The autobiography of Elizabeth Squirrell of Shottisham, and selections from her writings : together with an examination and defence of her statements relative to her sufferings, blindness, deafness, entire abstinence from food and drink during twenty-five weeks, and other extraordinary phenomena: also facts and opinions illustrative and suggestive / by one of her watchers.

  • Squirrell, Elizabeth, 1838-
Date:
1853
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The autobiography of Elizabeth Squirrell of Shottisham, and selections from her writings : together with an examination and defence of her statements relative to her sufferings, blindness, deafness, entire abstinence from food and drink during twenty-five weeks, and other extraordinary phenomena: also facts and opinions illustrative and suggestive / by one of her watchers. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    fifty times; and is one whose veracity would not be' impeached. He has mostly heard it when in prayer, close by it, and has expressed to me that his emotions and feelings, when hearing it, were indescribable. It has been heard to ring sufficiently loud to arrest the attention of any one who might have been standing outside the door; while, at other times, it has appeared perfectly ethereal, or more like an jcolian murmur. ‘ One of its most remarkable features, is the fact of its having been more than once a warning, and a call, for assistance to the helpless. I will relate a circum- stance which seemed most opportune and providential in its results. ‘At the period when it first rang, I was subject to faintness of a peculiar kind; I would sink quite off, and fall, without being able to thwart the attack in the least. I frequently lost my breatl:, and, but for timely assistance, should on many occasions have been in a most perilous condition. I was alone one day, a few weeks after the commencement of the glass phenomonen, when I was suddenly seized with a fit of the kind, and sank quite over the side of the bed, so that I was suspended from it. For some moments I retained consciousness, and felt my breath rapidly receding, without the slightest capability to arouse those in the adjoining ajiartment. I now lost consciousness, but when I sufficiently recovered to listen, my mother communicated to me the following very surprising fact relative to the glass. ‘ She had not the slightest intimation of my dangerous position, and was busily engaged with her domestic duties, when she thought she heard a distinct pealing ring; she stopped only for a moment, as she concluded