Canning's trial was marked by the prosecution's inability to find any evidence whatsoever that she had been anywhere but in Wells's home, and where Canning was in January 1753 remains unknown. Similarly, mystery surrounds the precise movements of the Squires family, when it was supposed they were travelling through Dorset early in 1753. The writer F. J. Harvey Darton suspected that the family were smugglers, and that it was significant they had passed through Eggardon, where Isaac Gulliver operated (although Gulliver was, at the time, a child). The 18th-century artist Allan Ramsay claimed that Canning's initial story was "exceedingly stupid", and false. He viewed the lack of detail in her testimony as unsurprising to a more analytical mind. The US author Lillian Bueno McCue theorised that she was an amnesiac, and that her former employer, John Wintlebury, was to blame for her imprisonment at the Wells house. Treherne (1989) considers this theory very unlikely however, and instead concludes that Canning was almost certainly at Enfield Wash, but was not kept prisoner at Wells's home. He suggests that Robert Scaratt implanted the suggestion that Canning had been held at the Wells's house, as a useful decoy, and that he had somehow been involved in an unwanted pregnancy. Treherne also suggests that Canning was suffering from partial amnesia, and that she may not have lied intentionally at the trial of Squires and Wells. He calls Canning "the first media product." Although some early authors adopted the same stance as Fielding or Hill, who actively took sides in the affair, most later writers believe that Canning did not tell the truth. Moore (1994), however, believes that Canning was probably innocent. Moore explains discrepancies between Canning and the Squires' testimonies as understandable omissions and modifications, and placing much emphasis on the ability of those men in power to follow their own pursuits—often at the expense of others.