page_title: Elizabeth Canning
section_title: Enfield Wash
hierarchical_section_title: Elizabeth Canning / History / Reappearance / Enfield Wash
caption_attribution_description: English: "A Plan of the house of Susanna Wells at Enfield Wash" from The London Magazine, 1754.
context_page_description: Elizabeth Canning was an English maidservant who claimed to have been kidnapped and held against her will in a hayloft for almost a month. She ultimately became central to one of the most famous English criminal mysteries of the 18th century.
  She disappeared on 1 January 1753, before returning almost a month later to her mother's home in Aldermanbury in the City of London, emaciated and in a "deplorable condition". After being questioned by concerned friends and neighbours she was interviewed by the local alderman, who then issued an arrest warrant for Susannah Wells, the woman who occupied the house in which Canning was supposed to have been held. At Wells' house in Enfield Wash, Canning identified Mary Squires as another of her captors, prompting the arrest and detention of both Wells and Squires. London magistrate Henry Fielding became involved in the case, taking Canning's side. Further arrests were made and several witness statements were taken, and Wells and Squires were ultimately tried and found guilty—Squires of the more serious and potentially capital charge of theft.
context_section_description: Chitty issued the warrant and on 1 February Canning's friends took her to Enfield Wash. Despite her poor physical condition Canning's supporters wanted her to identify her captors and the room she claimed to have been held in, and worried she might die before then, took the risk of moving her.  Wintlebury, Scarrat and Joseph Adamson (a neighbour) were the first to arrive, on horseback. They met the warrant officer and several peace officers, and waited for Susannah Wells to appear. Wells's house had served a variety of functions, including that of a carpenter's shop, a butchers and an ale-house. The old woman kept animals in the house and occasionally had lodgers. She had twice been widowed; her first husband was a carpenter and her second had been hanged for theft. She had also been imprisoned in 1736 for perjury. Sarah Howit, her daughter by her first husband, had lived there for about two years. Howit's brother John was a carpenter like his father, and lived nearby.
  When at about 9 am Wells entered her house, the officers immediately moved to secure the building. Inside they found Wells, an old woman named Mary Squires, her children, Virtue Hall and a woman they supposed was Wells's daughter. Another woman, Judith Natus, was brought down from the loft to be questioned with the rest. The warrant officer who searched the loft was surprised when he discovered that it did not resemble the room described by Canning, and nor could he find evidence of her having jumped from the window. The rest of the party, who had by then arrived in a hired coach and chaise, were similarly surprised.
  Canning, who had arrived in the chaise with her mother and two other people, was carried into the house by Adamson. There she identified Mary Squires as the woman who had cut off her stays, and claimed that Virtue Hall and a woman presumed to be Squires's daughter had been present at the time.  Canning was then taken upstairs where she identified the loft as the room in which she had been imprisoned—although it contained more hay than she recalled. Boards covering the window appeared to have only recently been fastened there. With such damning evidence against them, the suspects were taken to a nearby justice of the peace, Merry Tyshemaker, who examined Canning alone, and then those from Wells's house. Squires and Wells were committed, the former for removing Canning's stays and the latter for "keeping a disorderly House". George Squires and Virtue Hall, who both denied any involvement in the kidnapping, were set free; Canning and her supporters were allowed home.
caption: "A Plan of the house of Susanna Wells at Enfield Wash" from The London Magazine, 1754
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