Vulgar History Podcast
The Art of Crime: Princess Caraboo (with Gavin Whitehead)
November 13, 2024
Hello, and welcome to Vulgar History, my name is Ann Foster, and this is the feminist women’s history comedy podcast. I’m currently working on writing a book, and that is taking up a lot of my time and I don’t want to put out half-assed podcast episodes, so I was like, what can I do? Because I know—trust me, I know—the importance of an emotional support podcast, especially in these unprecedented times in which we’ve all been living in for many years now. So, I was like, well, how can I still have something new and fun for the Tits Out Brigade every week? And I was like, oh my gosh! So, what you’re going to hear today is an episode of the podcast, The Art of Crime, which is a podcast hosted by friend of the podcast, Gavin Whitehead, who you’ll recall from two weeks ago, he was our guest on the episode about Madame Tussaud, AKA Madame T. I first met Gavin when we made plans to record this episode you’re going to hear for his podcast, which is about a person called Princess Caraboo. Not her real name, but I don’t want to spoil the twist midway through this episode.
And so, this is somebody— I’ve wanted to do a Princess Caraboo episode of Vulgar History for a while, but she never quite fit into any of the themes I was doing. And even though she’s living at around the same time as Marie Antoinette, her story does not— There’s no degrees of Marie Antoinette, Nothing But Net, I think we call it. She does not connect to Marie Antoinette at all. So, I’m like, well, I can’t work her into that series. And then Gavin, what his show is about is the intersection of true crime and art. And I was like, well, there is technically a crime in this and there’s also artwork that was made about this. And he was like, “Hell yeah.” So, anyway, we did this episode.
I do want to just give you one quick caveat about the episode that you’re going to hear, which is just that at one point, we talk about cupping, the therapeutic thing that one can do. It kind of came up, and I didn’t really have time to think about or prepare to talk about what cupping is, it’s just something that came up in the story. And so, what I want to emphasize is that cupping is an ancient therapy where you kind of use, basically… cups, [laughs] technically, often silicone or glass, and you just kind of alleviate pressure. So, it creates sort of a vacuum or a suction on your body and it can help relieve your myofascial stuff; it’s often used in massage and things like that. It helps with pain and inflammation relief. Nothing weird about it. It’s based on ancient, I think, cultures did this, Egyptian, Chinese, Middle Eastern cultures did this. Anyway, it’s cool. It’s great. Nothing against cupping.
What we talk about in this episode and the scars that are found on Princess Caraboo’s body are based on the 19th century English version of cupping, which involved also leeches, where you put, like, a leech on the skin and you put a cup over it. And then, anyway, it’s not… That’s what we’re talking about. The kind of cupping done to her, not cool, problematic. The kind of cupping that people can do nowadays with a massage therapist or other sort of alternative practitioner. Lovely. Great. So, I just wanted to let you know that because, off the top of my head, I talk about cupping and I just wanted to clarify what it is and that it’s actually a beneficial and non-problematic thing.
Anyway, with all that out of the way, I guess we’ll let Gavin take it away. Technically, this is an episode of his podcast, The Art of Crime, but he was generous enough to let me play it on my feed as well. And I do think, I think there’s a lot of tits out behaviour that you’re going to enjoy in the story of Princess Caraboo.
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Gavin: All right, welcome once again to a special episode of The Art of Crime. Today we are joined by the lovely Ann Foster, host and creator of the Vulgar History podcast. Ann, thanks so much for coming on the show.
Ann: I am delighted to be here and I’m really excited to have a chance to talk about this person who I’ve been dying to talk about for ages.
Gavin: Well, I am delighted to have you here. And who is this person we’re going to talk about today?
Ann: Well, she was and is still best known as Princess Caraboo. We’re going to talk about the details, but she was seemingly a mysterious, shipwrecked princess from a mysterious, far-off land who just appeared one day on the coast of England in 1817.
Gavin: Right, and she went on to generate an international sensation in the press. So, it’s a wonderful story. So, let’s dive right into it.
I want to start with a portrait by a Bristol-based painter named Edward Bird. This picture was painted in 1817, and it depicts Princess Caraboo, this woman we’re going to be talking about. So, Ann, could you describe this picture for us? What does Princess Caraboo look like and what impression is Bird trying to give of her, would you say?
Ann: I think he’s trying to give an impression of just, like, an exotic and interesting and unusual traveller. So, we’re looking at a young woman, maybe around 25 years old, she’s pale-skinned, a white person, with dark hair, dark eyes, pink cheeks. She’s wearing a white sort of turban headdress that looks maybe silk, it looks a little shiny, with three peacock feathers in it. Her dress looks sort of like what someone might wear in India; it’s a yellow dress with flowing, very long sleeves, embroidery embellishment around the neckline, embellishment around the waist, embellishment around the bottom. And for this time period, for 1817, it’s short; it ends sort of mid-calf height. So, then you see she’s wearing on her feet sort of strappy sandals, almost like a Roman gladiator, like, wraparound sandal.
And then the background of where she’s standing, and she’s standing very posed, she’s holding a flower to her chest, as though she’s sort of walking on what looks like maybe a coastline. Behind her, you can see what I’m going to call tropical backdrop. In the background, you see there are some palm trees. It looks like, maybe sort of, a ship on the ocean, or not a ship, but like a small, maybe a junk, like, a Chinese-type boat, and then sort of a hut in the background as well. So, you get the sense that this is somewhere Asian-adjacent, perhaps, behind her. Her dress is certainly striking and unusual.
Gavin: Wherever it is, it certainly isn’t England, right? Because England isn’t exactly known for its tropical climes and palm trees.
Ann: No, no, exactly. And I think also just the fact that she has these bare, you know, feet, that her dress is quite low-cut, she’s clearly, this is meant to be somewhere warm. Like, this is not Bristol.
Gavin: Absolutely. The question of where Princess Caraboo comes from is one that will captivate many, many people in 1817. So, let’s get right to the story, shall we?
Our story begins like many great stories have over the ages: a mysterious outsider arrives in town. So obviously, our mysterious outsider is Princess Caraboo. And in this case, the town is Almondsbury, England, which is on the outskirts of Bristol. So, Ann, what are Princess Caraboo’s earliest interactions with townsfolk like?
Ann: Well, I mean, it’s quite stunning for these people in a small town. So, it’s, you know, 1817, small town. She arrives in the evening, dressed not exactly like she is in this portrait, but similar, like, with a headdress, looking unusual. And she’s speaking a language that the people there don’t know, which is not unusual. It’s a small town in Bristol, the people in Bristol who she encounters haven’t travelled very widely. So, she was disoriented, clothed unusually to them. And she went to the home of a cobbler and his wife.
Neither of them understood the language she was speaking, as far as they knew it could have been French or Spanish, they didn’t know other languages. And she just kind of used a lot of hand gestures so they got the impression that she needed a bed for the night. They just thought, like, “This is a poor woman, she clearly is from somewhere far away.” And so, there’s a position called the Overseer of the Poor. So immediately, their first thoughts were, let’s help this person, this person is in need of help. So, they were very sympathetic to her. They weren’t casting her out. They just thought like, “Oh, this is something interesting. This is something different and she clearly needs help.”
Gavin: Eventually, Princess Caraboo is brought to the home of Samuel and Elizabeth Worrall, both of whom become really important figures in this story, particularly Elizabeth. So, who are the Worralls and why are they made aware of this stranger’s presence?
Ann: So, Samuel Worrall, his job is the magistrate in the area. But more notably, the cobblers knew that one of the servants in this household spoke at least more languages than English and so, they thought maybe the servant at the Worrall’s might be able to understand the language that this woman is speaking. So, they brought her to see, yeah, Samuel Worrall and his wife Elizabeth, she was American-born.
And then once Caraboo met them, she revealed that she had a few English coins with her, she had kind of a small bundle containing necessities, a piece of soap wrapped in linen, and the overall effect of what she was wearing, which was a black dress with a frill around the neck, a black shawl on her head, and a red and black shawl around her shoulders. And I think this combined with just sort of her dark hair, her dark eyes, they thought she’s probably from somewhere Asian. To these people, to this small community of British people, the way that we think of Asia now is different from what they would have thought. So, they’re just thinking “She’s from somewhere away.” To them, that could include, like, Turkey or parts of Russia, like just anywhere east of, I don’t know, Paris. To them is like “the Orient.” The Worralls, again, were very helpful. Immediately they just thought like, “Let’s help this person.” And apparently, it wasn’t in the book that I read, but clearly, the servant who spoke various languages did not speak the same language that she was speaking. So, it turns out he wasn’t able to help in this case.
Gavin: So, after Princess Caraboo meets the Worralls, word gets around that Princess Caraboo is in town and various members of the community come forward and try to help them work out where this stranger is from. So, who all gets involved in this mystery and what are some of the clues they uncover as to the origins of Princess Caraboo?
Ann: So, Princess Caraboo herself is offering… Well, not offering, but to some of her behavior, people are interpreting in certain ways. Like, she sees a painting of a pineapple and she recognizes that and so they assume, “Oh, she must be from a place where pineapples are from.” She seemed unfamiliar with the concept of beds until they explained to her, “You don’t have to sleep on the floor.”
So, the first visitor was a parish clergyman. And so, he had some books that had images— I don’t think he was someone who travelled himself, but he had books with pictures in them of various maps and countries and things from countries. And so, they thought, “Okay, we’ll show her these pictures and she can point. Maybe some of these things will seem familiar to her as well,” like the pineapple did. She seemed to recognize some of the images of China and they learned that she had arrived in England on a ship. And it was around the same point that she started saying “Caraboo, Caraboo” while indicating herself. So, it was unclear at this point, is that her name? Is that her country? She kept recognizing Chinese… I guess in this household, there was some Chinese figurines and furniture. So, people were like, “Okay, she’s from China or she’s from somewhere near China or she’s been to China.” She refused meat, she also refused alcohol.
She went to see the mayor. She kind of keeps elevating, like, first she met the cobbler, then she went to the Overseer of the Poor, then to the magistrate, and now she’s meeting the mayor. And at this meeting, there was a magistrate present who said “Her language is unlike anything he’d ever seen.” It’s just a great mystery, but everyone is like, “Okay, we think her name is Caraboo and we think she’s from somewhere Asian,” which is quite broad.
Gavin: I love this element of the story, how she’s kind of climbing the social ladder, starting with the cobbler and then working her way up to the mayor and just puzzling everyone she meets along the way.
So, after Princess Caraboo meets the mayor, she spends some time in a vagrant hospital in Bristol, but eventually, Elizabeth Worrall comes and retrieves her from that hospital and invites her to live with her and Samuel at their property, which is called Knole. And it’s at Knole that much of Princess Caraboo’s backstory starts to emerge. So, what is that backstory?
Ann: So, I do want to mention something I forgot to say about— This is part of her backstory that they want to find explanations for, and probably why she was sent to the hospital as well. Her hair is cut short, which is not usual for women in 1817 in England, but maybe it is for wherever she’s from. But you can also see the scars on the back of her neck from some sort of cupping procedure or some sort of medical thing. So, it might be they think, “Is this person in medical distress?” So, I think that’s part of why they took her to the hospital as well.
Yeah, after she was at the vagrant hospital, and part of why she left there was because Elizabeth Worrall was really, I don’t know if she felt a connection to her or she was just so enraptured by the story, but she felt a personal obligation to take care of her. And so, she comes with them to Knole, and this is where, I’m going to say an allegedly Portuguese man, because I don’t know who this guy is really, named Manuel Eynesso happened to be in Bristol, and they’re like, “Oh, you’re Portuguese. Maybe she’s speaking Portuguese, can you come and see her?” And so, this is where we get a lot of her backstory is from her meeting with this guy, Manuel.
So, what he said that he gleaned from her communications is that she was a princess from an island in the East Indies who had been brought to England against her consent and then either was abandoned or escaped. And again, everybody by now accepts that her name is Caraboo, and she saw many more visitors during her time there. So, there was a man who came who had made several visits to the East Indies and was familiar with Chinese customs. So, he determined that she was the daughter of a Chinese father and a Malaysian mother who had been killed in war. She was from a place called Javasu, and how she wound up in England is she was walking in her garden, was seized by a pirate, and then she was sold to another ship captain along with some other captured women, and then when they arrived in England, she jumped off the ship, she escaped and swam ashore. She had been wearing, you know, Javasu clothes this whole time, but then she exchanged them with a woman in England for the black dress that she was wearing now and wandered around for six weeks before she found her way to Almondsbury.
So, this is what we’ve learned. So, now we know that she’s a princess, we know that she’s this brave person who escaped human trafficking and war.
Gavin: Quite the fighter. So, Princess Caraboo stays at Knole for a period of several weeks and while she’s there, various outside observers study her habits and her skills. What are some of the traits that really stuck out to these outside observers?
Ann: She worshiped a deity called Allah-Tala, which is one of the formal names for God in Islam. She preferred rice to bread, she ate no meat, she didn’t drink alcohol, she only drank water and tea. She said prayers morning and night, fasted every Tuesday, and on every Tuesday, she would climb onto the roof of Knole to face the sun, it seemed like. There was a pond nearby, and she would go there and wash her hands and her face there in what seemed like a religious or a spiritual practice. I don’t know where she’s getting all these accessories from, but she sometimes carried a gong on her back and a tambourine in her hand. I guess these were just around Knole? Maybe they were offered to her. A wooden sword on her right and a bow and arrow on her left. She knew how to do archery, she knew how to do fencing.
One time she was found, she had climbed a tree. They weren’t sure where she was, but Elizabeth was, you know, “Where’s my friend?” And they learned from Caraboo, who I think seemed to be picking up some English words. No one was picking up Javasu from her, but it seemed like she was able to communicate a bit better. But it seemed like Princess Caraboo had climbed the tree because all the women in the house had left and she felt unsafe being in a house with only men. There was one thing she did once where she was given a dagger and then she went to a household plant and rubbed a bit of the juice from the plant onto the dagger and then mimed, passing out, to kind of show, like, you know, “Where I’m from, we put poison on our blades.” These are the things she’s doing. Some of these are similar to the practices in various cultures and groups, but no one knew of a culture or group that did all of these things.
Gavin: You can see why she fascinated so many people because she definitely has this exoticism about her, but she also gives off major warrior princess vibes. It sounds like she was very athletic, right? Climbing up trees and climbing onto the roof of Knole.
Ann: Yeah, no, exactly! You know, that’s a really good point because I think, yeah! Yeah, I think it’s not just like, “Oh, she’s a princess from far away.” She’s not, like, a swooning damsel, she’s some sort of, like, brave hero. Yeah.
Gavin: More Amazonian. So, I understand that Princess Caraboo’s behaviour was slightly erratic, you might say, while she was at Knole. So, she vanished without explanation and on two occasions. The first time was about three weeks after her arrival, and then the second time was about two months after she first showed up. We will return to these mysterious disappearances in due course, but you should know that they were happening while she was staying at Knole and gaining a lot of attention. Her name was already appearing in headlines across England and Scotland, correct?
Ann: Yeah, the people were writing articles because it’s just an interesting and weird thing, and people were excited about it. And these were accompanied by drawings of what she looked like as well.
Gavin: I wonder if they thought that maybe readers could come forward and help in this effort to identify who she was and where she came from.
Ann: I think that was definitely part of what they were doing because partially it’s just like, “Look at this weird situation.” I think it was. I think part of it was like, this is what’s happening. And this is probably how some of these people who came to try to help, arrived. You know, it’s like, “Oh, I’ve travelled around the Orient. Let me talk to her.” You know, I think that’s where some of these people found out about it and came from.
Gavin: Right. “I know Portuguese and no one else who knows Portuguese has met her, so maybe she speaks Portuguese,” right.
Anyway, during Princess Caraboo’s stay at Knole, several people do suspect that she is not who she says she is, but she’s able to convince them that in fact, she is this Princess Caraboo who has come from abroad. So, who are some of these skeptics and why are they ultimately kind of brought around?
Ann: So, remember they brought her to the Worralls because they had a servant who spoke a language other than English. So, I don’t know that servant’s name, but it’s a man who was Greek. And he, I think from day one was just like, “Oh, this is a scam. I don’t believe this. I don’t believe her,” because she was sleeping in, I think, the same rooms as some of the servants. So, they would try to see, like, “Does she speak in her sleep in a different language?” Like, the servants, I feel like were trying to catch her out but even this Greek man eventually seemed to come around. He felt sympathy for her, especially after one of her escapes, she came down with an illness, seemingly typhus and it seems like he felt sympathy for her and treated her with kindness. Whether he believed her or not, I don’t know, but I think he stopped trying to catch her out.
There was a moment when she had this illness— And again, she only spoke in Javasu language, even when she had a fever and dealing with doctors and stuff. And there was a moment where one of the doctors spoke in English to Elizabeth saying, “Oh, I don’t know if she’s going to make it through the night,” or something like that and it seemed like Princess Caraboo’s face flushed when she heard that, as though she understood English. But then people were like, “No, no, her face flushes a lot. She has typhus. Don’t worry about it.” She must have been so charismatic and interesting. People wanted to believe.
Gavin: All right. So, there are some questions hovering around whether or not this is a hoax. Eventually, a Dr. Wilkinson of Bath examines Princess Caraboo and publishes his findings in the Bristol Journal. So, what does Dr. Wilkinson have to say?
Ann: So, he’s from Bath. And the reason that I think he became involved was during one of her disappearances, Caraboo was discovered in Bath, the city. He met her there and he was intrigued by her whole story. And so, he spoke with her and he’s a linguistics expert. He’s a self-proclaimed expert in lots of things.
But one of the things he said is he compared her language to a book that’s called Pantographia, which was an encyclopedia of known alphabets and scripts, like, internationally. He compared her language to there. He also looked at the marks, remember the marks on the back of her head from some sort of cupping procedure. And he’s like, “Oh yeah, that’s what they do in Asia, in ‘the Orient.’” He said that her appearance made him think, (like, her pale skin, her dark hair and eyes) made him presume she was from, she was Circassian, which is a northwest Caucasian ethnic group in the North caucuses, it’s part of modern-day Russia. Although, she said that she’s from the West Indies and now he’s saying that she’s from the caucuses.
Gavin: Not the same place.
Ann: No!
Gavin: Dr. Wilkinson publishes his article and then Elizabeth Worrall receives some surprising revelations from more than one source.
Ann: So, the article comes out, I think, again, there’s a picture of her, like a drawing. And a woman named Mrs. Neale saw that and thought, “Well, that looks an awful lot like my—” She’s a landlady, Mrs. Neale, and she’s like, “Well, that looks a lot like my tenant, who’s a woman called Mary Willcocks,” and I think who is, like, in arrears on paying her rent and has not been around for three to four weeks. So, Mrs. Neale went to see someone called Mr. Mortimer, not sure who that is, but he’s an intermediary who brings Mrs. Neale to the Worralls. At around the same time, a boy arrived in town and he remembered seeing someone who looked like Caraboo along the road. He remembered that she had drunk alcohol when she was with him, although Princess Caraboo never drinks alcohol. And so, this double confirmation that Caraboo was maybe a grifter convinced Elizabeth that her friend was maybe not all that she said she was.
Gavin: So, in response to these revelations, Elizabeth Worrall essentially devises a scheme to entrap and expose Princess Caraboo as a fraudsteress.
Ann: As much as Caraboo is, like, a dramatic person, you know, with all of her, sort of, performance of her ethnicity and her culture, Elizabeth has some dramatic instincts as well here, because this is straight out of Agatha Christie’s, Poirot situation. It’s just like, “Let’s get everyone in a room together.” We started out talking about that portrait by Edward Bird. So, during this time, Caraboo has been going regularly into Bristol to the studio of Edward Bird to pose for this portrait.
So, Elizabeth told Caraboo that they were going to Bristol in the morning for another sitting for this portrait. But when they got to Bristol, they did not go to the portrait studio, but rather they went to the home of this man, Mr. Mortimer. And Mrs. Neale was waiting there to confront her.
Gavin: The jig was up.
Ann: Yeah, yeah. Everything, everything starts to come out. Honestly, Elizabeth, iconic behaviour.
Gavin: Where’s her portrait?
Ann: Yeah! But the fact that Elizabeth didn’t confront her herself, but sort of like, brought about this scheme to trap her in this room with someone who knew her real identity, it’s, you know, good job, Elizabeth.
Gavin: Yes. I would also say missed opportunity. I want, like, a double portrait with both Elizabeth Worrall and Princess Caraboo.
Ann: Mm-hm! I know. Yeah, if only Edward Bird had been there to, like, sketch the confrontation.
Gavin: The great revelation. All right. So, at this point, the cat is out of the bag and Princess Caraboo gradually admits that her real name is Mary and that she was born in Witheridge, Devonshire. What were Mary’s childhood and adolescence like? What was her life actually like?
Ann: What I’m going to say is her life story is just as interesting as Princess Caraboo being captured by pirates and just as many twists and turns. But she revealed her story and that’s partially because Elizabeth said, “If you tell me who you really are, I’m not going to kick you out.” Mary was also upset, like, “Please don’t tell my father.” So, Elizabeth said, “Tell me the truth and I’ll stand by you,” which is remarkable actually for Elizabeth.
Gavin: It is. I mean, she’s shown real compassion for her from beginning to end in this narrative, hasn’t she?
Ann: That’s probably partially why Mary does come clean. At first, she tries to be like, “Oh, I actually lived in Bombay for a while.” And they’re like, “Mary, no. Who are you really? Mary.” And she’s like, “Okay, I’m from Devonshire.” Her father was, interestingly, a cobbler, who was the first person who she met in Almondsbury as well. So, she’d been given no education, like, I think a typical sort of upbringing in this era for that class of person. So, she’s put to work at age eight in farms and things like that, just sort of, manual labour mostly. At age 16, she started working at a farmhouse, but she left there as the pay was too low. Even as a poor, young working person, like, she had dreams and sort of standards for herself. Like, she didn’t just go to a job and say, “Okay, here’s my job.” She’s like, “No, I want something better.” So, she just kind of kept moving around, getting various jobs.
There was one part where during her teenage years, she went to Exeter and she worked there for a while and she made enough money to buy herself this beautiful white dress. And then she went home to her parents and the parents were like, “That dress is too beautiful. You must’ve stolen it.” In terms of, you know, costuming and just, like, theatricality and presenting herself in different ways, this was obviously part of her life. So, she ended up wandering around begging. She winds up in London and she falls ill. She’s taken to St. Giles’ Hospital, this is where she had her head shaved and a cupping treatment was done. So, this is, by the time she gets to Almondsbury later, her hair has grown back in and that’s why it’s short. And that’s why there’s the cupping treatment scars as well.
Anyway, so she was in London and she was working for someone who seemed pretty nice, Mrs. Matthews, who taught her to read and permitted her to read various books in her collection. So, this is part of like, Mary’s story sort of starts to reveal how did she learn about these different… because a lot of the things she were doing were similar to what people do do in various different cultures. So, this is part of where she starts like acquiring this knowledge to maybe eventually become Caraboo. So, she ended up leaving this position, briefly, very briefly. She was very taken by their Jewish neighbours and by their customs and their culture and she snuck away to go attend a Jewish wedding and that’s why she lost that job. So, she’s always really interested in other cultural traditions.
So, when I said like, this is just as interesting as the Caraboo story of leaving Javasu because next she traded in her clothes for men’s clothes because she thought “Maybe I’ll make more money begging if I’m a man,” at which point she caught up with a gang of bandits who taught her how to shoot a pistol. But then they parted ways after they realized that she was a woman.
Gavin: It’s another example of her kind of trying to assume a new identity, in this case as a man. One of the many figures she encounters on her various travels is this, “gentlemanly-looking man,” whom she may have married, we don’t quite know about that. But what does she learn from this gentlemanly-looking man?
Ann: The only reason we know that he’s a gentleman-looking man is because that’s all that she ever revealed about him or his identity. His name might have been Beckerstein or Bakerstendht, which sounds maybe German. Anyway, so they may or may not have actually been married, but she became pregnant by him and he had some knowledge of Malaysian language and customs. So, maybe he’d been a sailor or something like that. So, this is where she learned some of the stuff that she would later perform as Caraboo. He abandoned her, he went to Calais in France. He promised to send for her, but he never did. So, she is pregnant, alone, and when the child was born, she gave it up to a Foundling Hospital, and the child, like so many did in this era, died in infancy.
Between leaving home at 16, she’s now maybe 24 years old. Like, this has been an adventure-packed few years. And this is where she heads off towards Bristol. So, she goes begging and she finds that if she acts the role of a foreigner while begging, then people are a bit more sympathetic to her.
Gavin: She eventually makes it to Bristol and there she learns that she can buy a ticket, basically, to take a ship across the Atlantic to the United States and she likes the sound of that idea, but doesn’t have the money for it. So, what is the plan that she comes up with to acquire that money?
Ann: Basically, she plans that, okay, “There’s a ship leaving in, I think, 15 days.” And so, she’s going to put on this role of like, I am a foreigner and just beg for 15 days to get enough money to pay for the passage on the ship. At this point, she leaves her trunk with her belongings behind with her landlady, Mrs. Neale, and then heads out to go begging, which is why when she’s first seen in Almondsbury, she’s just looking for a room for the night.
Gavin: Now, we’re in a position to explain those two mysterious disappearances that we mentioned a few minutes back. What were those all about?
Ann: Right. So, this is where we double back to be like, “Well, here’s what was really happening.” So, the first time she went away, she had gone to Bristol, where she had gone back to her landlady. She went back to get her possessions, to then get on a ship to go to America. But the ship that she had planned on taking had already left. So, she paid her overdue rent to the landlady and then returned to Almondsbury with this bundle of clothes. And at this point, when Caraboo returned with a bunch of clothes, they’re like, “What are these clothes?” And she said, “Oh, these were clothes I had left and I had buried earlier.”
Gavin: And somehow, she’s communicating this with hand gestures.
Ann: Mm-hm! Mm-hm!
Gavin: Because at that point, she’s still speaking her “native language.”
Ann: In Javasu style. And so, the second time she went missing, this was where, well, she wound up in Bath and that’s where she met that doctor. But I think she was also eventually hoping to get onto a ship to America. But the people in Bath told Elizabeth Worrall and then Elizabeth Worrall came and picked her up. So, all along, she’s just kind of wanted to get to America. You know, at this time of 1817, and maybe still today, it’s this concept of, like, that’s a place where you can start anew, you know, start a new identity, build a new life for yourself. Like, clearly, that’s what she’s been constantly trying to do.
Gavin: Two things just leap out to me when I hear this story. First of all, can you imagine how flabbergasted these people were even to hear her speak in English to them? She’s like, “I could have told you this all along. Like, I knew English this whole time.”
Ann: Oh my gosh! Yeah. Well, and that’s where, like, when you look back at some of the details as well… Because I mentioned, you know, there were some of the servants who are suspicious of her and she overheard them talking in English and they said, “Well, we’re going to stay awake to see if when she’s asleep, you know, if she speaks in English in her sleep,” but she heard them say that because she understood English. So, then she would pretend to be asleep and then, like, talk in Javasu language, pretending to be asleep. You know, when the various travellers came to visit her, she would have heard them say like, “Oh, well in Malaysia, this is what they do with their daggers. You know, they put poison on them.” So, then she would just do that because she heard them say that in English and they wouldn’t have known that she understood them.
Gavin: Right. They were unwittingly making these suggestions.
Ann: Yeah. So, if they said like, “Oh, maybe she’s a runaway princess,” and she’s like, “Okay. Yeah, okay. I’ll do that.” But you’re right. You’re right. Just the way this would blow everyone’s mind to be living with her for a couple of months. And then suddenly she’s just like, “Oh yeah. Oh, I am Mary. I’m from…” you know, like, oh my gosh, she’s English.
Gavin: Am I correct here? She’s so consistent in using the same Javasu word to refer to the same object. Right?
Ann: Yeah! Yeah. That’s what everybody remarked on even, you know, the linguistics doctors and stuff, like, she just made up this language and committed to it. And she was consistent about it, like with the language and also with her sort of rituals, you know, every Tuesday climbing on the roof or saying her prayers in a certain way. Yeah! So, it didn’t seem like somebody just talking, no one ever seemed to think, “Oh, she’s insane. This is a person just speaking gibberish.”
Gavin: And there’s definitely an intellect to this woman as well if she’s creating this language and then sticking with it as she invents it, you know, that’s quite an intellectual feat.
Ann: Well, and the fact that she’s just a person who was planning to just pretend to be a random foreigner for 15 days and then peace out to America, that she ends up for three months having to be the princess of Javasu, 24 hours a day.
Gavin: That’s the other thing that I wanted to talk about because I would just love to have been able to sit down with Mary, Princess Caraboo, and just be like, “Okay, wait. Take me through this strategy again.” Because you mentioned that she thought that she could earn more money as a foreigner because people would kind of take pity on her. I mean, is there any evidence that she tried to beg for money when she showed up in Almondsbury? It seems like she was more interested in, like, shooting her bow and arrow and climbing trees and stuff.
Ann: It seemed to shift pretty quickly. So, at first, she saw some people from France, from Brittany, like the Breton national costume, if you look it up, it’s like they, it involves this sort of like white, lace hat. And she saw some people from that region begging and being successful. So, she’s like, okay, I’m going to just pretend to be a French person then. But then she ran into someone who actually was French. So, then she was like, “Pivot, I’m Spanish.” And then she ran into someone who is, who spoke Spanish and she’s like, “Pivot, I speak my own made-up language now.”
think she was begging, like when she got to Almondsbury, she was just like, “I need a roof over my head.” And then she got all the way to the Worralls and then she started meeting people who wanted to decode her language. Those are the people who were like, oh yeah, “No, she told me that she’s a princess, she’s from Javasu, she was captured by pirates.” Like, it was really sort of a team effort. Another person might’ve gotten to the Worralls and snuck away the first night, but she stayed there climbing trees, you know, diving in the pond, like fencing. Like, she was leaning into it.
Gavin: Yeah. I mean, the Worralls were also so generous. So, you imagine that if somehow she just indicated to them that she needed some money, they would have just given it to her and she could have gone on her merry way. But I get the sense that she was doing this partly out of love for the game. She’s like, “No, I’m committed to this character.”
Ann: Along the way she was finding, you know, she dressed up as a man or she pretended to be from France. Like, she was always sort of trying on different identities, changing her last name. So, I think she’s just like, “This is my dream. “You know, in another life, maybe she would have been an actress or something, but she’s just somebody who gets to just like, “Let’s play this out. How far can I take this? How much fun can I have at these people’s expense?” Yeah.
Gavin: This story all comes out and after she has heard everything, Elizabeth Worrall offers to pay for Mary’s passage to America. What are the days leading up to her departure like? And again, at this point, she’s still generating a lot of media attention, right? A lot of people are still interested in this story and how it will play out.
Ann: She’s so famous at this point, yeah. Like, the fact, like, the mysterious Princess Caraboo is an exciting story people liked to read about, you know, newspapers and pamphlets, but now that it’s like, “Oh, Princess Caraboo is actually a hoax,” people are even more excited. Like she’s even more famous now.
Gavin: Because she pulled it off for as long as she did, right?
Ann: Because Elizabeth had her back. And that’s the thing too, like, if she’d been sent to a different magistrate and his wife, maybe it would have been different. But there’s never any talk about sending her to jail, charging her with a crime. Like, Elizabeth just supports her and like you just said before, like, “Oh, she wants to go to America. Okay. I’ll pay for my friend to go to America.” Elizabeth also, she kind of does her due diligence. She sends a man to Mary’s parents to find out, like, is that story true? And they do. They find her parents were just these, kind of like, normal people. And I like this detail. The father said that Mary got rheumatic fever when she was 15 years old and ever since then, “She had not been right in the mind.” And the only examples he gives of this is that she always wanted to go to America, and she only ever drank water, not beer.
Gavin: Clearly unhinged. Well, I guess it was probably dangerous to drink water all the time back then.
Ann: Actually fair. But still, the fact that his only examples are just kind of like a sort of natural and understandable urge to get out of the small town, poor, poverty-stricken life you’re in. It’s like, I don’t think this is, like, the story of an unhinged person who’s deranged in the mind. I think it’s a really ambitious, interesting, smart woman who wanted more than she, you know, than life was ready to give her.
Gavin: On the one hand, there is some appreciation for just her skills. Like, “Okay, good on you. You had us all fooled. That was amazing.” But also, I mean, you think about her actual life story, it would elicit sympathy from people because she had a really rough upbringing and lost a child and, you know, had wandered in poverty for so many years. So, I guess, in that sense, it also makes sense that Elizabeth Worrall would want to help her financially in whatever way she could.
Ann: That’s a really good point, yeah. Because I think Elizabeth hears her true story and it’s actually heartbreaking, you’re right. Like, maybe she’s not Princess Caraboo, but it’s still sort of a very sympathetic story. So, Elizabeth gives her everything she needs. So, she finds her spot on the ship, gives her clothes and money, like, enough money to support herself until she found a position there. And just to sort of illustrate her fame, the ticket for this ship was purchased under a fake name, the name Mary Burgess, which is her mother’s maiden name because the name Mary Baker or Mary Willcocks was as famous as Caraboo at this point. So, they just didn’t want people to, I don’t know, be going to the ship— There’s not paparazzi, but you know, they didn’t want everybody there at their cell phones filming her.
What one of the people who saw her at the time said that they found it notable that she didn’t seem to be showing any signs of being guilty for having fooled everybody, but instead she seemed proud for how successfully she had pulled it off for as long as she had. And I think, yeah, of course she was. This is actually really impressive what she did.
Gavin: Mary is eventually able to board a ship for Philadelphia on June 28, 1817. And I have to confess, at this point in the story, part of me fully expected her just to vanish from the historical record entirely because, oh! She’s off to America, never heard from again. But that is not at all what happened, is it? So, what happens?
Ann: First of all, so she goes to Philadelphia in June 1817. So, this is around the same time that Napoleon has been sent to exile in St. Helena. And so, a guy wrote this letter, allegedly, Sir Hudson Lowe, the official who was in charge of Napoleon on St. Helena, and he claimed that the Philadelphia-bound ship had been driven close to St. Helena by a storm, that Mary cut herself adrift, rowed ashore, and she so fascinated Napoleon that he was applying to the Pope for dispensation to marry her. This is not true, listeners. But, you know, it could have been.
Gavin: We want it to be true and that counts for something.
Ann: Yeah. So, this is why you sometimes see her— And there’s not a lot out there about her other than the books I was able to find. But sometimes when you read about her, people are like, “Oh yeah, she was a mistress of Napoleon.” It’s like, “No… no.”
Gavin: I mean, in the fan fiction version of the story, she definitely was.
Ann: You know what? Absolutely. This guy wrote fan fiction to the Bristol Journal in 1817 imagining, what if this happened to her? What actually happened to her is she arrived in Philadelphia safely and some people had heard of her. She was persuaded by a showman called Sanders to appear, to do a stage performance as Princess Caraboo just, like, dancing and speaking her language. Apparently, the show was not a success. And I think, because you’d asked me like, “What was the show like?” So, I was digging a bit more into it and I think she could have put on a great show, but not dancing and speaking her language. I think doing fencing, acrobatic tricks. I don’t know. I don’t think Sanders had a good vision for the show. So, the show, not a success, not a success.
Gavin: It’s one of the great ironies to the story, right? Because she had sort of played the part of Princess Caraboo to perfection in Bristol so you could see why someone would want to put her on stage. But it’s so ironic that, you know, you put her within a theatrical context and for whatever reason, it just busts. So, unfortunately, Mary does not find much success on stage as Princess Caraboo, but she does stick around in the United States for a couple years. Eventually, she returns to Britain. So, what happens after that? Can we just wrap this story up for us?
Ann: Yeah. So, she returns to Britain and perhaps she returned because she thought, like, “Well, maybe there I can make it go over, the Princess Caraboo routine,” and she put herself on exhibition. It sounds like she set up a booth on the street sort of vibe of just like, “Come meet Princess Caraboo” in London. Again, not successful.
Gavin: At this point, several years have passed, right, since the whole Princess Caraboo sensation. So, maybe it’s sort of like, “Ergh,” no one cares anymore?
Ann: I’m sure there’s been some new weird thing that’s happened. Yeah, it’s like seven years later. So, we know that by 1828, so that’s almost 10 years after the Caraboo scenario, she got married to a man named Richard Baker, she had a daughter named Mary Ann and as far as we know for the next, like, 30 years, she successfully runs an operation, a leech business, selling leeches to Bristol Infirmary Hospital because leeches were what you did in hospitals and someone has to acquire and sell the leeches. And I never thought, you know, it’s such a joke about, like, old-time hospitals are like, “Oh, let’s use leeches, let’s bleed them.” But I’ve never once thought, well, where does the hospital acquire the leeches from? A business like hers.
Eventually, she died from a fall. So, December 1864, and she was buried in the Hebron Road Cemetery in Bristol. Her daughter Mary Ann continued on the family leech business and then Mary Ann, this is just what I read, “Mary Ann did not get married. She lived in a house full of cats and then she died in a house fire in 1900.” And that’s, that’s the end of Princess Caraboo’s lineage, I guess that’s her, you know, her daughter dies and that’s kind of the end of the saga. But you know, her portrait is still on display; her story, still known by some people.
Gavin: Mm-hm. Still fodder for podcasters.
Ann: Yeah. And how many, you know, cobbler’s daughters from 1817 are still being talked about?
Gavin: Great. Well, that is the story of Princess Caraboo, it is quite a wild one. So, I’m just curious, are there any lessons that you think we can draw about history from this, this story?
Ann: There’s so many interesting and weird stories that can feel really contemporary. You know, like, I think there’s a tendency of people to think about history as these very, sort of, straight-laced— Like, the way that people look in a portrait, you just imagine everyone’s going around being very formal all the time and you never hear about the poor people. But actually, people are out there, like Mary was such a fascinating person, she was so ambitious, she was so interesting. And it does feel a bit, you know, like people who you see now coming out on… Just people who become a TikTok star or they’re on a reality show, like, it’s such a modern way of being to just completely reinvent yourself, pretend to be a different ethnicity, then you get cancelled, but then you keep going. Like, it’s just a reminder to me, this story, that people have always been people, messy and interesting. Especially women from poor classes are never talked about, you know, today. But also, when you’re looking at history, because we don’t know their stories and if other women were as interesting as Mary, then I hope we can find more of their stories.
Gavin: That is funny to sort of think of her as someone who, like, went viral in a 19th-century way.
Well, I guess that about does it for Princess Caraboo. Any last thoughts that you want to share with listeners, Ann?
Ann: I just want to thank you for inviting me on your podcast and agreeing to do this story because again, like I said, it’s one that I’ve always kind of wanted to do on my podcast, but it’s never really fit any of the themes that I’ve been doing. But I was like, this is perfect because there’s the portrait, there’s the crime. It’s ideal for you. So, thank you so much for the opportunity.
Gavin: All right. With that, let’s sign off. Thanks again, Ann!
Ann: Yeah, thank you so much.
—————
Hey, everyone, it’s Ann again. So, that was an episode of The Art of Crime podcast and I had so much fun talking with Gavin in this episode. I had so much fun talking with Gavin two weeks ago when we did our Madame Tussaud episode. And if you want to hear more of Gavin, his podcast is called The Art of Crime and you can find that wherever you get your podcasts from. I hope to have him back on Vulgar History again later this season, hopefully.
So, what we’re going to be doing just so you know for the next little bit, because I’m just in this intensive, like, writing a book situation while at the same time providing some new episodes for you every week, or revisited episodes.
Anyway, what next week is going to be is the first of several author interviews. We haven’t really done a lot of author interviews during this Marie Antoinette season, but we’re getting up to gift-giving season, lots of winter holidays where people give each other presents, and I know that a lot of you like the book recommendations that occur on this show, and there’s some authors I’ve been really wanting to have on. And so, we’re just going to have several weeks of talking to authors about their incredible books that I think would be good for gift-giving season/giving yourself a book. Isn’t it in Iceland where, like, late December, early January… or is it just the month of December, you just, like, give a book every day or something?
Anyway, next week, we’re going to be talking with an author about a book that actually connects with a deep, deep dive episode of Vulgar History from early 2020 when I was doing various episodes about just pandemics in history, because that’s how I was adapting with 2020 happening, was learning what other people had been through pandemics and what that was like. This is a book that is going to tell more about one of those stories that I’ve already covered in those episodes but in the form of a historical fiction novel and I think you’re really going to like it. So, that’s coming up next week. And I mean, just officially, so you all know, for those of you who stay and listen to my rambling after-the-episode talks, like, we’re going to be in this kind of new content every week, but we’re not going to get to the Marie Antoinette stuff until after I finish writing my book because I need to focus entirely on that at the moment. I want to give Marie Antoinette and that whole season all my attention and when I’m able to do that, there’ll be more episodes in that series.
Anyway, in the meantime, you can also keep up with me and my writing. I mean, the book, no information about, like, pre-orders or anything like that. But if you want to see my writing and what it’s like to hear, to see me, or to see the words I write rather than to listen to the words I say, I do have a Substack, which is called “Vulgar History A La Carte,” and every two weeks I post there an essay, a piece, about a woman from history or about feminism or about various different things. I posted one recently about “The sexist history of guilty pleasures,” and why do we call some things guilty pleasures and other things are just pleasures and what’s the gender binary got to do with it? Anyway, that is all 100% free. If you want to read those things in my newsletter, you just go to VulgarHistory.Substack.com and there it is.
You can also follow along with me on Patreon, where I have been mentioning lately… So, there’s a free membership you can do on Patreon, which is a way that you can make sure you get all of my updates and information just because various social media algorithms don’t always, even if you follow me because you want to hear what I have to say, they don’t always show up in your feed because of various algorithms. But if you follow me on Patreon, you’ll get a notification every time I post something and you can join there for free. The free members of the Patreon, they get my various updates. I post links and things there but most importantly, that’s where I’ve been posting my other podcast, Ann is Writing a Book: Rebel of the Regency, which is where I have kind of short, casual podcast episodes about how the book writing is going and what’s driving me crazy at the moment. I’m about to record one of those right now because I’ve had to request a biography of Prinny—if you know who that is, then you know why I’m so annoyed—I’ve had to request a biography of Prinny from the library to verify some facts and I haven’t been so mad since I had to request a book from the library called The History of the Napoleonic Wars. Just the things… the things I have to learn about for this book. Anyway, so you can listen to that, Ann is Writing a Book, those episodes are for free. Any of the members, the free members on Patreon can listen to that.
While you’re on Patreon, if you’re like, “Oh, I want to get a little bit more,” if you pledge at least $1 a month, then you get early, ad-free access to all episodes of Vulgar History, and that includes listening to the previous older episodes, the archive with no ads as well. And if you want to get a little bit more, if you pledge $5 or more a month, you get access to bonus episodes like Vulgarpiece Theatre, which I’m hoping that myself, Allison Epstein, and Lana Wood Johnson can make plans to have at least one new episode of that before the end of the year. So, fingers crossed. The three of us are all incredibly busy at the moment, but I really hope we can make it happen. And even if not, there’s a huge archive of the past Vulgarpiece Theatre episodes you can listen to, as well as So This Asshole bonus episodes, and also The Aftershow where I talk with some of the guests just about fun things. Anyway, so you go to Patreon.com/AnnFosterWriter, and that’s where you can join the Patreon to get all that stuff. Also, if you join the Patreon at the $5 or more level, then you get to join our Discord, which is like a group chat, and we just have a nice time there talking about episodes of the show, talking about, I don’t know, the news of the day that has to do with things relating to Vulgar History stuff. A lot of people share TikToks. It’s just a nice time. It’s basically just a group chat with a bunch of nerds (positive).
I also always want to mention our brand partner, like, if we’re talking about gift-giving season, Common Era Jewelry, which is a women-owned small business that makes beautiful heirloom jewelry pieces inspired by classical history, specifically women from history and from mythology. So, this includes people from mythology, like I just saw one of the Tits Out Brigade members just got the Artemis necklace. So, Hecate is there if you’re feeling, like, witch vibes. Sappho is there in terms of, like, sapphic history. And you’ve also got people like Boudica, Cleopatra, Agrippina, and Anne Boleyn featured there on their beautiful pieces. Their pieces are available in solid gold as well as in more affordable gold vermeil and Vulgar History listeners can always get 15% off all items from Common Era by going to CommonEra.com/Vulgar or using code ’VULGAR’ at checkout. And if you’re going to be asking for some of these things as a gift, like make sure you tell the person giving you the gift to use code ‘VULGAR’ at checkout so they can get the discount.
You can also, gift giving season, get Vulgar History merchandise which is available at VulgarHistory.com/Store, that takes you to our TeePublic store which is great for Americans. If you’re not an American, you can shop at our other site which is the Redbubble site VulgarHistory.Redbubble.com. You can get in touch with me using the form at VulgarHistory.com. There’s just a thing there that’s like “Contact me.” Please do. Or you can also DM me, I’m on Instagram @VulgarHistoryPod. I’m also on Threads @VulgarHistoryPod.
I think that’s everything I have to say. Next week, amazing author interview. It’s funny when I book these, I always tell the authors I’m like, “Yeah, this will probably take about 30 minutes,” and it always ends up being, like, 90 minutes because there’s so much to talk about. Next week is going to be like that. But anyway, until next time, my friends, keep your pants on and your tits out.
Vulgar History is hosted, written, and researched by Ann Foster, that’s me! The editor is Cristina Lumague. Theme music is by the Severn Duo. The Vulgar History show image is by Deborah Wong. Transcripts are written by Aveline Malek. Find transcripts of recent episodes at VulgarHistory.com.
References:
Learn more about Gavin’s show The Art of Crime at artofcrimepodcast.com
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