Thus things went on, crowds gathering to amuse themselves with the ghost.  On February 1, Mr. Aldrich, a clergyman of Clerkenwell, assembled in his house a number of gentlemen and ladies, having persuaded Parsons to let his child be carried thither and tested.  Dr. Johnson was there, and Dr. Macaulay suggested the admission of a Mrs. Oakes.  Dr. Johnson supplied the newspapers with an account of what happened.  The child was put to bed by several ladies, about ten o’clock, and the company sat ‘for rather more than an hour,’ during which nothing occurred.  The men then went down-stairs and talked to Parsons, when they were interrupted by some of the ladies, who said that scratching and knocking had set in.  The company returned, and made the child hold her hands outside the bedclothes.  No phenomena followed.  Now the sprite had promised to rap on its own coffin in the vault of St. John’s, so thither they adjourned (without the medium), but there was never a scratch!

’It is therefore the opinion of the whole assembly, that the child has some art of making or counterfeiting particular noises, and that there is no agency of any higher cause.’

In precisely the same way the judges in the Franciscan case of 1533, visited the bed of the child where the spirit had been used to scratch and rap, heard nothing, and decided that the affair was a hoax.  The nature of the fraud was not discovered, but the Franciscans were severely punished.  At Lyons, the bishop and some other clerics could get no response from the rapping spirit which was so familiar with the king’s chaplain, Adrien de Montalembert (1526-7).  Thus ‘the ghost in some measure remains undetected,’ says Goldsmith, and, indeed, Walpole visited Cock Lane, but could not get in, apparently after the detection.  But, writing on February 2, he may speak of an earlier date.

Meanwhile matters were very uncomfortable for Mr. K. Accused by a ghost, he had no legal remedy.  Goldsmith, like most writers, assumes that Parsons undertook the imposture, in revenge for having been sued for money lent by Mr. K. He adds that Mr. K. was engaged in a Chancery suit by his relations, and seems to suspect their agency.  Meanwhile, Elizabeth was being ‘tested’ in various ways.  Finally the unlucky child was swung up in a kind of hammock, ’her hands and feet extended wide,’ and, for two nights, no noises were heard.  Next day she was told that, if there were no noises, she and her father would be committed to Newgate.  She accordingly concealed a little board, on which a kettle usually stood, a piece of wood six inches by four.  She managed this with so little art that the maids saw her place the wood in her dress, and informed the investigators of the circumstances.  Scratches were now produced, but the child herself said that they were not like the former sounds, and ’the concurrent opinion of the whole assembly was that the child had been frightened by threats