At eight in the evening, the whole row of pewter dishes, bar one, fell from a shelf, rolled about a little, and ’as soon as they were quiet, turned upside down; they were then put upon the dresser, and went through the same a second time’.  Then of two eggs, one ’flew off, crossed the kitchen, struck a cat on the head, and then burst in pieces’.  A pestle and a mortar presently ’jumped six feet from the floor’.  The glass and crockery were now put on the floor, ’he that is down need fear no fall,’ but the objects began to dance, and tumble about, and then broke to pieces.  A china bowl jumped eight feet but was not broken.  However it tried again, and succeeded.  Candlesticks, tea-kettles, a tumbler of rum and water, two hams, and a flitch of bacon joined in the corroboree.  ’Most of the genteel families around were continually sending to inquire after them, and whether all was over or not.’  All this while, Ann was ’walking backwards and forwards’, nor could they get her to sit down, except for half an hour, at prayers, ‘then all was quiet’.  She remarked, with stoicism, ‘these things could not be helped’.  Fowler came in at ten, but fled in a fright at one in the morning.  By five, Mrs. Golding summoned Mrs. Pain, who had gone to bed, ’all the tables, chairs, drawers, etc., were tumbling about’.

They rushed across to Fowler’s where, as soon as Ann arrived, the old game went on.  Fowler, therefore, like the landlord in the poem, ‘did plainly say as how he wished they’d go away,’ at the same time asking Mrs. Golding ’whether or not, she had been guilty of some atrocious crime, for which providence was determined to pursue her on this side the grave,’ and to break crockery till death put an end to the stupendous Nemesis.  ’Having hitherto been esteemed a most deserving person,’ Mrs. Golding replied, with some natural warmth, that ’her conscience was quite clear, and she could as well wait the will of providence in her own house as in any other place,’ she and the maid went to her abode, and there everything that had previously escaped was broken.  ’A nine-gallon cask of beer that was in the cellar, the door being open and nobody near it, turned upside down’; ‘a pail of water boiled like a pot’.  So Mrs. Golding discharged Miss Ann Robinson and that is all.

At Mrs. Golding’s they took up three, and at Mrs. Pain’s two pails of the fragments that were left.  The signatures follow, appended on January 11.

The tale has a sequel.  In 1817 an old Mr. Braidley, who loved his joke, told Hone that he knew Ann, and that she confessed to having done the tricks by aid of horse-hairs, wires and other simple appliances.  We have not Mr. Braidley’s attested statement, but Ann’s character as a Medium is under a cloud.  Have all other Mediums secret wires? (Every-day Book, i. 62.)

Ann Robinson, we have seen, was a tranquil and philosophical maiden.  Not so was another person who was equally active, ninety years earlier.