now she gave her mother for him all that she had--the farthing!

You see that I am on Elizabeth's side: that farthing touch, and
another, with the piety, honesty, loyalty, and even the superstition
of her people, have made me her partisan, as was Mr. Henry Fielding,
the well-known magistrate.

Some friends were sent for, Mrs. Myers, Miss Polly Lyon, daughter of
her master, and others; while busybodies flocked in, among them one
Robert Scarrat, a toiler, who had no personal knowledge of Elizabeth.
A little wine was mulled; the girl could not swallow it, emaciated as
she was. Her condition need not be described in detail, but she was
very near her death, as the medical evidence, and that of a midwife
(who consoled Mrs. Canning on one point), proves beyond possibility of
cavil.

The girl told her story; but what did she tell? Mr. Austin Dobson, in
_The Dictionary of National Biography_, says that her tale 'gradually
took shape under the questions of sympathising neighbours,' and
certainly, on some points, she gave affirmative answers to leading
questions asked by Robert Scarrat. The difficulty is that the
neighbours' accounts of what Elizabeth said in her woful condition
were given when the girl was tried for perjury in April-May 1754. We
must therefore make allowance for friendly bias and mythopoeic
memory. On January 31, 1753, Elizabeth made her statement before
Alderman Chitty, and the chief count against her is that what she told
Chitty did not tally with what the neighbours, in May 1754, swore that
she told them when she came home on January 29, 1753. This point is
overlooked by Mr. Paget in his essay on the subject.[1]