1-624-731 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

'A True Draught of Eliza Canning. E Canning vindicated or Mr S-sy Gypsies Flight to Enfield Wash', c1753. In 1753, Elizabeth Canning claimed to have been kidnapped and held at a house in Enfield. She also said that her kidnappers tried to force her to become a prostitute. On her evidence people were arrested, tried and convicted. Mary Squires, a Romany woman, was accused of imprisoning her. Because Squires said she was hundreds of miles away at the time, she was caricatured as a witch on a broomstick, able to be in two places at once. Doubts began to be expressed about her story, the prisoners were released and Elizabeth Canning was charged with perjury, convicted and sentenced to transportation for seven years. Illustration from Social Caricature in the Eighteenth Century ... With over two hundred illustrations by George Paston [pseudonym of Emily Morse Symonds], (London, 1905).