They put new locks on the doors lest the villagers had procured keys,
but this proved of no avail. The servants talked of seeing
appearances of a gentleman in drab and of a lady in silk, which Mrs.
Ricketts disregarded. Her husband went to Jamaica in the autumn of
1769, and in 1771 she was so disturbed that her brother, Captain
Jervis, a witness of the phenomena, insisted on her leaving the house
in August. He and Mrs. Ricketts then wrote to Mr. Ricketts about the
affair. In July, 1772, Mrs. Ricketts wrote a long and solemn
description of her sufferings, to be given to her children.
We shall slightly abridge her statement, in which she mentions that
when she left Hinton she had not one of the servants who came thither
in her family, which "evinces the impossibility of a confederacy".
Her new, like her former servants, were satisfactory; Camis, her new
coachman, was of a yeoman house of 400 years' standing. It will be
observed that Mrs. Ricketts was a good deal annoyed even _before_ 2nd
April, 1771, the day when she dates the beginning of the worst
disturbances. She believed that the agency was human--a robber or a
practical joker--and but slowly and reluctantly became convinced that
the "exploded" notion of an abnormal force might be correct.
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