days’ journey from Coombe to Basingstoke. They came to Enfield full three weeks after Canning absconded. How ’tis managed I know not, but the girl is devoted to doom.”

  A knocking interrupted my discourse. The knocker proved to be a heavy-set red-faced man. He was accompanied by a younger man, a spindle-shanked sandy fellow with a long nose. Between them they supported a weeping woman. The woman was fortyish, and ample to overflowing.

  The sandy young man burst immediately into speech.

  “Robert Scarrat, hartshorn-rasper, at your service, sir, which I rasps hartshorn on a piece basis for Mrs. Waller of Old ’Change, and her son is tenant to Mrs. Canning here.”

  The weeping woman snuffled and confirmed the hartshorn-rasper with a nod.

  “This here,” the nervous strident tones hurried on, “is by name John Wintlebury, as is landlord of the Weavers’ Arms, and Bet Canning was a servant in his house.”

  “’Tis a good wench,” rumbled the publican.

  “Nevertheless they have contrived her ruin among them,” cried the woman, “and will transport her to the plantations—unless you, sir, would undertake to clear up the matter.”

  “You must tell me,” replied my friend, “what they are saying about her.”

  “’Tis never true that I hid her for my gain,” cried out the weeping mother, smearing her bleared eyes with a thick finger, “for I never had rest, day nor night, for wondering where she was. Mostly I thought her dead in Houndsditch, sir, or catched up by some rakish young fellow. I had dreams and wandering thoughts, and I prayed day and night to have a vision of her. But the cunning man said—”

  “The cunning man?”

  “A mere piece of woman’s folly, sir,” muttered the innkeeper, but Mrs. Canning paid him no mind.

  “The cunning man in the Old Bailey. I went to him to have news of her, he had a black wig over his face.”

  “What said he?”

  “Not a word, sir, only wrote, scribble, scribble, scribble along. He said, an old black woman had my daughter, and she would return soon.”

  “Ay,” chimed in the hartshorn-rasper, his prominent hazel eyes rolling with superstitious awe, “is’t not strange, sir?”

  Mrs. Canning shuddered, and sobbed harder than ever. The landlord laid his hand on the woman’s arm.

  “Be easy, ma’am,” he said gently, “for we know Bet’s a good girl, and Dr. Johnson will soon make the matter clear. No need to take the hystericks over it.”

  The woman moaned. Scarrat took up the tale.

  “Nor ’tis not true,” he went on, “that I went off with the girl for my pleasure, for she was unknown to me.”

  “Ay,” seconded the landlord, “for all the time she lived in my house, she was modest and shy, and would scarce so much as go to the door to speak to a man; and though Mr. Scarrat frequented the house, they never exchanged a word.”

  “And,” cried the spindly man, growing hot, “as to my forging this tale, out of revenge against the bawd, ’tis false as Hell, though indeed I owe the creature no kindness.”

  “A notorious woman,” said Wintlebury, “I knew of her infamous brothel when I lived and courted in Hertford.”

  “Oh, pray, pray, Dr. Johnson,” sobbed out the weeping mother, “will not you help us?”

  “Do, sir,” I seconded. “Could you but see the vile face of the gipsy hag, you would rush to the girl’s defence.”

  “As to faces,” replied my friend, “there’s no art to find in them the mind’s construction; and as to helping, if I must come down to the Old Bailey, ’twill not do.”

  The fat woman gave a howl and fell to the floor in a paroxysm. There was instant confusion. The fat friend and the thin one fell to slapping her wrists, while I applied under her snubby nose the hartshorn-bottle which was perhaps the fruit of Mr. Scarrat’s endeavours.

  When she had gasped and sat up, I turned to my kindly friend.

  “Pray give your assistance,” I begged. “I will be your deputy to the Old Bailey.”

  My friend accepted of my offer, and the friends of Canning departed in better cheer.

  Only the fame of my companion gained us access to the gipsy. She sat in the best room of the White Horse, in the Haymarket, and regarded us sardonically with black, beady eyes. She was surrounded by a court of Dorsetshire fishermen, King’s landwaiters, and gipsies in leather breeches. Her pretty daughter sat hand in hand with a tall man in fustian; I recognized with a start one of the principal witnesses for the prosecution, a cordwainer of Dorset. A black-browed little raisin of a man turned out to be the girl’s uncle, Samuel Squires, a landwaiter of the customs right here in London and a gipsy of considerable influence.

  Dr. Johnson ran a lowering eye over the motley crew; the men of the customs particularly took his eye. Then he waved them all away, and to my relief they went.

  “Now, ma’am,” says Dr. Johnson, “out with it. There’s more in this than meets the eye.”

  The beady eyes measured him.

  “I will confess,” said the rusty voice.

  I thrilled to my toes. The girl was saved!

  “I’ll confess. Though I have passed myself for a strolling pedlar, I am in reality—”

  Dr. Johnson leaned forward.

  “I am in reality—a witch. I can be present at two places at one time,” whispered the old beldame with hoarse and ostentatious caution, “and though all these people saw me in Dorset, I nevertheless carried Canning to Enfield on my broom-stick—”

  Dr. Johnson cut short her triumphant cackle by rising to his feet.

  “Have a care, ma’am,” he said angrily, “I am not to be trifled with.”

  The old hag leaned back and laughed in his face.

  “I know you are no witch,” my friend went on grimly, “but I will tell you what you are.”

  He spoke three words in her ear. Her face changed. She looked at him with more respect.

  “Ah,” she said, “I see you are in the councils of, the great.”

  “I can see a church by daylight,” replied Johnson as we withdrew.

  I made off, being engaged to dine with some ladies in St. James’s, but Dr. Johnson turned into the tap-room and lingered.

  “Alack, Mr. Boswell,” he told me when again we met. “Alas for Bet Canning, the rusticks are honest. I had their story over a can of ale, and with such a wealth of detail as can scarce be forgery. The honest cordwainer loves the gipsy wench; he dallied eight days in their company at Abbotsbury, and when they departed he followed them on the road. There are landlords to swear to them all, and the things they saw and the meals they ate. So rich is the tale, it must be more than mendacious invention.”

  “Yet who pays,” I cried, “who pays the scot of the poor gipsy pedlar and her forty witnesses at the White Horse in the Haymarket? Who keeps them in victuals and gin?”

  “My Lord Mayor, ’tis said,” replied my companion. “But come, Mr. Boswell, let me know your mind: shall we push forward and uncover the truth, wherever it lies? Or shall we leave Bet Canning to her luck with the jury?”

  “Let us wait,�
�� I replied uneasily, “and see.”

  I filled the days of waiting in the court-room of the Old Bailey, where each day the girl sat in the dock with her wrists crossed before her, and looked on without expression while witnesses called her liar or martyr.

  “How goes the trial, Bozzy?” demanded my friend as I returned bedraggled from another day’s session.

  “Ill, for the girl, ill,” I replied dejectedly. “You may know how ill, when I tell you that the Lord Mayor was pelted by the resentful Canningite rabble as he came away from the Sessions-house. The girl has been made to appear a liar. Before the sitting Aldermen, so he has sworn, she described her prison to be little, square, and dark. Then they took her to Enfield; when it appeared that the room she swore to was long and light, with many other contradictions. I know not what to think.”

  A starved girl, after long imprisonment, may surely exhibit some confusion,” suggested Dr. Johnson thoughtfully.

  “There is more,” I replied. “From Enfield came many witnesses, who swore that they visited her supposed prison during that month, and saw there no such person as Elizabeth Canning.”

  “What said the girl to this?”

  “Never a word, save once. ’Twas a son of Wells’s testified, he stepped into the shuffleboard room to lay by his tools, for he is a carpenter, and there was no soul there save the labouring man that lodged there. Bet Canning leaned forward, and scanned him closely. She frowned, and looked him up and down. I never saw him before, as I know of, says she.”

  “Why did she so?”

  “Who can tell? ’Tis a strange wench. Just so, by the evidence, did she comport herself when they took her to Enfield: would not be sure of the gipsy man, could not be sure she had ever seen Wells. Only the gipsy woman she swore to without hesitation. They report strange things of the girl, too, in Wells’s loft. Do you remember that six-foot nest of drawers? says they. I never saw it before, says Miss. Do you remember the hay and the saddles stored up here? says they. She scratches her head. I will not swear, says she, but there is more hay. As to the saddles, I remember one only. But there was a grate, says she. O no, says they, look for yourself. There’s no grate and never has been: look at the cobwebs. There was a grate, says she, and from it I took the rags I wore when I fled. There was never a grate, says they.”