Canning Elizabeth

Canning, Elizabeth, was born in 1734. A domestic, she in 1753 disappeared, turning up again four weeks later in a hungry and half-clothed condition. Her story was that while on her way nome from a visit she had been seized by two men, carried to an isolated house on the Hertfordshire Road, and subjected to ill-usage by an old woman to drive her to an immoral life. In two women, Susannah Wells and Mary Squires, she identified her persecutors, who were sentenced - Wells to be burnt in the hand, and Squires to be hanged. Dissatisfied with the evidence, however, the Lord Mayor had the case gone into again, with the result that Squires was pardoned, and Canning was put on her trial for perjury. The result was that she was transported for seven years, and being sent to New England died in Connecticut in 1773.