As she arrived at the court Canning was cheered by the large crowd gathered outside the building. Inside, she testified that she was taken by two men "to the prisoner Wells's house" at about 4 am on the morning of 2 January. In the kitchen, the old woman (Squires) was sat in a chair and asked her "if I chose to go their way". Canning's refusal had prompted Squires to cut off her stays, slap her face, and push her up the stairs into a darkened room. She told the court she "saw nothing brought up[, but w]hen day-light appeared, I could see about the room; there was a fire-place and a grate in it, no bed nor bedstead, nothing but hay to lie upon; there was a black pitcher not quite full of water, and about twenty-four pieces of bread ... about a quartern loaf". She claimed to have escaped by removing a board from a window at the north end of the loft, climbing out, and jumping down to the soft clay below. She fled along a lane behind the house, through some fields, and on finding a road set out for London. When asked if she had seen or spoken to anyone on the way back, she replied that she had not, explaining that she had shied away from contact for fear of meeting somebody from the house she had escaped from. Canning was cross-examined by William Davy, who questioned her recollection of events in the house. Asked why she had not attempted escape earlier she replied: "Because I thought they might let me out; it never came into my head till that morning." Squires, who had been quietly muttering to herself in the dock, shouted "I never saw that witness in my lifetime till this day three weeks".