Books: A Ass, A Idiot

THE MYSTERY OF ELIZABETH CANNING—Barretf R. Wellington—J. Ray Peck ($3).

THE STRANGEST CASES ON RECORD—John Allison Duncan—Reilly & Lee ($3)..

Elizabeth Canning, a virtuous serving wench, vanished into the labyrinthine London night on New Year’s, 1753. Four weeks later she reappeared, bloodstained, gaunt with hunger, clad in rags. Before Magistrate Henry Fielding she told a tale which might have been sliced from his own Tom Jones. She claimed that she was seized by two ruffians, robbed, dragged to a bawdyhouse where a gypsy hag with a nightmare face ripped her stays (value: 10/) from her, locked her up in the loft. There Elizabeth languished until she escaped through a boarded window. The gypsy crone was tried before the Lord Mayor of London, condemned to the gallows.

But the gypsy was quickly pardoned by George II. Reason: a swarm of witnesses were uncovered to swear they had seen that unforgettably hideous face far from London at the time of the crime. Soon it was Elizabeth Canning who was being tried, for perjury. Found guilty, she was exiled to Connecticut. In the two trials, involving 134 witnesses, the hag was clearly proved to have been in a London suburb in January 1753, and at the same time to have been several counties away. This forms “the strangest enigma that ever faced a court of law,” says Lawyer Barrett R. Wellington of Troy, N. Y. in The Mystery of Elizabeth Canning, a book which is both a mystery story and a case history in the perilous science of evidence. Wellington doubts that the crone had an enchanted broomstick. He thinks she was twins. The Lord Mayor and the twelve good men & true were “fuddled, deceived, duped, gulled, hoodwinked and lamentably humbugged by a pack of clever gypsies.”

Readers who do not yet agree with Dickens’ Mr. Bumble that “the law is a ass, a idiot” can turn to The Strangest Cases on Record by Lawyer John Allison Duncan of Cleveland. His book is a random docket of legal madness. Hear ye:

>Thomas a Becket died in 1170, was lengthily tried in 1538 under Henry VIII. Henry, wrote Lord Campbell, “when he wished to throw off the authority of the Pope, thinking that as long as the name of St. Thomas should remain in the calendar men would be stimulated by his example to brave the ecclesiastical authority of the Sovereign, instructed his Attorney General to file a quo warranto information against him [Thomas a Becket” for usurping the office of a Saint. . . .” Verdict: guilty of rebellion and treason.

>”The statue of Venus de Milo was tried for nudity in Mannheim, Germany, and sentenced to prison in 1853.”

>”During the reign of Henry III, ‘to wound, maym or kill a fairy’ was punishable by death.”

>At a Boston trial Lawyer R. M. Morse asked a question 20,000 words long. The witness’ answer: “I don’t know.”

>Verdict in United States v. 350 Cartons of Canned Sardines: “The jury finds a verdict in favor of the United States and recommends the mercy of the Court.”

>A corporation can be sued for alienation of affections (case of Louis Gold v. Pocket Brassiere Co., Inc., et al.).

>In 1922 a California court awarded a judgment of $304,840,332,912,685.16. The defendant soon went through bankruptcy.