A handkerchief fell from a high window. Sarah said she had cast it toward the street, drenched in tears. A young woman picked it up, not perceiving at first whence it had fallen. Sarah called out to her twice; the young woman made a motion to toss it back into the courtyard. Sarah said she was about to direct her to her father’s house.
The scene was recounted three months later, at Kingston, during the trial of Frederick Calvert, Baron Baltimore, Elizabeth Griffinburg, and Ann Harvey. It was Sarah herself who related it under oath. The shorthand account printed by Joseph Gurney records the questions of the Crown, Calvert’s protracted cross-examinations, the witnesses for the defense, and the learned judge’s summing-up. This contemporary judicial pamphlet affords entry into the courtroom, yet it can replace neither an exemplified record nor a neutral transcript: its digitized types are at times distorted, and its voices reach us solely through the stenographer and an edition published by permission of the court. The jury, for its part, acquitted all three prisoners. Nothing in the narrative that follows warrants affirming as established what the court did not find proven.
An Order for Ribbons
Sarah was employed as a milliner in her father’s shop near Tower Hill, in London. She knew the wares, the trimmings, and the custom that sustained the trade. A gentleman entered, bought a fur tippet, returned some days later for ribbon, and then spoke of a lady to whom he might recommend her. He claimed to live nearby and gave her to understand that he would direct patrons to her counter. She did not yet know that he was Lord Baltimore. When he returned once more, he feigned having been thrown from a coach; she recalled above all his pressing desire to converse with her.
A woman calling herself Ann Harvey subsequently called at the shop. She bespoke a pair of ruffles and proposed that Sarah come the following day to wait upon a gentlewoman likely to furnish her with extensive custom. The young milliner consented. On December 16, 1767, she set forth after four o’clock, carrying her patterns. At Harvey’s dwelling, another woman and a small man unknown to her were present. The latter presently announced that they must take coach for the playhouse. The carriage was dark; the glasses were drawn. Sarah stated that she could not recognize the way. After some half an hour, she arrived at a stately house through several rooms of which she was conducted.
The house belonged, she affirmed at the bar, to the gentleman she had seen in the shop. He stepped forward to greet her; the women spoke of ladies who had not yet arrived. Tea was served to her, followed by the presentation of trifles and a game of cards. She desired to return home. She was told she should soon depart, that she must wait, that they would show her the house. The delay lengthened. Night had fallen. She repeatedly asked to take her leave; according to her deposition, she was informed that she must first remain to sup. She described a first assault behind a curtain, then hours spent in tears and supplication. The two women urged her to go above to bed. She refused to sleep beneath that roof, yet fear and exhaustion at last compelled her to lie down fully clothed, watched over by Ann Harvey.
Sarah explained that she had endeavored to prevail upon Harvey to let her return home and to intercede on her behalf. She reminded her that she was betrothed and could not entertain Calvert’s advances. She asserted that she had repulsed him and struggled when he sought to use force against her. The trial record preserves these averments as her formal accusation and as the deposition she maintained at the bar; it preserves equally Calvert’s denial. It belongs not to this narrative to convert either into an anticipated verdict.
Letters Under Surveillance
In the days that followed, Sarah stated she was led from chamber to chamber while being promised an interview with her father. A letter was written under Calvert’s dictation. Therein she affirmed that all was well and entreated her family not to raise an alarm. At the trial, she explained that she had chosen words likely to reassure the nobleman sufficiently for the missive to be dispatched, while calming her father enough to induce him to come. She swore that the writing ran contrary to her true feelings. Yet the paper bore her own hand. The outward form of written evidence and the internal will of the scribe do not necessarily coincide: in this trial, the chasm between the two became a central crux of the proceedings.
The father and sisters sought the young woman. They followed Harvey’s trail and learned that she had quit her lodging with a customer. Her absence was measured by missed appointments, questioned acquaintances, and weary hours spent waiting. Within the house, Sarah maintained that she was barred from standing at a window and that the casement of her bedchamber was nailed fast. She recalled catching sight of a woman in the street and throwing down her handkerchief. A witness who stood outside, her friend Richard Davis, described another window: he caught sight of Sarah behind a pane of glass, then returned toward her with a book in his hand to signal that she should write. She replied that she could not come down. He assured her that her father and kin were well. She inquired after her father and indicated that she knew not where Harvey was. The exchange was broken off; she vanished from the window.
This colloquy settled nothing. Davis and the other friends were still in the dark as to what was transpiring within. Calvert contended that Sarah remained there of her own accord; her family suspected she was prevented from returning. An attorney, William Watts, eventually obtained a writ of habeas corpus, a process intended to bring forth any person believed to be restrained of their liberty. Calvert agreed to appear before Lord Mansfield, then Lord Chief Justice of the King’s Bench.
Two Answers Before Lord Mansfield
During the private examination, Sarah at first answered that she was there of her own free will. The record preserves this fact, an embarrassing circumstance for her subsequent prosecution. Accounts diverged thereafter as to the manner in which the question was framed, what she understood of the magistrate’s authority, and the exact moment her relatives were admitted into the room. In her deposition, she declared that she had never heard the name of Lord Mansfield and had not comprehended that he possessed the power to set her free. Once her father and sisters were present, she related, she desired to go with them. Before witnesses, she repeated this choice; Lord Mansfield declared that she was at liberty to go whithersoever she pleased.
The record offers a counter-narrative. William Watts, who had served the writ, remembered an initial “yes” and related that Lord Mansfield had desired the friends to hear her replies. The father and sisters maintained they had been obliged to explain to her her legal right to depart. Another witness, Robert Rose, recounted having heard her say, during the first colloquy, that she was happy and that Calvert had treated her with high regard; later, she was said to have chosen to rejoin her family. In the courtroom, these details did not coalesce into an unclouded certainty. Rather, they revealed how differently the words of an individual may be construed according to who reports them and what prejudice pre-exists in the hearer’s mind.
Following her deliverance, Sarah attended upon the magistrate Sir John Fielding. She declared that Calvert had forced her to submit to carnal knowledge against her will. John Ford, a surgeon, reported having examined her on January 1. He testified to having observed marks of recent sexual intercourse and an acute tenderness in the parts examined; when pressed by the Court, he stated that he could not medically determine whether the act had been consensual. His physical inspection might corroborate bodily violation, but it could not of itself resolve the legal question that divided the courtroom.
The Journey into the Country
The defense assembled those who had seen Sarah at Calvert’s town residence and at his country seat at Woodcote. The servants testified that she ate, took tea, walked, or laughed in the company of the household. A coachman and a footman described the journey to the estate and an accident at the gate; they recalled a carriage whence no outcry had issued. Visitors affirmed that she appeared cheerful during an entertainment with a magic lantern, where witnesses claimed to have seen her sewing several tablecloths together end to end. One witness swore he had seen her seated beside Calvert and had seen him kiss her; according to this testimony, she had returned the embrace.
These men and women spoke to what they claimed to have observed, not to the long hours wherein Sarah found herself alone, or enclosed with the persons of whom she complained. The open rooms, the shared meals, and the amusements they described did not efface the handkerchief at the window; nor was the handkerchief sufficient to rebut every adverse deposition. Calvert’s counsel seized upon this discrepancy. He asked Sarah whether she had not traveled without offering resistance, whether she had not smiled, eaten, worked, played, or written letters. He recurred to the hesitations she had acknowledged regarding dates, her age, and the minutiae of her stay. Her replies were not always positive; she admitted that her memory failed her on certain points. Yet upon that which she deemed essential, she never wavered: she maintained that she had never consented to the sexual acts she described.
Calvert addressed the court to deny all violence. He insisted that Sarah had formed an attachment to him, that she had come willingly, and that their commerce had been consensual. Elizabeth Griffinburg and Ann Harvey likewise denied having employed any force or participated in any restraint. These declarations were self-interested defenses, just as Sarah’s testimonies belonged to a prosecution that rested almost entirely upon her sole oath. The proceeding possessed no recorded transcript of each unfolding hour; it pitted conflicting memories, interests, and interpretations against one another.
The Verdict
The trial took place at Kingston on March 26, 1768, before Baron Smythe. In his charge to the jury, the learned judge distinguished two matters that public clamor was in danger of confounding. The manner in which Sarah had been brought to the house might illuminate the occasion and the credibility of her complaint; it was not sufficient to establish a felony of rape if the carnal act itself had been consented to. He charged the jurors to weigh the deposition and the circumstances without suffering themselves to be swayed by the pamphlets already circulated abroad. He reminded them also that if the Crown failed to prove the principal crime, the two women could not be convicted of having aided and abetted therein.
The jury withdrew. Some hour and twenty minutes later, they returned. Calvert was declared not guilty; Elizabeth Griffinburg, not guilty; Ann Harvey, not guilty. The clerk repeated the verdict, which the court duly recorded. There was no conviction to chronicle, no sentence to execute, no judicial determination that allows us to say whether Sarah’s testimony was confirmed or refuted by a verdict of guilt.
The cast handkerchief remains in the chronicle because Sarah recounted that gesture; the subsequent encounter with Davis, at another window, forms a distinct episode that he likewise attested under oath. Neither incident attains to absolute proof. The printed record preserves as well the scenes of meals, promenades, and laughter urged by the defense; it reproduces Sarah’s determination to return to her kin; it shows the surgeon declining to pronounce upon consent. The justice of 1768 determined the trial by an acquittal. Gurney’s pages leave ringing in our ears the question that preceded that verdict: confronted with two irreconcilable truths, what facts could the witnesses truly vouch for?