At
Rerrick, as in Russia, the _little hand_ was seen by Telfer himself,
and the fire-raising was endless. At Amherst too, as in a pair of
recent Russian cases and others, there was plenty of fire-raising. By
a lucky chance an English case occurred at Wem, in Shropshire, in
November, 1883. It began at a farm called the Woods, some ten miles
from Shrewsbury. First a saucepan full of eggs "jumped" off the fire
in the kitchen, and the tea-things, leaping from the table, were
broken. Cinders "were thrown out of the fire," and set some clothes
in a blaze. A globe leaped off a lamp. A farmer, Mr. Lea, saw all
the windows of the upper story "as it were on fire," but it was no
such matter. The nurse-maid ran out in a fright, to a neighbour's,
and her dress spontaneously combusted as she ran. The people
attributed these and similar events, to something in the coal, or in
the air, or to electricity. When the nurse-girl, Emma Davies, sat on
the lap of the school mistress, Miss Maddox, her boots kept flying
off, like the boot laces in The Daemon of Spraiton.
All this was printed in the London papers, and, on 15th November, The
Daily Telegraph and Daily News published Emma's confession that she
wrought by sleight of hand and foot.
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