For Georgian Britain, the story of Elizabeth Canning was fascinating. Little attention was paid in the trial to Squires's request for Canning to "go their way"; according to Moore (1994), overtly the saga questioned Canning's chastity, while covertly it questioned whether someone of her social standing had any right to be taken notice of (in view of the immense interest taken in the case, this last seems unlikely). The author Kristina Straub compares the case with the more general debate over the sexuality of female servants; Canning may have been either a "childlike innocent, victimized by brutally criminal outlaws", or "a wily manipulator of the justice system who uses innocent bystanders to escape the consequences of her own sexual misdeeds". "The Case of Elizabeth Canning Fairly Stated" posited that Canning either suffered imprisonment to protect her virtue, or lied to conceal "her own criminal Transactions in the Dark". Straub opines that the debate was not merely about Canning's guilt or innocence, but rather "the kinds of sexual identity that were attributable to women of her position in the social order."