Inquiries were made and advertisements were placed in the paper; all in vain. To be sure, a 'gentlewoman in an oil-shop' in Bishopsgate declared that she had heard a 'young voice scream out of a coach' on the night of January 1; but as she 'did not know whether it was a man's or a woman's voice,' her information was not of much use. However, vague though it was, Mrs. Canning caught at it eagerly and put it into the advertisement. As to what had become of her daughter, she guessed something different every day. Perhaps she had been kidnapped, or she might have been murdered, or have had an attack of illness.
Some years before, part of the ceiling of a garret had fallen on Elizabeth's head and hurt her, so that if anything frightened her she was apt to lose her sense of what was going on for a while. Naturally when the girl was lost her mother remembered this and dreaded lest she should have fallen down in some strange place unconscious. Every idea that could come into a person's mind—every accident likely or unlikely that had ever befallen anybody—was, we may feel certain, discussed in the month of January 1753 by Mrs. Canning and her neighbours.
She had almost given up hope, and was even in the act of praying to see her daughter's ghost, when Elizabeth at last came. But what an Elizabeth! The apprentice, when he hastened to the door on hearing the latch lifted, did not recognise the girl, and thought it was a woman who had called to ask her way. Then the truth suddenly dawned on him and he cried out, 'Betty has come home'; but as she entered, nearly bent double and walking sideways holding her hands before her, her mother took her to be indeed the ghost she had prayed for, and, shrieking 'Feel her! Feel her!' sank down in a fit.
It was the apprentice and not Mrs. Canning who attended to Elizabeth and placed her in the chimney-corner, where she sat exhausted and to all appearance nearly dead. Her mother's first act on recovering from her fit was to send, not for the doctor but for the neighbours, and so many flocked to see the lost girl, that in two minutes the room was full, and the apprentice had to stand at the door to keep fresh people out. Of course it was long before anyone thought of putting Elizabeth to bed, and giving her something to eat or drink; instead they plied her with questions as to where she had been and what she had been doing, and how she had got in that dreadful condition. To these she replied, telling the same tale which she repeated to Alderman Chitty upon oath two days later.
On the following morning an apothecary was summoned, and attended her for a week till a doctor was called in, and he for some days thought very badly of her chance of living.
But weak and ill as she might be, two days after her return home she 'was brought' before Alderman Chitty to tell her story. And this was what she said:
After her uncle and aunt had left her in Houndsditch, she was passing along the wall which surrounded the lunatic asylum of Bedlam, into Moorfields, when she was suddenly attacked by two men who took all her money from her pocket, and then stripped off her gown and hat. She struggled and tried to scream, but a handkerchief was quickly thrust into her mouth, and she was told that if she made any noise they would kill her. To show that they spoke the truth, one of them did indeed give a blow on the head, and then they took her under the arms and dragged her along Bishopsgate till she lost her senses, as she was apt to do when frightened. She knew no more till she found herself in a strange place which she had since learned was a house at Enfield Wash, about eleven miles from Aldermanbury. By this time it was about four in the morning of January 2.
In the kitchen in which she recovered consciousness were several people, among them an old woman who asked her if she would stay with her instead of returning home. To this Elizabeth replied No; she would not, as she wanted to go back to her mother at once. The old woman looked very angry at her answer, and pushed her upstairs into a room, where she cut her stay-laces, and took the stays themselves away. She then told her there was bread and water for her if she was hungry, but that was all she would get; adding that the girl had better be quiet, for if she attempted to scream out, she herself would come in and cut her throat.
Having said this, the old woman went away locking the door behind her, and that was the last the girl saw of any human creature for four weeks, except the eye of a person who peeped through the keyhole.
Left alone, Elizabeth looked about for the food which was provided for her, and found there were some pieces of bread about as much as a 'quartern loaf'—and three-quarters of a gallon of water or a little more, in a pitcher. She had besides a penny mince-pie that she had bought while she was at her uncle's the day before, and intended as a present for her little brother; for, as she said to her mother, the boy had 'huffed her,' and she had not given him a penny like his sisters, so the mince-pie was to make up.