The Dark Mystery of Princess Caraboo

Summary

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After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal

Episode: The Dark Mystery of Princess Caraboo (May 7, 2026)

Hosts: Anthony Delaney & Maddy Pelling
Podcast: History Hit

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Episode Overview

This episode delves into the twisting true story of Princess Caraboo, one of Britain's most elaborate historical hoaxes. The hosts, Anthony and Maddy, unravel the Regency-era case of a mysterious woman who fools an entire community—and then the nation—into believing she’s an exotic princess from the East Indies. Alongside this bizarre tale, the episode offers sharp insights into early 19th-century British society: its obsessions with empire, colonial fantasies, social class, "fake news," and the cultural appetite for spectacle and imposture.

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Setting the Scene

[01:00-04:15]

• Maddy and Anthony open in modern-day Bristol Museum before the famed portrait of Princess Caraboo. They describe its enigmatic charm and highlight Caraboo’s oddness amid the sobriety of 19th-century portraits.
• Caraboo, it turns out, was not a royal at all, but a notorious impostor in Regency Britain.

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Regency Britain: Context of Anxiety and Change

[06:33–10:15]

• Regency era painted as darker than the pastel world of Jane Austen.
• 1815: Aftermath of Waterloo—Britain’s victory, but economic and social despair as war veterans return to hard times.
• 1816: The “Year Without a Summer,” with darkness caused by the Mount Tambora eruption, impacting crops and morale; cultural unease reflected even in the art of Turner and stories written by the Shelleys and Byron (Frankenstein is born).
• Rising British interest in the “exotic East” and empire. “Empire, colonial fantasies, and the overreaching ambition of a real-life Dr. Frankenstein” will all feature in Caraboo’s tale.

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The Arrival of an Enigma: Enter Princess Caraboo

[11:00–18:17]

• In 1817, in Almondsbury near Bristol, a mysterious young woman collapses at the door of a cobbler. She speaks an unknown tongue, carries only a bar of soap, coins (one forged), and is clothed extravagantly.
• "She draws people in... She's incredibly beautiful. Everyone comments on this... often they're charismatic." – Maddy [12:28]
• Local authorities and the magistrate (Samuel Worrell, known as "Samuel Devil Worrell") become involved. She won’t speak English, only her invented language, and resists attempts to strip/search her.
• The Worrells begin showing her prints of empire, triggering excitable reactions [17:00]. The village starts constructing an exotic backstory based on these reactions—she must be a kidnapped princess from the East Indies.

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The Hoax Takes Hold

[18:18–22:59]

• Public spectacle: The Worrells parade Caraboo through Bristol seeking someone who can identify her or her language.

• A Portuguese sailor claims to understand her: “She is a princess, kidnapped by pirates from the East Indies.” – Maddy [19:39]

  “Everyone is lying to a certain extent and everyone is willing to be lied to.” – Anthony [31:59]

• This “discovery” cements the Caraboo narrative, and she becomes a local celebrity.

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Science Meets Spectacle: Enter Dr. Wilkinson

[22:59–26:53]

• Dr. Charles Hunnings Wilkinson arrives: a galvanist from Bath, performing pseudo-scientific experiments—a “real-life Dr. Frankenstein.”
• He helps construct Caraboo’s supposed language and map, possibly faking documents himself. The map features invented places like “Javasu.”
• Wilkinson publishes her "language" and "map" in the press, making her Britain’s latest sensation.
• Caraboo becomes an object of elite voyeurism, swimming semi-naked, praying in “exotic” rituals, sword-fighting—her life becomes public entertainment.

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Colonial Fantasy and Media Mania

[26:54–39:47]

• The East Indies narrative resonates with ongoing British imperial ambitions.
• Anthony: “This is a very the Brits are at it again situation.” [30:29]
• Examples of similar hoaxes and imperial myths: the supposed “giants of South America," fictional captivity memoirs.
• The painting and media depictions of Caraboo are influenced by contemporary “best-seller” accounts of Java and empire.
• Caraboo becomes a vessel for everyone’s projections: “She becomes totemic... everybody has claim to [her].” – Anthony [37:22]

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Unmasking Caraboo: The Real Mary Wilcox

[39:48–54:38]

• The unraveling: newspaper descriptions lead contacts from her real past—a wheelwright’s son and a Bristol landlady—who recognize her as English.

• Dramatic confrontation: Elizabeth Worrell brings Caraboo to the lodging house; under pressure, "Princess Caraboo" finally admits her name is Mary Wilcox.

  "Who have I allowed in my house? Who the is Mary Wilcox? and why can you suddenly speak English?" – Maddy [42:31]

• Mary’s tragic backstory: Born in Devon to poor parents, becomes a vagrant after hand-to-mouth servant work, experiences severe hardship, mental health crises, and the trauma of losing her child after entering the Foundling Hospital. She survives by inventing new identities—including the persona of a foreign beggar.

• "She created characters and aliases for herself to survive." – Maddy [54:01]

• She never actually claimed her name was Caraboo or that she was a princess until prompted; much was foisted on her by those around her.

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Colonial, Gender, and Class Critiques

[33:25–54:38]

• The hosts discuss how Caraboo reflects the obsessions and blind spots of British society: its credulity in the face of the “exotic,” its willingness to be deceived, and the role of gender and class in making spectacular impostures possible and newsworthy.
• “People floppy from Bath and Bristol... [Noel] becomes central to the Regency period in this area.” – Maddy [32:56]
• Mary Wilcox’s story is reframed: not the cunning liar, but a survivor using what she could to get by in a system stacked against her.

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Reflections and Quotes

• “The extent to which she was a liar is really hard to identify. And I think maybe she wasn’t at all.” – Maddy [54:01]
• “She has some agency, and she’s using what she has at her disposal.” – Anthony [54:16]
• Caraboo’s story ultimately represents the intersection of personal tragedy, social performance, and a nation’s hunger for the strange.

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Notable Moments & Timestamps

• Caraboo at the cobbler's door: [11:01]
• Wilkinson's pseudo-science & Caraboo performance: [22:59–26:53]
• Portuguese sailor’s key intervention and lies: [18:35–19:51]
• Dramatic unmasking as Mary Wilcox: [41:17–42:31]
• Mary’s foundling records and tragic backstory: [44:00–51:30]
• Discussion on the cultural appetite for imposture, colonial fantasy, and women as spectacle: [33:25–38:41]
• Host reflection on Mary’s agency and survival: [54:01–54:21]

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Closing Notes

Maddy’s new book, Truth and Lies in the Age of Enlightenment, explores Caraboo and other impostors in depth, considering their personal stories alongside broader historical and cultural forces.
“It’s an intimate history of these lives... lost from the record or, you know, are rolled out as like bizarre, fun anecdotes that really have so much more complexity and depth to them. These are stories of women who deserve to be heard.” – Maddy [55:26]

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Further Exploration

• Book: Truth and Lies in the Age of Enlightenment (Maddy Pelling) – Released May 7, 2026
• Episode contextualizes the Caraboo saga within fake news, misinformation, and historical imposture.
• Listeners encouraged to reflect on who gets believed, why, and how history’s “fun anecdotes” mask gritty realities.

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For full details, character portraits, and archival materials, visit Maddy's website and social accounts.

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Transcript

[Maddy]

Hello everyone, it's me, Maddy. I am back. Well, not quite. I will be back on the pod very soon, but in the meantime, if you've missed your fix of Anthony and me together, you can now catch us live on stage at Conway hall in London on the 7th of May. There we'll be discussing my brand new book, Truth and Lies in the Age of Enlightenment, out that very same day, we'll be discovering how fake news is nothing new, chatting about what it's like to spend time in the darker side of the Georgian world, and meeting the three extraordinary, bizarre and often frightening characters at the heart of the book. Copies of Hoax will be available on the night, which I'll be signing after the show and hopefully chatting to as many of you as possible. So get your tickets now. The link is in the show notes. You can go to the Conway hall website or follow the link in my Instagram bio. I'm so excited about this book and I just can't wait to share it with you all. Do come along. It is going to be the most fantastic evening. See you there. There's never been a better time to get outside and experience the benefits of nature, discover nearby trails and explore the outdoors with all trails. Download the free app today and find your Outside. We're standing in Bristol Museum and Art Gallery in the present day. Around us, the sounds of visitors and school children tasked in some kind of activity echo off the marble of this vast building. The painting before us is small, unlike the large canvases either side of it, it requires we get close to it, peer in, lean forward as though it wants to tell us its secrets. At its center is a young woman. She stands on the shoreline of a far off island, the bay behind her ringed with palm trees and fishermen's boats. Her gaze is direct yet vague. There's something about her flushed pink cheeks, dark brows and darker hair, sweet, swept up in a white turban topped with peacock feathers that we can't quite place. Her dress is odd too. Skirts bejewelled and cut off just below the knee, their swathes of gold enveloping her fleshy form beneath. She clasps a single flower to her bosom, while her feet, bare but for a pair of strappy Romanesque sandals, appear to be taking her off and away, just as out of frame. She's something of an exotic oddity here among the dark portraits of Bristol's early 19th century industrialists and sentimental cottage scenes. Certainly she's hard to place, to define. On the surface, she might be a dignitary from across The British Empire. A local aristocrat of some colonial outpost to the east. Or maybe even a royal. What we're actually looking at, though, is one of the most infamous liars of regency Britain. In 1817, a strange young woman staggered into an English village, speaking a language no one could understand. She claimed to be a princess called Caribou, kidnapped by pirates from a far flung land. At least that's what the British establishment thought the story was. As they came to marvel at her, when the lies came crashing down, they revealed a truth that was far, far stranger. Welcome to After Dark. This is the twisting, turning uncertain story of Princess Caribou. Hello, everyone. I'm back. Sort of.

[Anthony]

It's me.

[Maddy]

I want, like, smoke coming up as I arrive. And some glittering.

[Anthony]

The YouTube editors are gonna be doing.

[Maddy]

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, please. I'll have the glitter. Hello. I have appeared during my maternity leave. We've recorded this well in advance. I'm still pregnant in this universe. To talk to you about a little book that I have coming out in May called Hoax.

[Anthony]

Hoax. What's the subtitle, Maddy?

[Maddy]

What is the subtitle? That's a very good question. Truth Lies, Lies in the Age of Enlightenment.

[Anthony]

Out on the 7th of May 2026.

[Maddy]

This is the marketing copy, not the hardback, because we're recording it so far in advance that the hardback doesn't exist yet. But also, look at these gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous cards.

[Anthony]

These are so lovely.

[Maddy]

People made for me. Tarot cards.

[Anthony]

Just to describe it, because we are on the podcast.

[Maddy]

Oh, yes, we are.

[Anthony]

I forgot we're one of those things. But we'll put them on socials. Yes, well, you'll be posting these loads on socials. But we have three characters. The princess, the witch, the ghost and then the book itself. And so we have the three main characters from the book on and they're

[Maddy]

little portraits of each of them.

[Anthony]

And they're there. Yep, yep. And they're little.

[Maddy]

Obsessed with them.

[Anthony]

Portraits of each of them. And they are so cute. I mean, if you want to do merchandising, bring these out.

[Maddy]

Well, we've been talking about maybe doing it, so who knows? By the time you hear this, this might have encouraged, forced the hand of my marketing person to do this.

[Anthony]

I love that.

[Maddy]

I love them so much. I'm obsessed with them. So great.

[Anthony]

Oh, my gosh.

[Maddy]

They're like top trumps of imposters and hoaxes.

[Anthony]

Now, while we're on the subject of some of these individuals, last time that we spoke, we spoke about the Cock Lane ghost and we talked about Fanny and Betty and all the people that. William, all the people that were involved in that. This is a little bit of a smaller cast and crew that we're going to be talking about, if any.

[Maddy]

Wilder story.

[Anthony]

Yeah, this, this. And thankfully funnier. Yes, Cock Lane is funny, but, like, this is. I. Okay, we'll get. We'll get into it.

[Maddy]

You can decide.

[Anthony]

We are going to be talking about empire, colonial fantasies and the overreaching ambition of a real life Dr. Frankenstein. So, Maddie, give us. We're in a little bit of a. So we started at the beginning of the. Yeah, Cockhlane's the first.

[Maddy]

Yes, it is. So we started in the 1760s and

[Anthony]

now we're going to the.

[Maddy]

We're in the Regency now.

[Anthony]

Regency. We're in the 19th century.

[Maddy]

The peak. Jane Austen.

[Anthony]

Give us a little bit of context at that time.

[Maddy]

Okay. So in 1815, Jane Austen's Emma is published. So you might think, you know, this is a world of pastel colours and polite dances. No, no, no, no. This is a much darker world than the one that Jane Austen would have us believe. In the same year, Napoleon is, of course defeated at Waterloo. Ever heard of it?

[Anthony]

Waterloo.

[Maddy]

Waterloo. Europe is exhausted from the effort of defeating Napoleon. There's, you know, a long road to recovery in terms of rebuilding. Veterans are coming back, they're broken, they're not finding work. This is a grim time. Even though victory has been had, the aftermath of the war is really extreme.

[Anthony]

Victory costs.

[Maddy]

Victory costs. You should get that on a T shirt. The following year, 1816 is known as the Year Without a Summer, which is quite well known now.

[Anthony]

Yes.

[Maddy]

So the reason for this, and this is a kind of climatological event, the reason is the eruption of Mount Tambora in the East Indies. People in Europe would not have known that this was the cause in this moment, but this is the reason. It triggers a climatological crisis and essentially darkness falls over the northern hemisphere. The stuff coming out of the volcano

[Anthony]

stuff, man, I'm a technical term.

[Maddy]

Okay. I describe it better in my book, I promise. It basically darkens the skies for an entire year. And because this happens over the summer of 1816, crops don't grow in Britain. Across Europe and North America, there are food shortages. There are so many diary entries of writers and poets complaining about this darkness. If you look at, for example, Turner's paintings for that year, the palette is darkened and, you know, it's really visible. You can kind of read it almost like an archaeological layer.

[Anthony]

Do you prefer Turner or Blake?

[Maddy]

Do I have to pick one? Yes, Turner.

[Anthony]

Yeah, me too.

[Maddy]

Yeah. Only just, though. You're right, only just. But yeah. In this Year of Darkness, of course, famously, at Byron's villa in Switzerland, he invites some friends, including Percy Bysshe Shelley, hate him. And Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, as she is there, and she's eventually going to be Mary Shelley, to spend time with him. And they spend the evening writing ghost stories. And what is the result of that?

[Anthony]

It is a little book called Dr. Well, called Frankenstein.

[Maddy]

That's the one.

[Anthony]

Not Dr. Frankenstein, who was the man, not the monster. So, you know, this is literally iconic.

[Maddy]

It's an iconic time and it's a time of, like, unease. Right. The world is literally dark. It's culturally dark, it's emotionally dark. For Britain, slavery has supposedly ended. And so there is this looking now to the east, to the East Indies, to India itself, to China. And in this year, 1816, Sir Stamford Raffles returns from the island of Java. Now, he is an incredibly famous colonial figure. He founded, quote, unquote, Singapore, for example. He has this huge colonial legacy. And interestingly, he was born aboard a ship. Like, he's that much a boy of empire. Yeah, yeah. He literally is like, you know, he's almost not a sea dog. Yes, yeah. And he. Why I'm saying this is important is because it's going to be important for the story that he returns. He's been governor of the island of Java in the East Indies, and he returns to Britain with one of the Javanese chieftains, a man called Radhan Radha Dipura, who we know very little about. Surprise, surprise. But together they come back to London in this year and Raffles writes a history of Java that becomes a bestseller. And I want you all to hold that in your minds, this history of this far off island that's captured people's imaginations.

[Anthony]

It does.

[Maddy]

It plays a part.

[Anthony]

Play a part in the story. Now, you set the story of these. The context of these far off lands, or these seemingly far off lands in heavier verte commas.

[Maddy]

This is, you know, this is a story being told from a Eurocentric point

[Anthony]

of view, but in this colonial imagination, in the colonial heartland or motherland, whatever way you want to call it, or disasterland it is. These places seem far off, they seem foreign, they seem other. And all of this is happening now. Now let's come back to England and let's talk about how this story relates to those things. And it all starts in Amondsbridge. Never even knew that place existed, by the way.

[Maddy]

It's a nice little village still just outside Bristol.

[Anthony]

We're in Bristol in the west of England and we're in April 17th. Enter.

[Maddy]

Enter who? Enter. A young mysterious woman. So this is a little village that has, you know, cobblers, watchmakers, farmers living in it. There's no one posh or exciting living here. You know, according to the attitudes of the day, this is just an ordinary little place. There's a church, there's a village pub, that's it. There's a little charity school. And one of the cobblers has this door open and in off the street wanders this young woman and she collapses in his doorway. She is a little bit strange looking. She has very dark hair and quite sunkissed skin as it's described in the archive. She has a shawl that is wrapped as a turban around her head. She's wearing quite outlandish clothing and she's speaking in a language that this cobbler does not understand. Definitely a foreign language. She's carrying a small bundle of clothes and she has in her pocket just a bar of soap and a few coins, including the forged coin. And that's it.

[Anthony]

It's an odd little combination of things.

[Maddy]

It's a nice little mystery.

[Anthony]

Yeah, it's like what randomly here we don't. And you know, you're talking about a small town. They will have known the vast, vast majority of the people coming and going through there.

[Maddy]

Now, I will say we're close to Bristol here, out of Bath. We're close to Bristol. You know, it's an incredibly busy port city with people going out across the globe. All sorts of foreigners are passing through it all the time. So if you were to go down to the docks in this moment, you would hear a plethora of different languages from around the world. But this is a little bit more inland.

[Anthony]

Yeah, yeah.

[Maddy]

They're not expecting to see someone like this. Occasionally vagrants will come through who maybe speak different languages, you know, who've got off the ship and haven't been able to find work for themselves and are now begging on the street, that kind of thing. But even then she's strange, she stands out, she's really. And she's incredibly beautiful. Everyone comments on this, that she has this intensity to her that just draws people in. And I think this is so interesting when we talk about, you know, hoaxes and the people at the center of these things, often they're charismatic and they really. People gravitate towards them, but the cobbler doesn't know what to do with her. He can't comfort her. Yeah, this is my house. What are you doing? He can't communicate, he can't comfort her. So he sends for the overseer of the port, who, you know, you'd have these in every parish, and it's someone who's responsible for moving vagrants on, basically.

[Anthony]

Oh, sorry, I thought it was like the overseer of the port. I was like, wait, the port? Yeah.

[Maddy]

So he takes one look at her and he's like, I don't really know who she is. I can't really tell.

[Anthony]

So he decides, I haven't overseen this poor before.

[Maddy]

Yeah, exactly. He's like, mm, this is too poor for me. I'm not sure what to do. So he decides to take her to the mansion. Now, the magistrate just happens to live on the big house on the top

[Anthony]

of the hill, as they so often do.

[Maddy]

Exactly. And this house is called Knole Park. And sadly, it's no longer there. The village of Almondsbury is there. The pub is still there. That was there in this moment. Does a good pint and a bowl of chips.

[Anthony]

There you go.

[Maddy]

The house, sadly, is not, but the estate that it was on is. And I went and saw this. It's an ancient house. It's not, you know, you imagine the sort of Regency house of your Jane Austens, but this is sort of this old, gnarly, quite Gothic building that's already centuries old. And it sits on this hill and overlooking the valley, going down to the Bristol harbour and estuary. And you would have been able to see ships coming and going out into the world the whole time. So this idea of empire is right there. Expanse. Yeah. This idea of sort of this influx of people and goods and exoticism and mystery and opportunity is all there in the landscape and it's in everyone's mind all the time. And inside the house are Samuel and Elizabeth Worrell. Now, Samuel Worrell is the local magistrate. He is also. He's a local dignitary. He's a bank owner. The closest person I think you can compare him to is in Poldock, the baddie, who is sort of Poldark's nemesis. And he owns a bank, George Warleggan.

[Anthony]

I haven't seen it. You've not seen it, but my mum likes it.

[Maddy]

Jesus Christ. Okay, well, your mum will understand this reference there. He's got that kind of vibe about him. He's known locally as Samuel Devil Worrell.

[Anthony]

Stop it.

[Maddy]

Yeah, he's hilarious and he's sort of. He's a sort of scary man. There's an anecdote about him where he goes to, like, a dignitary dinner one time and he's going back to his offices in Bristol and he gets out the carriage and he misses the step and falls over because he's a little bit drunk. And he's so mortified that there's like a little crowd, you know, standing by watching him fall in the gutter. And he instantly turns around and points at some random shopkeeper and is like, you've just pushed me over.

[Anthony]

The shopkeeper's like, oh, little man, little man.

[Maddy]

Absolute little man syndrome. Elizabeth Worrell is a little bit more likable. She is an American heiress who was fled to Britain after the War of Independence.

[Anthony]

This is relatively early for American heiresses.

[Maddy]

Yeah, I mean, she's so her family go across in the early 17th century. Her great, great, great, great, great whatever grandfather is like one of the earliest Puritan settlers.

[Anthony]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Maddy]

And, you know, she's so. She's. She's American through and through until she's not. And the American war happens. And she's like, we're loyal to Britain. We should. So they've got married, they have this kind of nice, respectable life. They're very socially ambitious. Obviously, Samuel Worrell is a petty little man. And the overseer brings this young woman into their home. And interestingly, when they arrive, she won't get out the carriage. And she's clinging to the carriage, almost like, is she aware of the man she's about to go and meet? We don't know. She doesn't want to go in. But they get her inside and they interrogate her. They make her empty her pockets, which is why we know what she was carrying. They try and take up under clothes, and she is not having it. She's like, you're not touc. The whole time she's speaking this language they don't understand. Now, interestingly, the Worrells have a servant who is Greek and, you know, not unusual for the time.

[Anthony]

We'll try any language here. Bring him in.

[Maddy]

You're foreign. What's she saying? And he's like. He's really insulted. And he's like, nothing to do with me.

[Anthony]

I'm not even Greek.

[Maddy]

Yeah.

[Anthony]

Where this rumor started, I'm French.

[Maddy]

Exactly. So they can't make out who she is. They don't know what she's saying. And over the next few days, they try and sort of work out what's going on. And one way they do this is they show her books of empire, they show her prints of things, they show her A print of, I think, a pineapple at one point. And she starts shouting, inanna. Inanna. Which is very close to the Latin name for it. And she gets all excited about this, and they show her, you know, books of prints that have things like ships in or. Yes. Sort of different scenes from different parts of the Empire. And she's pointing at, like, a lot of Chinese stuff, a lot of what we would now say was Indonesian stuff, the East Indies. And she points at the ship, and so they're like, ooh, clues. And they start to build up a story, and already a narrative starts to take hold that this young woman is not really feeding them, where they're like, okay, so she's probably from the East Indies or, like, somewhere East. She's very exotic, and she's escaped. She's escaped a terrible marriage or maybe she's been kidnapped. And they're sort of overcome with excitement because they've kind of put the idea out of their head that she's a vagrant because she's so exotic and interesting and a vagrant.

[Anthony]

Oh, she couldn't possibly look like that.

[Maddy]

She's so beautiful. So she can't be a poor person. And she has very soft hands that don't look like they've ever worked. So, you know, she must be. Do you. Do you. What's your moisturizing?

[Anthony]

Don't moisturize my hands. But they are very soft.

[Maddy]

Are they? They have a little feel. Oh, yeah, they are. Oh, very nice. Yeah.

[Anthony]

Lovely typing. That's all I do.

[Maddy]

I'm a writer. Okay. So then they decide to take her into Bristol. And they're like, there's lots of foreigners in Bristol. Someone will know. God. So they parade her so much. It's just so awful.

[Anthony]

It's so difficult.

[Maddy]

So they parade her up and down the harbor, the port. And at one point, they do put her into what is essentially a workhouse. It's a hospital. And they get people to come and, like, view her and things. So this happens over several weeks and they get different people to. Nobody can identify the language he's speaking until we have, oh, this guy.

[Anthony]

Now this guy, this guy. I kind of love this guy because this is bullshittery at its finest.

[Maddy]

And this is again, like we said in the previous episode with the Cockland Ghosts, everybody's lying for their own ends. So this guy is a Portuguese sailor. And by now, words got out, like, if you can identify the language, you're gonna get a reward. So he's, like, flexing. Turns out, I'm gonna get this Exactly. Right. So he walks into the room with her, and she's speaking her language to him. And he's nodding. He's like, oh, this?

[Anthony]

Yes. Right.

[Maddy]

Ah, okay. Yes, yes, yes. And then he turns to Elizabeth and Samuel Warren. He goes, okay, okay.

[Anthony]

You're never gonna believe this.

[Maddy]

Gather in. Also, pay me up front. So he says she's from the East Indies. He's not sure exactly which island because he has traveled to some, but not others. And she's not speaking a dialect he exactly recognizes.

[Anthony]

Which fair. You know, fair.

[Maddy]

And seems believable.

[Anthony]

Yeah.

[Maddy]

And then he's like, but I can tell you what her story is now.

[Anthony]

It just happens to be fantastical.

[Maddy]

Yeah. And remember, this woman is just stood here the whole time listening to me say this in English.

[Anthony]

She hasn't told him what to say.

[Maddy]

No, they're not communicating. Like, spoiler alert. He's not understand the language she's speaking. And he says her name is Caribou and that she's a princess. She's been kidnapped by pirates.

[Anthony]

Sounds really good.

[Maddy]

Well, sure.

[Anthony]

Who else would you be kidnapped by?

[Maddy]

And that they docked in Bristol Harbour as well. All pirates do. And that she escaped. And that she ran into the countryside and collapsed in ar, exhausted. And he takes his cash prize away with him. And they're like, oh, my God, this is amazing. You're a princess. We are going to be so famous and rich, and everyone in Bristol is going to love us. This is great. Mom, can you tell me a story? Sure. Once upon a time, a mom needed a new car. Was she brave? She was tired mostly. But she went to Carvana.com and found

[Anthony]

a great car at a great price. No secret treasure map required.

[Maddy]

Did you have to fight a dragon? Nope. She bought it 100% online from her bed, actually. Was it scary? Honey, it was as unscary as car buying could be. Did the car have a sunroof? It did, actually. Okay. Okay. Good story. Car buying. You'll want to tell stories about. Buy your car today on Carvana. Delivery fees may apply.

[Anthony]

Hi there. I'm Dan, host of Dan Snow's history podcast. I can imagine. On these dark winter nights, all you're going to do is curl up with a cup of tea and get lost in an amazing story. Well, I can help you with that. Twice a week, I tell you the most dramatic and extraordinary stories from history, with details I can guarantee you've never heard before. Feel the frostbite of that grisly failed American invasion of Canada in the dead of winter. Imagine every clash and blow at the Battle of Bosworth, follow Eleanor of Aquitaine, one of the most powerful women in the medieval world, as she goes on crusade to the holy land. With 300 handmaidens in tow, she leads her own army. Everyone goes gaga for Eleanor and trace the voyage of the first Vikings as they arrive on Iceland's lonely shores. For the best historical stories to get lost in, check out Dan's note history.

[Maddy]

So this is their opportunity. They are like, we are going to make our name. And don't forget, everyone's fascinated by empire at this moment. Everyone's obsessed with this idea of the exotic, especially the East. But nevertheless, they do have some sense. They're like, we need to make this official. We need to study her. This is the. You know, we're coming slightly out of the era of enlightenment now, but these legacies of everything has to be categorized, everything has to be ordered. Everything has to be a scientific experiment in order to be legitimate. So they have to prove her story. They have to gather some evidence before they present it to the world and announce that they found this lost princess. So they call in the help of a doctor from Bath. Now enter our real life Dr. Frankenstein. This. This guy, this guy, this guy needs to be put in the bin. So this guy is called Dr. Charles Hunnings Wilkinson. Now he resides in Bath. He's a galvanist, I. E. He's doing experiments with electricity.

[Anthony]

The galvanism thing always annoys me.

[Maddy]

Yeah.

[Anthony]

I don't know why.

[Maddy]

And it's such a fascinating thing that is, you know, really at the heart of this book where it's this combination of science and spectacle.

[Anthony]

It annoys me in Frankenstein too. I'm like, can we just skip this bit? I was so boring. The whole thing hinges on it. And I'm like, kind of vital.

[Maddy]

Yeah, sure. So he. Interestingly. So he does these kind of daily performances in Bath at the Kingston Rooms, which are right next to the Abbey, if anyone's been to Bath, interestingly, who is there at the time he's doing these experiments? Mary Shelley, who has just come back from the previous summer, being at Byron's. She's writing or finishing the manuscript for Frankenstein. There's no evidence that she went to see his galvanistic experiments. And we know that she'd seen them previously done by other people. But I can't imagine where she's staying and where his rooms are like meters apart. There's no way she didn't pop in one afternoon. So he is potentially partly the real life inspiration. I always like to think that if Mary Shelley had seen him perform, she would have seen through him just like she sees through Dr. Frankenstein. This is a guy who not only is doing so, he does things like he experiments on frogs and sort of seemingly brings them back to life and they kind of jump on the plate or whatever, but he is also medically treating people. Obviously. Bath is a spa town. People are coming there to take the waters. He almost exclusively treats female patients and he electrifies them, electrocutes them, claiming that he can treat anything from infertility to hysteria. He sends electric currents through their head, but also through their pelvis, like, no, thanks, pal. And he does this to, like, pregnant women, women who are like postpartum women who are menopaus. I just think he's a creep, because he is. Yeah. I don't think that's a way in which he.

[Anthony]

Oh, well, you're just electrophobing a few frogs and then putting the same electrodes on women. Yeah, Grant, there's nothing weird about that. Not even in the context of the early 19th century.

[Maddy]

Exactly. That's the thing. Even for his own time, he's weird. And he is delighted to be called to Noel and, you know, to be able to take up the study of this beautiful young woman. And so he arrives and over the course of the summer of 1817, he sets to work sort of. He doesn't electrocute caribou, but he experiments on her in different ways in terms of how he manipulates her behavior. He asks her to write out her language, he asks her to draw a map and we'll talk about. So we have some of these images which are incredible, but at the same time, people are flocking already to see her. So she's becoming a celebrity. So while this experiment is going on and the official study of her is happening, Samuel and Elizabeth Worrell are milking it for all it's worth. So the great and good of Bath and Bristol, you know, were some of the richest, are coming to Nol and they'll see her do things like she strips half naked and swims in the lake and, you know, all her clothes are see through and everyone's kind of watching. It's really voyeuristic and weird. She hunts in the grounds with a bow and arrow. She takes people onto the roof of this ancient house and, like, prays and people watch her pray and she does this kind of strange ritual which they don't understand. She even sword fights, but only with gentlemen. So there's a kind of, you know, another kind of Crackling electrical kind of sexual current going on there that she's being exploited in all these ways, but she's also performing it.

[Anthony]

And I want to talk about this more towards the end, actually, once we have the full story, because it's hard

[Maddy]

to access her in this moment. And we will access her.

[Anthony]

Yeah, yeah. Yes.

[Maddy]

But for now, she is this exotic stranger and that's all we can kind of get to. But I have two pictures here of one is. So these are from the archive in Bristol. And to tell you that my heart quickened when I found these in the archive. My God. So. So these are supposedly drawn by Caribou herself. And I instantly have doubts about that because the ink used is basically the ink in all of Wilkinson's letters. So immediately it's like, did the good doctor do this? So on the one hand we have her language, her writing, her Alphabet, and on the other we have a map.

[Anthony]

Okay, so let's have a look at the writing. So it's essentially a series of squiggles. There are elements of what looks like musical notes. I can see a rest there, for instance. I can see different types of rests. Actually. I'm seeing two side by side musical rests.

[Maddy]

Yeah, there are. There are.

[Anthony]

I can see what looked like versions of numbers in there. There are lots of swoops and I mean, some Greek looking figures in there. It's a melee of nothingness, if you know what I mean. There's actually sometimes. I mean, that looks like the word Jarvis. G, E, R, V I S there. I mean, it's not.

[Maddy]

But you know, there are like hints of recognizability.

[Anthony]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You can see things. But. But it also bizarrely looks upside down. And I don't know what I'm basing that on. Cause it's not even a language. But anyway, so there's that. And then. What's this one, Maddie? This is the.

[Maddy]

So this is supposedly the map that she draws and that Wilkinson very helpfully labels for her.

[Anthony]

Right, okay.

[Maddy]

Of the journey that she's been taken on by the pirates from now the island, the name that she gives. Think back to the Sir Stamford Raffles book, the island of Java. Oh, yeah, it's already a bestseller in this moment. The island name she gives is Javasu, which nobody knows exists at all at this point. It could exist and it has not been colonized yet. It could be a small little island. So they're not ruling it out, but it's new information to the people of Britain.

[Anthony]

Now I'm looking at the Map. Right. And there's a little doodle of a bodiless head, which probably Caribou, which is up there. And that's maybe supposed to be her. Exactly. And then I have. Okay, I have what looks like circles or balloons that are tied together by what looks like string, as this kind of goes around. Now, am I to believe that she has written in. In her language or her supposed language, those things? And then he has translated England beside one of them. So she's obviously said, look, I know we're here. And then Bombay is essentially where France is.

[Maddy]

Yeah, yep.

[Anthony]

And then the Cape of Good Hope just happens to be near Italy, apparently. And, you know, there is Java Su marked on. Where is Javasu on it? Oh, yes, I see it.

[Maddy]

But then there's places called, like, Boogoos and Malaise, which is pretty generic. Do you know what it makes me think of in Tristram Shandy, the great novel, the 18th century novel by Lawrence Stern, there's a famous page in there where, you know, it's a kind of completely batshit novel that goes off in all these times.

[Anthony]

I hate it.

[Maddy]

Oh, I absolutely love it.

[Anthony]

Oh, do you?

[Maddy]

Actually, I love it so much, I wouldn't sit and read it for pleasure. Like, it's not. It's not a page turner, but I love it as a concept. There's a very famous page in that where he literally doodles on the page, the shape of the narrative, and it's like a crazy squiggle. And so many 18th century historians have it as tattoos. Like, it's like the cliche thing to have. And this reminds me of this. This kind of, like, wandering, meandering fiction that is being presented here. It just reminds me of that. But this is taken seriously. Wilkinson presents this to the Worrells and says, here's your map. We're gonna publish this. Here's the language. He goes to the local papers in Bath and Bristol and he publishes a sample of the writing, the handwriting, and announces to the world that he, Dr. Wilkinson, along with Magistrate Worrell, has found a Indonesian princess from, you know, an East Indian princess who is an exotic beauty. She's washed up on the shores of Britain and now she is theirs to claim as a prize and to experiment onlearn from.

[Anthony]

Supposedly we have a saying, and I'm Irish people if I'm exposing us here slightly, but we have a saying in Ireland sometimes when, you know, if it's like, five best places in Britain to visit. And the first one is County Clenny in Ireland. And so what we say when that happens, kind of tongue in cheek is the Brits are at it again. This is a very the Brits are at it again situation.

[Maddy]

I'm like, this is like, you brought this on yourself, lads. This is embarrassing. Yeah. And you know, this story will eventually, no spoilers, travel to America and the Americans. Oh, my God, the Brits are at it again. Like 100%.

[Anthony]

Oh, even the. Even contemporary American.

[Maddy]

Yeah. They're like scarlet for your master, for you all. Who do you think is telling lies in this? And do you think, first of all, do you think she's a real princess who's been kidnapped by pirates? But do you think that she is collaborating with Wilkinson or do you think she had been dragged into this and this narrative has been pushed on her and he is the one creating the lies. Is there such hysteria within the household at Knowl? Everyone's so excited that they're all feeding each other. They've got all these, you know, the library is full of books about Empire. They've got all these references, they've got all these references to language, different languages, you know, and like you said in this, in the handwriting sample, there are kind of Greek symbols, you know, there's kind of Middle Eastern languages in there. There are legitimate letterings from different places. There's, you know, ancient languages, there's Egyptian in there. But it's not a coherent whole that anyone recogn who is telling the truth and who's lying.

[Anthony]

Well, everyone is lying to a certain extent and everyone is willing to be lied to. I mean, obviously I've read the book and I've read the chapter, so I know what's happening, where we're going in terms of the supposed princess. But I mean, even beyond that, in terms of how complicit she is, let's say in this, at this point, it's hard to tell. The Portuguese guy at the docks did

[Maddy]

her a big favor or the worst crime in the world against us.

[Anthony]

Yeah, he's my key to this and yours.

[Maddy]

Actually, he never features again.

[Anthony]

Yeah.

[Maddy]

And he's just a walk on character,

[Anthony]

but he changes everything about this.

[Maddy]

He just lights the fuse and walks

[Anthony]

off again because otherwise she's being put somewhere quite quickly. If he says she's just got rid of, you know, so. Yeah, it's just sometimes it's the same thing again, isn't it? It feeds back into what we talked about at Cock Lane. Like sometimes people are just desperate to watch the latest Netflix series that's a hit.

[Maddy]

And the fact that people floppy from Bath and Bristol. And, you know, Bath is still very much in this moment. I mean, look at any Jane Austen novel that's set there, that it's still the most fashionable place to go. The most. The wealthiest, most fashionable, most ambitious people are going there. It's got a booming marriage market. You go there for your health, you go there to be seen. And this story and Noel becomes an extension of that world. This isn't just some weird little side story that's happening. This becomes central to the Regency period in this area.

[Anthony]

It's remarkable and it does say so much about colonial attitudes. I know we often say that in different aspects, but, like, it really does.

[Maddy]

This story, it really exposes a lot here, doesn't it?

[Anthony]

Yeah, and it's, it's, it's, it's a bit icky, it's a bit reformy, it's a bit like, you know, I know all kinds of linear time thingies there, but it's just. Yeah, I don't know, there's seeds of shit that we're dealing with today here. That is icky.

[Maddy]

Yeah, absolutely. And this idea of sort of imperial fantasy, you know, one of the things that Dr. Wilkinson is aware of is that there have been hoaxes and sort of dupes before leading up to this period, leading up to this moment, and he is sort of determined to prove that he's got it right. So some of these, you know, include in 1729, for example, there was a text that was published called Madagascar or Robert Drury's journal, during 15 years of captivity on the island. And, yeah, and I mean, it's a great read. It's, you know, it navigates shipwrecks, there are hostile islanders, there's the enslavement of. Of its sort of protagonist, Robert Drury, and he eventually escapes to England. And people read this as though it was a real text. They were like, who is this guy? This is incredible. He had such an adventure. Turns out it was a work of fiction written by the novelist and sometimes by Daniel Defoe. So, you know, why is everybody a

[Anthony]

pain in the arse that's writing in the 18th century?

[Maddy]

I know all the men.

[Anthony]

Yeah.

[Maddy]

In 1766. I just love this story. There was a ship called the Dolphin that docked in the Thames and its commander, Commodore John Byron, jumps off and he's like, super excited to tell his story. And he's like, we've just been to South America and guys, there are nine foot giants there. And everyone's like, amazing, let me buy your pint in the pub. That's Incredible. Tell me more. And for like, you know, a little while, that news gets in the London newspapers and everyone's like, holy shit, we should all go to South America. This is amazing. So, you know, there's so many things like that. There's so many kind of fictional fantasy things that are hoaxes that people take up and then realize aren't really true. And it speaks so much as does this story to just people's ignorance. You know, this is a vast empire. And yes, a lot of Brits are traveling around the empire and colonizing it and trading in it and all the rest and exploring quote, unquote. But the majority of people are at home in Britain and have never set foot outside of Britain and have never seen anyone from this wider empire. And so they don't know any better. And they're like, she's beautiful. She's got dark hair. Yeah, she could be from the East Indies.

[Anthony]

She's definitely from all the places she said. Well, the place she's saying she's from, she definitely speaks this language. Why not? The world is bigger than we ever thought it could possibly be. So here is one of them.

[Maddy]

Yeah, yeah. And you know, talking of texts as well, so we've got the History of Java written by Stanford Raffles, and as I say, it's bestseller in the months before Caribou comes on the scene. And it's impossible to prove that that book was in the library at knowl. We know that several others were that were specifically about empire and specifically about different languages. So we know that she definitely saw them. They're referenced by multiple people in letters and printed texts. But there is a painting that's done of Caribou by Edward Byrd in this moment, who's a sort of society portraitist around Bath and Bristol. You know, nice tidy gig if you can get it. And he paints her. And if you look at the illustrations in Raffles, History of Java, of royal women, and then you look at Edward Byrd's painting, the clothes she's wearing, the way that she's holding herself, the background of the scene, there is no way that Edward Byrd hadn't seen that book. So there are people around Cariboo who are taking that bestseller about this far off island that not many people have been to that has this extraordinary history. And, you know, Raffles is really proud of his time there. And as he sees it, he's really showing love to the island. He talks about all their traditions, their rituals, their beliefs, the landscape, the natural history, all of that. And people are taking that and going, Java. Javasu. She said she was from. It's quite similar. We'll just overlap them a little bit.

[Anthony]

It's interesting because there is a real idea here that she becomes totemic and it's almost. And she's not. And you do a really amazing example of showing how she's not. But for this moment in time, there is this idea that she represents, presents something that suddenly everybody has claim to.

[Maddy]

And.

[Anthony]

And it's. It's. I. I would go as far as to say that this is almost exclusively applied on women, and we still see it today in different aspects. So think about, like, you know, somebody who is famous, like, or maybe tragically famous or was at some point to someone like Kerry Katona or something, who I've, you know, an awful lot of respect for in terms of what you're talking about.

[Maddy]

No, but.

[Anthony]

But think about the layers of story that have been placed on top of that woman's actual lived experience, which is really quite remarkable. And her story is a story of survival, but actually, for so long in the media, what her story is a story of is exploitation and scandal and intrigue. So in the same way that they are trying to sell, or were trying to sell back in the day, Heat magazine, that's what these people are trying to do with who they understand to be. Well, I have a feeling. My instinct on it is they never understood her to be Caribou, as in, like, the journalist, the print thing around her. I have a feeling the. Is it Worrells?

[Maddy]

Yeah, the Worrells.

[Anthony]

I have a feeling the Worrells probably thought they wanted to believe.

[Maddy]

Yeah, I think they wanted to believe. So they all have their own motives. And Wilkinson, the doctor, decides his time really has come. He's published in the local paper to be like, I've discovered her. Here's a sample of writing. This is incredible. I'm doing more studies. He's bagsied her, basically. He's like, nobody else dibbed this woman. He then. So he heads off to London. He's like, I'm gonna go to the East India Company headquarters in Leadnor street and I'm gonna propose an expedition to find Java Su. Which, I mean, I don't think he believes it exists.

[Anthony]

Stay at home, for God's sake.

[Maddy]

I think he doesn't believe it exists. I think he just wants to make his name. He wants to be famous, like Raffles is famous. However, while he's gone, it all goes to.

[Anthony]

I love that he actually goes too, by the way. Just like. Well, yeah, goes. Yes.

[Maddy]

Yeah, yeah. He's like, I'm off to London and there are several things that happen. You know, I go into a lot of detail in the book in terms of like. Like what this collapse is. And it comes from different sort of moments and different people. But the bare bones of it are this. That descriptions of Caribbean have been put about in the papers in terms of what she's wearing, when she was found, et cetera, et cetera, what she looks like.

[Anthony]

I think this is remarkable.

[Maddy]

Yeah. Now two people come forward to go, oh, I know who she is. I've seen her before.

[Anthony]

I would never recognize that person.

[Maddy]

No, no, no.

[Anthony]

If they put a sketch of you in a paper, I'd be like, I don't know.

[Maddy]

So one guy is a wheelwright son who remembers. He remembers the following summer on the road, he met a woman who was speaking a bit of an odd language. She seemed a little bit. Not quite with it, not very well. And he offered her a drink of gin and she took it. Which is interesting because Caribou refuses all alcohol. Right. As part of her performance. But he's like, I remember her. And he sort of blushes. He goes to Noel to say this to the Warrells and he's like, I remember her cause she was really beautiful and I really liked her. And he made me blush at the time and it's making me blush now. And they're like, okay. So he doesn't get to see her. They don't show Caribou. Ooh, alarm bells are ringing. Then a landlady from Bristol gets in touch and she says, this woman has stayed in my house in Bristol in the months preceding this. She's English, she's not from wherever she says she's from. And you need to bring her to my house now.

[Anthony]

So she says, right, I know who this is. You're gonna wanna bring her back to me.

[Maddy]

So they do like a dramatic reveal. So Elizabeth Worrell gets Caribou in the carriage under the guise that they're going to Edward Byrd the art to finish the portrait of in Bristol. But they don't go to the studio. Instead they go to this lodging house in like a crap part of Bristol. It's really poor and obviously Caribou at this point, her heart's probably racing, she's thinking, what's happening?

[Anthony]

This isn't the way to the studio. Yeah.

[Maddy]

And I recognise the street protection.

[Anthony]

Yes, of course, yeah, yeah.

[Maddy]

So they pull up to the house, they go inside and she's made to wait in the hallway while Elizabeth goes in to talk to this woman, and then all the other people come out, and Caribou and Elizabeth have this standoff moment in the parlor together. And they, over the course of the summer, have become really close. Like, Elizabeth kind of thinks of her as her companion she's really trusted. She brought this woman into a home, and she's like, it's all over. I know that you're English. Tell me your name. And Caribou's like, no, Caribou me caribou kind of thing. And she really, you know, she really does do that. She calls Elizabeth Maudie, which is supposedly. It's hard to get to the origin of it. It's called a gypsy word. Gypsy having its whole definition in the 18th century that, you know, is of its time, but it's a gypsy word for mother. And that's what she calls Elizabeth. And she's like, you moddy, Caribou. And Elizabeth's like, cut the bullshit.

[Anthony]

Not anymore, babe.

[Maddy]

And so this woman eventually goes, my name.

[Anthony]

So. So, yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Maddy]

My name is Mary Wilcox. There's just silence in the room, and they sort of stare at each other, and they're like, who have I allowed in my house? Who the is Mary Wilcox? And why can you suddenly speak English?

[Anthony]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Maddy]

And she has an insane backstory.

[Anthony]

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[Maddy]

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[Anthony]

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[Anthony]

We need to know what this backstory is.

[Maddy]

Okay, so I have a whole chapter on her backstory in the book. I'm just going to give the bare bones here because we don't have time to go into it all, but her story is so tragic and it's basically a tour de force of like the grimmest institutions and the most dangerous areas, the most dangerous levels of poverty that Regency Britain had to offer. Right? It's like, it's literally a who's who of like, how to have a shit life in the early 19th century. So she's born in Devon, not on the island of Javasu at all, to a conquest. So she's born to, you know, respectable but very low class parents. She eventually, as a teenager, gets a job as a maid. But she has this sort of character flaw where she always wants more. She thinks quite highly of herself and she. Whether it's mental illness at this point, certainly there's going to be poor mental health later on, we don't know. But she is always walking out of jobs essentially and she works around the west country for a little bit, she works in Exeter for a little while, blah, blah, and eventually she becomes ill with what she describes as a burning fever in her head to the point where she can't see, she can't think, she loses all of her jobs, her family kick her out because of her erratic, strange behaviour, and she finds herself walking on the road to London and becoming a vagrant, as many people were in this period. You know, she's got nowhere to go, she collapses on the road and she's picked up by some really kind people who hoik her onto their cart a few miles outside of London and they drop her at the door of St. Giles Workhouse, which is the workhouse for the poorest slum in the city at this moment. And at this point she's anonymized. She doesn't know anyone in London, nobody knows her. She's taken into the medical wing workhouses, you know, you would have to be subjected to all kinds of checks for venereal disease, for lice. Your clothes would be taken off you. So she's stripped bare, her head is shaved and the treatment they give her is this cupping where, you know, hot cups are applied and she's left with these scars forever, which is one of the sort of things about her that is seen as mysterious. Mysterious that she has these, like circular

[Anthony]

scars when they examine her. I remember that now.

[Maddy]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So she eventually she asks if she can leave. She's feeling a little bit better. And this gives you the insight into the level of medical care in these places. The doctor's like, you see the big fire over there in this ward with the big vast pot of boiling water on it. If you can Lift that and you're strong enough, you can go. So she's like, okay. So she tries to lift it and she pulls it all over herself and burns herself. And he's like, told you you weren't well enough to go, babe. Get back in to bed. So she's there for several months. Eventually, one of the vicars who's associated with the workhouse gets her a job as a maid in house in Clapham. Interestingly, the head of that household is probably. I think he's called Mr. Matthews. And there was a famous comedian who lived in Clapham at the time called Mr. Matthews. And if that was him, I love the idea of these two performers living under the same roof. I think that's fascinating. But she. This family treats her quite well. They teach her how to read and write, which is extraordinary for a certain servant. But through various misadventures and bad behaviors and defiances, she finds herself out on the street in no time. She can't keep this job down. And this is where she sort of starts to invent characters in order to survive. And I think this is so interesting. And this is what the question is, whether she does this deliberately, whether this is some kind of mental health issue, whether it's, you know, a safety mechanism for her, I don't know. But she gives herself different names. A.m. burgess is the name she uses a lot. There's several. Several others. But she does things like she kind of calculates what institutions will look after her because she has nowhere to go. She's living on the street and she goes to the Magdalene House for penitent prostitutes, which I know it well. Yeah. It tells you everything you need to know about the tone of that place, you know, and this is meant to be a place for women who have worked in the sex industry who no longer wish to or are trying to escape from abusive relationships or whatever it is. She, as far as we can tell, never works selling sex, ever. But she's like, yes, yes, I did. Poor me. It's terrible taking the place of women who actually really need this. And she's there for a while and, you know, it's a really interesting 18th century institution. There's sort of a lot of scandal associated with it, a lot of hypocrisy. And eventually one day someone says to her, you know, what did you do then as part of the trade? What were your tricks? And she's like, how dare you? I would never. And they're like, wait, what?

[Anthony]

What?

[Maddy]

So they're like, off you go. We're not helping you anymore. And she sort of crops up in different archives of different institutions from here on in. We find her in 1815, entering another workhouse. Not St. Giles this time, but this time she has a baby with her, a baby that she calls John. And this really freaked me out, right, So I won't tell you the dates now, but her baby is born on the due date that my baby is due. Oh. And she enters the workhouse on my birthday and very, very, very sadly, something not very nice is going to happen on the birthday of my sister. Really strange. There's like a weird date thing going on there. Just coincidence, but very odd. So she has the. She's in the workhouse, she can't look after the baby. Where do you go in London if you can't look after your baby but you want someone else to take care of it?

[Anthony]

Ah, Foundling Museum.

[Maddy]

She goes to the. Not the museum, the hospital, as it was then she pops him in a gas station.

[Anthony]

Museum now.

[Maddy]

Oh, my God. So she goes, go to the museum, go to the museum. It's always a good, safe space. So she goes to the foundling hospital and, you know, call back to our. We did two previous episodes on this and they're very, very moving. It's an incredible place. So do go back and listen to those. But she drops him off there. She's so lucky that she gets him. So I went to the archive and I read the petitions for that summer for the women who are trying to get their baby in. She manages to get John the baby in. There are women who have the same circumstances as her who just disappear from the record. They're rejected.

[Anthony]

So this is her record at the Foundling?

[Maddy]

It is. So, yeah, it still exists. We don't know. For anyone who listened to the Foundling episodes, you'll know that the mothers would leave behind half of a token and take the other half in order to collect their babies if and when they could. We don't know what she leaves. Sadly, that doesn't survive. But we do know that she's never gonna go back to collect him because he dies just a few weeks later.

[Anthony]

Right. Quite common, really, really, really common.

[Maddy]

But when she finds out this news, this sends her into a complete spiral. She loses the plot completely, she's not well, and she sets out away from London, trying to get back to the West Country. She has no plan, she has no friends, she has no safety. And in different versions that are told, when she's exposed as being this Merryworld Wilcox, there's kind of fantasy elements that are put on her. So there's a story that she joins a gang of highwaymen and she's dressed as a man and she robs with them for a while and things like that. And, you know, this is all nonsense, but she does make her way back to Bristol. And when she's there, she observes at the docks that there are French and Spanish women who wear their hair with the shawls wrapped around their heads like a turban. And that they have, you know, kind of quite interesting clothes on, a little bit outlandish for Bristol, and that they do really well, better begging because they're kind of beautified and exotic looking. And people feel sorry for them and are attracted to them. And so she's like, okay, I'm gonna take on this role now. This is my new character. And I'm gonna save up enough coins to pay for passage to America. I'm just gonna start again. I'll be fine. Like, I'll become. Well, it's not an issue. So that's the time when she starts to live at the landlady's house briefly, who recognizes her. Things go wrong for her again. Again, the mental health's not very good. And that's essentially how she finds herself one morning, delirious, stumbling into Armonsbury. And the rest we know.

[Anthony]

It's literally history.

[Maddy]

I mean, it's just. It's so tragic and it's so typical of the period. It's so mundane, and yet something so extraordinary happens from it. And she is cast from being, you know, the lowest of the low. A vagrant who is mentally unwell, whose son has died. She's tossed from institution to institution in London. She's lost, living below the poverty line and then some. And then she's suddenly a princess.

[Anthony]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Can I ask, in terms of the origin of her origin story, where's that coming from? Is she telling that to somebody? Because the only reason I'm asking is because it's also really fascinating as to. We know some of it's definitely true because you found her in foundling archives.

[Maddy]

It's really hard to get to the baseline information. So, as you say, she exists in these archives. So we know, for example, that she was in the workhous. We have her entry in the workhouse in London, in St Giles. We have her information for the Magdalene. We have her information for the foundling God.

[Anthony]

She's leaving a big old paper.

[Maddy]

She really does. So you can pinpoint her. But the main version that we have is published in the press. As part of the scandal, when the fallout of this happens, and they're like, oh, my God, can you believe these people got duped? And look what a crazy imposter she was. And, wow, here's her salacious story of scandal and intrigue and poverty, all of that. And it becomes really voyeuristic for the same aristocrats who saw her swim half naked in the lake and are like, it's kind of poverty porn. They're like, wow, that was her story. Ew.

[Anthony]

Ew.

[Maddy]

You know, so it is hard to get to. And there are so many different layers, but she is. She's findable within that. And I think this is the story out of all of them in the book. And there's a third story, which I'm gonna probably do as the bonus chapter that listeners will get to listen to outside of these episodes as well. But of all the three women in the book, I think Caribou's story, Mary Wilcox's story, is the one that affected me the most. I felt like I've been to so many places in London that she ended up in. I've kind of traced her footsteps in the archive. I've spent so much time trying to find who she is. I've been to Almondsbury. I've been to Knowl. I've been to Bath and Bristol, to the places where she was. I really have been everywhere that I know she was.

[Anthony]

Yeah.

[Maddy]

And I feel closer to her than the others. And I feel like hers is the most fascinating story because the extent to which she was a liar is really hard to identify. And I think maybe she wasn't at all.

[Anthony]

Yeah.

[Maddy]

I mean, she created characters and aliases for herself to survive.

[Anthony]

Yeah.

[Maddy]

But does she at any point ever say that her name is Caribou before someone else?

[Anthony]

No.

[Maddy]

No. Does she ever claim that she's a princess? No.

[Anthony]

I think she's unwell.

[Maddy]

She's really unwell.

[Anthony]

But that's not to say she has no agency. She. She has some agency, and she's using what she has at her disposal. But.

[Maddy]

Well, she's spent the last years in terrible conditions, and now she's in the house of a wealthy patron who's willing to dress her in fine silks, have her painted by portraitists, etc. Etc. It's not a bad position to be in. You just have to keep the actor.

[Anthony]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Maddie, if you want to know a lot more detail about.

[Maddy]

There's so much more about this. There's a whole chapter. She gets sent off to America she takes the stage in America. She interrupts a presidential election like it is. Her story is not done. It's crazy.

[Anthony]

Where can they get this book and when is it available and what is it called?

[Maddy]

It is called Truth and Lies in the Age of Enlightenment. It is out on the 7th of May, but if you're listening to this before that, please pre order. It's available online and in store. I'm going to be doing a whole host of events. You can come and me. We have some lined up already. And surely by the time this episode

[Anthony]

goes out, they'll be on your website as well, right?

[Maddy]

That will all be on my website, yeah. Which is just madelinepelling.com, i think.

[Anthony]

I don't know.

[Maddy]

I don't know.

[Anthony]

I don't know if I've ever been on my website.

[Maddy]

Go on my website.

[Anthony]

But yeah, it's there somewhere.

[Maddy]

It's there. It'll be all over my socials. You'll be bloody sick of it. But please do buy it. I've had so much fun writing this book. I love it so much. I love the characters in it. And it's a history that is important to understanding Britain in this moment. Understanding, understanding huge cultural shifts and arguments. Also the idea of misinformation and fake news in our own time. You know, I close this book talking about Trump's America and the responsibility we have to not blindly agree to believe things. But also it's an intimate history of these lives that have been lost from the record or, you know, are rolled out as like bizarre, fun anecdotes that really have so much more complexity and depth to them. These are stories of women who deserve to be heard.

[Anthony]

So buy the book, take it to the beach. Like, enjoy it, savor it, and you'll get to time Travel through the 18th and early 19th century. It is called hoax. It's out on the 7th of May, pre order, if it's not already out, and run out and buy it now if it is. Maddie, thank you for dropping back in from the past.

[Maddy]

Yeah, sure. I don't know what I'm currently doing in the present.

[Anthony]

This is freaking me out a little bit. But we will see you again shortly. Back in full capacity on After Dark.

[Maddy]

I'm sure I'm coming back very, very, very soon indeed.

[Anthony]

And until next time, I don't know what I'm going to be talking to you about soon because I have no idea what those episodes are yet.

[Maddy]

This is so far in the past, you don't know.

[Anthony]

But we will see you again next time. Liberty Mutual customizes your car and home insurance. And now we're customizing this rush hour ad to keep you calm, which could help you your driving. And science says therapy is great for a healthy mindset. So enjoy this 14 second session on us. I think you've done everything right and absolutely nothing wrong. In fact, anything that hasn't gone your way could probably be blamed on your father not being emotionally available because his father wasn't emotionally available, and so on. And now that you're calm and healing,

[Maddy]

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[Anthony]

Classic group chat move.

[Maddy]

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