Character witnesses in 18th-century English trials were, according to author Douglas Hay, "extremely important, and very frequently used ... in character testimony too, the word of a man of property had the greatest weight. Judges respected the evidence of employers, farmers and neighbouring gentlemen, not mere neighbours and friends." The jury were apparently unimpressed by the defence's case and pronounced both defendants guilty. They were sentenced on 26 February; Wells would be branded in her hand and spend six months in prison. For stealing Canning's stays, Squires was to be hanged. By March 1753 pamphlets on Canning's story were being read in the coffee-houses of London. There was widespread outrage over Squires' treatment of her, exacerbated when Little Jemmy, "a poor man who cries sticks about the streets" was supposedly robbed and then stamped on by five gypsies. Canning was celebrated by the mob and gentry, several of whom contributed to her purse, enabling her to move to better accommodation in the house of a Mr Marshall, a cheesemonger in Aldermanbury.