Vulgar History - Regency Era Grifter ＂Princess Caraboo＂

00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome to Vulgar History, a feminist women's history comedy podcast. My name is 0.73

00:00:14.140 Anne Foster and we are in our Regency era. This is a season of the podcast where we're

00:00:19.140 talking about people who lived mostly in England in the early 1800s, a time period that is known

00:00:24.960 for Jane Austen, for Mary Shelley was alive then. Bridgerton is kind of set in that time period.

00:00:32.840 That's what we're talking about. And what I'm hoping to do in this season is to flesh out

00:00:38.320 our understanding of that time period. Today, we're talking about a woman who went by the name

00:00:42.460 of Princess Caribou. And this is sort of a complimentary episode to the one from a few

00:00:46.580 weeks ago where we talked about Mary Bateman, the Yorkshire witch. When I say we're fleshing

00:00:51.480 out our understanding of the Regency era. We're looking at not just the people on the marriage

00:00:56.160 march, not just the tawn like they have in Bridgerton, not just the royals, not just the 0.52

00:01:00.900 wealthy people, but looking at kind of the people who are just boots on the ground trying to get

00:01:05.400 through every day in an era where the weather has been bizarre. So the crops are bad. Lots of people

00:01:11.480 are poor. And some women turned to a life of light crime, which is a bit of what comes up in this 0.82

00:01:20.180 episode of Princess Caribou. I don't want to spoil the twist in this episode, but I will say

00:01:26.120 that just for context and like skip ahead, you know, 30 seconds or whatever, if you want to just

00:01:30.600 get into the story. But technically what I'm going to be playing for you is an episode that I first

00:01:34.720 recorded in 2024 for my friend, your friend, Oliver Friend of the podcast, Gavin Whitehead's

00:01:41.360 podcast, The Art of Crime. So Gavin's podcast talks about the intersection between true crime

00:01:46.340 and artwork. And he invited me on in 2024. And the topic I chose was princess caribou. And it

00:01:51.560 was such a fun time. Gavin and I have become really good friends since then. We've collaborated

00:01:55.100 on other episodes, like earlier in this Regency series, the Grey-Style-Rumple Elliot. He was

00:02:00.560 telling an amazing story about her hiding a man in her mattress. Anyway, so what you're going to

00:02:04.780 hear in this episode is Gavin and I realizing that we are soulmates and we've become friends

00:02:09.880 in the course of this episode. But also, so technically it's Gavin's episode of Art of Crime

00:02:14.580 featuring me as a guest but it feels I think a lot like a vulgar history episode with him and I

00:02:20.280 talking about and sharing the story about Princess Caribou and stay tuned after because after we

00:02:25.180 listened to the original 2024 episode Gavin joined me for we recorded another honestly 45 minutes of

00:02:30.700 just like chatting about it all some follow-ups some corrections to some things that we said

00:02:35.840 in the episode and ultimately why I invited Gavin back on to talk about this again is because

00:02:44.380 we need to give princess caribou a score on our the vulgar history fredigan memorial

00:02:49.300 scandaliciousness scale which is where we score all the people who we talk about on this podcast

00:02:54.360 in four different categories and what we're doing with the regency series and we're getting close to

00:02:58.960 the to the end of this series is we're going to do a playoff based on these scores i'm going to

00:03:03.640 create brackets and then you the listeners will get to vote on choosing the diamond of the season

00:03:08.940 like they do in bridgerton so princess caribou had to have a score so she could be a part of

00:03:13.660 that competition. And now with Kevin's help, she is. So enjoy this new, newly re-edited version of

00:03:21.900 the Princess Caribou episode featuring bonus content at the end, culminating in Princess

00:03:27.100 Caribou's score in the scandalous scale. This is, I'm very fond of this story and I hope you really

00:03:32.640 enjoy it. All right. Welcome once again to a special episode of The Art of Crime. Today,

00:03:40.560 we are joined by the lovely Anne Foster, host and creator of the Vulgar History Podcast.

00:03:46.820 Anne, thanks so much for coming on the show. I am delighted to be here, and I'm really excited

00:03:51.280 to have a chance to talk about this person who I've been dying to talk about for ages.

00:03:56.020 Well, I am delighted to have you here. And who is this person we're going to talk about today?

00:04:00.820 Well, she was known as, and she is still best known as Princess Caribou. We're going to talk

00:04:06.700 about the details, but she was seemingly a mysterious shipwrecked princess from a mysterious

00:04:11.820 far off land who just appeared one day on the coast of England in 1817.

00:04:17.180 Right. And she went on to generate an international sensation in the press. So it's a wonderful

00:04:21.600 story. So let's dive right into it. I want to start with a portrait by a Bristol based

00:04:27.680 painter named Edward Bird. This picture was painted in 1817 and it depicts Princess Caribou,

00:04:34.820 this woman we're going to be talking about. So Anne, could you describe this picture for us?

00:04:39.220 What does Princess Caribou look like? And what impression is Bird trying to give of her,

00:04:45.340 would you say? I think he's trying to give an impression of just like an exotic and interesting

00:04:51.180 and unusual traveler. So we're looking at a young woman. So maybe around 25 years old,

00:04:58.080 She's pale skinned, a white person with dark hair, dark eyes, pink cheeks, and she's wearing

00:05:04.480 a white sort of turban headdress that looks maybe silk. It looks a little shiny with three peacock 0.82

00:05:10.020 feathers in it. Her dress looks sort of like what someone might wear in India. It's a yellow dress

00:05:19.220 with flowing very long sleeves, embroidery embellishment around the neckline, embellishment

00:05:24.560 around the waist, embellishment around the bottom. And for this time period, for 1817,

00:05:28.680 it's short. It ends sort of mid-calf height. So then you see she's wearing on her feet

00:05:33.980 sort of strappy sandals, almost like a Roman gladiator, like wraparound sandal. And then

00:05:40.100 the background of where she's standing, and she's standing very posed. She's holding a flower to her

00:05:44.660 chest. And as though she's sort of walking on what looks like maybe a coastline behind her,

00:05:49.340 you can see what I'm going to call tropical backdrop. In the background, you see there are

00:05:54.940 some palm trees. It looks like maybe sort of a ship on the ocean or not a ship, but like a small,

00:06:00.400 maybe like a junk, like a Chinese type boat, and then sort of a hut in the background as well. So

00:06:05.240 you get the sense that this is somewhere Asian adjacent, perhaps behind her and her dress is

00:06:11.580 certainly striking and unusual. Rare it is. It certainly isn't England, right? Because England

00:06:16.880 isn't exactly known for its tropical climbs and palm trees. No, no, exactly. And I think also just

00:06:22.520 the fact that she has these bare, you know, feet, that her dress is quite low cut, like it's she's

00:06:27.380 clearly this is meant to be somewhere warm. Like this is not Bristol. Absolutely. The question of

00:06:32.260 where Princess Caribou comes from is one that will captivate many, many people in 1817. So let's get

00:06:38.700 right to the story, shall we? Our story begins like many great stories have over the ages,

00:06:43.320 a mysterious outsider arrives in town. So obviously, our mysterious outsider is Princess

00:06:49.500 Caribou. And in this case, the town is Allmansbury, England, which is on the outskirts of Bristol.

00:06:56.220 So Anne, what are Princess Caribou's earliest interactions with townsfolk like?

00:07:01.760 Well, I mean, it's quite stunning for these people in a small town. So it's, you know,

00:07:07.020 1817, small town. She arrives in the evening, dressed not exactly like she is in this portrait,

00:07:12.260 but similar, like with a headdress, looking unusual. And she's speaking a language that

00:07:17.500 the people there don't know, which is not unusual. It's a small town in Bristol. The people in

00:07:22.700 Bristol who she encounters haven't traveled very widely. So she was disoriented, clothed unusually

00:07:28.620 to them. And she went to the home of a cobbler and his wife. Neither of them understood the

00:07:32.740 language she was speaking. As far as they knew, it could have been French or Spanish, like they

00:07:35.900 didn't know other languages. And she just kind of used a lot of hand gestures. So they got the 0.63

00:07:40.760 impression that she needed a bed for the night. They just are like, this is a poor woman. Like, 0.77

00:07:45.000 she clearly is from somewhere far away. And so there's a position called the overseer of the

00:07:50.140 poor. So immediately their first thoughts were, let's help this person. This person is in need

00:07:54.080 of help. So they were very sympathetic to her. They weren't casting her out. They just thought

00:07:57.720 like, oh, this is something interesting. This is something different. And she clearly needs help.

00:08:01.740 Eventually, Princess Caribou is brought to the home of Samuel and Elizabeth Worrell,

00:08:06.260 both of whom become really important figures in this story, particularly Elizabeth.

00:08:10.760 So who are the Worrells, Anne, and why are they made aware of this stranger's presence?

00:08:17.020 So Samuel Worrell, his job is the magistrate in the area.

00:08:20.340 But more notably, the cobblers knew that one of the servants in this household spoke at least more languages than English.

00:08:26.980 And so they thought maybe the servant at the Worrells might be able to understand the language that this woman is speaking.

00:08:32.280 So they brought her to see, yeah, so Samuel Worrell and his wife Elizabeth, she was American-born.

00:08:37.200 And then once Caribou met them, she revealed that she had a few English coins with her.

00:08:42.500 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.

00:08:57.120 And I think this combined with just sort of her dark hair, her dark eyes, they thought. 0.89

00:09:02.840 She's probably from somewhere Asian.

00:09:05.120 asian to these people to this small community of british people the way that we think of asia now

00:09:12.140 is different from what they would have thought so they're just thinking she's from somewhere away

00:09:15.320 like to them that could include like turkey or parts of russia like just anywhere east of i

00:09:21.640 don't know paris to them is like the orient the worlds again were very helpful immediately they

00:09:28.180 just thought like let's help this person and apparently it wasn't in the book that i read but

00:09:32.660 clearly the servant who spoke various languages did not speak the same language that she was

00:09:38.280 speaking. So it turns out he wasn't able to help in this case. So after Princess Caribou meets the

00:09:43.380 worlds, word gets around that Princess Caribou is in town and various members of the community

00:09:49.700 come forward and try to help them work out where this stranger is from. So who all gets involved

00:09:56.740 in this mystery and what are some of the clues they uncover as to the origins of princess caribou

00:10:03.020 so princess caribou herself is offering well not offering but to some of her behavior people are

00:10:09.100 interpreting in certain ways like she sees a painting of a pineapple and she recognizes that

00:10:14.200 and so they assume oh she must be from a place where pineapples are from um she seemed unfamiliar

00:10:18.880 with the concept of beds um until they explained to her you don't have to sleep on the floor so

00:10:22.940 the first visitor was a parish clergyman. And so he had some books that had images. I don't think

00:10:28.200 he was someone who traveled himself, but he had books with pictures in them of various maps and

00:10:32.800 countries and things from countries. And so they thought, okay, we'll show her these pictures and

00:10:36.800 she can point like maybe some of these things will seem familiar to her as well, like the pineapple

00:10:41.220 did. She seemed to recognize some of the images of China and they learned that she had arrived in

00:10:47.100 England on a ship. And it was around the same point that she started saying caribou, caribou

00:10:52.200 while indicating herself so it was unclear at this point is that her name is that her country

00:10:56.980 she kept recognizing chinese i guess in this household there's some chinese figurines and

00:11:02.040 furniture so people were like okay she's from china or she's from somewhere near china or

00:11:07.600 she's been to china she refused meat um she also refused alcohol she went to see the mayor she 0.80

00:11:14.800 kind of keeps elevating like first she met the cobbler then she went to the oversee of the poor

00:11:18.860 then to the magistrate and now she's meeting the mayor. And at this meeting, there was a

00:11:23.320 magistrate present who said her language is unlike anything he'd ever seen. It's just a

00:11:28.080 great mystery. But everyone is like, OK, we think her name is Caribou and we think she's from

00:11:32.160 somewhere Asian, which is quite broad. I love this element of the story, how she's kind of

00:11:38.520 climbing the social ladder, starting with a cobbler and then working her way up to the mayor

00:11:43.140 and just puzzling everyone she meets along the way. So after Princess Caribou meets the mayor,

00:11:48.000 She spends some time in a vagrant hospital in Bristol, but eventually Elizabeth Worrell comes

00:11:54.520 and retrieves her from that hospital and invites her to live with her and Samuel at their property,

00:12:00.800 which is called Knoll. And it's at Knoll that much of Princess Caribou's backstory starts to emerge.

00:12:07.640 So what is that backstory? So I do want to mention something I forgot to say about this is part of

00:12:13.000 her backstory that they want to find explanations for and probably why she was sent to the hospital

00:12:17.340 as well is her hair is cut short which is not usual for women in 1817 in England but maybe it

00:12:23.340 is from wherever she's from but you can also see the scars on the back of her neck from some sort

00:12:27.820 of cupping procedure or some sort of medical thing so it might be they think is this is this

00:12:32.340 person in medical distress so I think that's part of why they took her to the hospital as well

00:12:36.020 yeah after she was at the vagrant hospital and part of why she left there was because Elizabeth

00:12:40.280 Worrell was really I don't know if she felt a connection to her or she's just so enraptured

00:12:44.880 by the story, but she felt a personal obligation to take care of her. And so she comes with them

00:12:49.820 to Knoll. And this is where I'm going to say, an allegedly Portuguese man, because I don't know

00:12:56.520 who this guy is, really, named Manuel A. Nesso, happened to be in Bristol. And they're like,

00:13:01.740 oh, you're Portuguese. Like, can you, maybe she's speaking Portuguese. Can you come and see her?

00:13:06.560 And so this is where we get a lot of her backstories from her meeting with this guy,

00:13:09.580 Manuel. So what he said that he gleaned from her communications is that she was a princess from an

00:13:17.740 island in the East Indies who had been brought to England against her consent and then either was

00:13:23.200 abandoned or escaped. And again, everybody by now accepts that her name is Caribou. And she saw many

00:13:30.140 more visitors during her time there. So there was a man who came who had made several visits to the

00:13:34.220 East Indies and was familiar with Chinese customs. So he determined that she was the daughter of a

00:13:39.980 Chinese father and a Malaysian mother who had been killed in war. She's from a place called

00:13:45.000 Javasu. And how she wound up in England is she was walking in her garden, was seized by pirate,

00:13:51.220 and then she was sold to another ship captain along with some other captured women. And then

00:13:55.640 when they arrived in England, she jumped off the ship, she escaped and swam ashore. 0.93

00:14:00.300 She had been wearing, you know, Javasu clothes this whole time, but then she exchanged them 0.63

00:14:05.020 with a woman in England for the black dress that she was wearing now.

00:14:08.080 Wandered around for six weeks before she found her way to Almondsbury.

00:14:13.060 So this is what we've learned.

00:14:14.260 So now we know that she's a princess.

00:14:15.380 We know that she's this brave person who escaped human trafficking and war.

00:14:21.280 Quite the fighter.

00:14:22.460 So Princess Caribou stays at Knoll for a period of several weeks.

00:14:26.380 And while she's there, various outside observers study her habits and her skills.

00:14:33.180 What are some of the traits that really stuck out to these outside observers?

00:14:36.520 She worshipped a deity called Allah Tala, which is one of the formal names for God in Islam. 0.70

00:14:43.600 She preferred rice to bread.

00:14:45.680 She ate no meat.

00:14:46.800 She didn't drink alcohol.

00:14:48.020 She only drank water and tea.

00:14:49.600 She said prayers morning and night, fasted every Tuesday.

00:14:52.580 and on every Tuesday, she would climb onto the roof of Noel to face the sun, it seemed like.

00:14:59.220 There was a pond nearby and she would go there and wash her hands and her face there in what

00:15:05.100 seemed like a religious or a spiritual practice. I don't know where she's getting all these

00:15:08.900 accessories from, but she sometimes carried a gong on her back and a tambourine in her hand.

00:15:14.620 I guess these were just around Noel. Maybe they were offered to her a wooden sword on her right

00:15:19.400 and a bow and arrow on her left. She knew how to do archery. She knew how to do fencing. One time 0.64

00:15:24.900 she was found, she'd climbed a tree. They weren't sure where she was, but Elizabeth was, you know,

00:15:30.480 where's my friend? And they learned from Caribou, who I think was picking up, seemed to be picking

00:15:35.040 up some English words. No one was picking up Javasu from her, but it seemed like she's able

00:15:39.460 to communicate a bit better. But it seemed like Princess Caribou had climbed the tree because all

00:15:43.600 the women in the house had left and she felt unsafe being in a house with only men. There was

00:15:49.500 one thing she did once where she was given a dagger and then she went to a household plant

00:15:55.400 and rubbed a bit of the juice from the plant onto the dagger and then mimed passing out to kind of 0.59

00:16:01.680 show like, you know where I'm from, we put poison on our blades. These are the things she's doing. 0.99

00:16:06.320 Some of these are similar to the practices in various cultures and groups, but no one knew of

00:16:12.180 a culture or group that did all of these things. You can see why she fascinated so many people

00:16:16.600 because she definitely has this exoticism about her, but she also gives off major warrior princess 1.00

00:16:21.840 vibes. Sounds like she was very athletic, right? Climbing up trees and climbing onto the roof of 1.00

00:16:28.160 Noel. Yeah, no, exactly. You know, that's a really good point because I think, yeah, yeah,

00:16:33.060 I think it's not just like, oh, she's a princess from far away. She's not like a swooning damsel.

00:16:37.720 She's some sort of like brave hero.

00:16:40.540 Yeah. 0.96

00:16:41.280 More Amazonian.

00:16:43.080 So I understand that Princess Caribou's behavior was slightly erratic, you might say, while

00:16:49.660 she was at Knoll.

00:16:51.300 So she vanished without explanation and on two occasions.

00:16:56.140 The first time was about three weeks after her arrival.

00:16:59.000 And then the second time was about two months after she first showed up.

00:17:03.200 We will return to these mysterious disappearances in due course.

00:17:07.440 but you should know that they were happening while she was staying at Knoll and gaining a lot

00:17:12.660 of attention. Her name was already appearing in headlines across England and Scotland, correct?

00:17:18.940 Yeah, the people were writing articles because it's just an interesting and weird thing and

00:17:23.220 people were excited about it. And these were accompanied by drawings of what she looked like

00:17:27.280 as well. I wonder if they thought that maybe readers could come forward and help in this

00:17:31.980 effort to identify who she was and where she came from.

00:17:36.080 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 traveled 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.

00:17:55.300 Right. I know Portuguese and no one else who knows Portuguese has met her. So maybe she speaks

00:17:59.940 Portuguese. Right. Anyway, during Princess Caribou's stay at Knoll, several people do suspect that she

00:18:05.540 is not who she says she is, but she's able to convince them that, in fact, she is this Princess

00:18:11.480 Caribou who has come from abroad. So who are some of these skeptics and why are they ultimately kind

00:18:17.680 of brought around? So remember, they brought her to the worlds because they had a servant who spoke

00:18:24.160 a language other than english so i don't know that servant's name but it's a man who is greek

00:18:29.040 and he i think from day one was just like oh she's this is a scam this is i don't believe this i don't

00:18:35.420 believe her because she was sleeping in i think the same rooms as some of the servants so they

00:18:39.260 would try to see like does she speak in her sleep in a different language like the servants i feel

00:18:43.380 like we're trying to catch her out but even this greek man eventually seemed to come around um he

00:18:50.260 felt sympathy for her especially after she after one of her escapes she came down with an illness

00:18:55.500 seemingly typhus and it seems like he felt sympathy for her and treated her with kindness

00:19:01.100 whether he believed her or not i don't know but i think he stopped trying to to catch her out there

00:19:06.260 was a moment when she had this illness and again she only spoke in javasu language even when she

00:19:12.340 has a fever and dealing with doctors and stuff and there's a moment where one of the doctors

00:19:17.680 spoken English to Elizabeth saying, oh, I don't know if she's going to make it through the night

00:19:22.080 or something like that. And it seemed like Princess Caribou's face flushed when she heard that as

00:19:26.240 though she understood English. But then people were like, no, no, she just her face flushes a

00:19:30.440 lot. She has typhus. Don't worry about it. She must have been so charismatic and interesting. 0.70

00:19:36.000 People wanted to believe. All right. So there are some questions hovering around whether or not

00:19:41.520 this is a hoax. Eventually, a Dr. Wilkinson of Bath examines Princess Caribou and publishes his

00:19:49.260 findings in the Bristol Journal. So what does Dr. Wilkinson have to say? So he's from Bath. And the

00:19:55.460 reason that I think he became involved was during one of her disappearances, Caribou was discovered

00:19:59.680 in Bath, the city. He met her there and he was intrigued by her whole story. And so he spoke

00:20:05.760 with her and so he's a linguistics expert he's a self-proclaimed expert in lots of things but one

00:20:12.480 of the things he said is he compared her language to a book that's called pantographia which was an

00:20:18.120 encyclopedia of known alphabets and scripts like internationally he compared her language to there

00:20:24.940 he also looked at the marks remember the marks on the back of her head from some sort of cupping

00:20:29.680 procedure and he's like oh yeah that's what they do in asia in quote the orient he said that her

00:20:35.900 appearance made him think like her pale skin her dark hair and eyes made him presume she was from

00:20:40.900 she was circassian um which is a northwest caucasian ethnic group in the north caucasus

00:20:47.880 like in it's part of modern-day russia although she said that she's from the west indies and now

00:20:52.760 he's saying that she's from the caucasus not the same place no and now for a quick advertising break

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00:23:36.120 Dr. Wilkinson publishes his article, and then Elizabeth Worrell

00:23:40.520 receives some surprising revelations from more than one source.

00:23:45.000 So the article comes out, I think, again, there's a picture of her, like a drawing.

00:23:48.840 and a woman named Mrs. Neal saw that and thought well that looks an awful lot like my she's a

00:23:55.640 landlady Mrs. Neal and she's like well that looks a lot like my tenant who's a woman called Mary

00:24:00.140 Wilcox and I think who is like in arrears on paying her rent and has not been around for 1.00

00:24:05.300 three to four weeks. So she Mrs. Neal went to see someone called Mr. Mortimer not sure who that is

00:24:12.940 but he's an intermediary who brings Mrs. Neal to the worlds. At around the same time,

00:24:19.620 a boy arrived in town. He remembered seeing someone who looked like Caribou along the road,

00:24:25.720 and he remembered that she had drunk alcohol when she was with him, although Princess Caribou,

00:24:29.840 you know, never drinks alcohol. And so this double confirmation that Caribou was maybe a grifter

00:24:35.040 convinced Elizabeth that her friend was maybe not all that she said she was. 1.00

00:24:39.720 So in response to these revelations, Elizabeth Worrell essentially devises a scheme to entrap and expose Princess Caribou as a fraudstress.

00:24:51.720 As much as Caribou is like a dramatic person, you know, with all of her her sort of performance of of her ethnicity and her culture.

00:24:59.220 Elizabeth has some dramatic instincts as well here, because this is straight out of Agatha Christie Poro situation.

00:25:06.100 It's just like, let's get everyone in a room together.

00:25:07.860 We started out talking about that portrait by Edward Byrd.

00:25:11.820 So during this time, Caribou has been going regularly into Bristol to the studio of Edward

00:25:16.620 Byrd to pose for this portrait.

00:25:18.780 So Elizabeth told Caribou that they were going to Bristol in the morning for another sitting

00:25:23.260 for this portrait.

00:25:24.340 But when they got to Bristol, they did not go to the portrait studio, but rather they

00:25:28.420 went to the home of this man, Mr. Mortimer.

00:25:30.700 And Mrs. Neal was waiting there to confront her.

00:25:34.960 The jig was up.

00:25:35.840 yeah yeah everything everything starts to come out honestly elizabeth iconic behavior where's

00:25:42.360 her portraits yeah but the fact that elizabeth didn't confront her herself but sort of like

00:25:47.840 brought about this scheme to trap her in this room with someone who knew her real identity it's

00:25:53.360 you know good job elizabeth yes i would also say it missed opportunity i want like a double

00:25:59.600 portrait with both elizabeth worrell and princess caribou i know yeah if only edward

00:26:05.440 bird had been there to like sketch the confrontation. The great revelation. All right.

00:26:10.660 So at this point, the cat is out of the bag and Princess Caribou gradually admits that her real

00:26:16.080 name is Mary and that she was born in Witheridge, Devonshire. What were Mary's childhood and

00:26:22.740 adolescence like? What was her life actually like? What I'm going to say is her life story is just

00:26:27.360 as interesting as Princess Caribou being captured by pirates and just as many twists and turns.

00:26:31.940 So 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 will, you know, I'll stand by you, which is remarkable, actually, for Elizabeth.

00:26:49.720 It is. I mean, she's shown real compassion for her from beginning to end in this narrative, hasn't she?

00:26:55.680 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, OK, I'm from Devonshire. Her father was, interestingly, a cobbler. That was the first person who she met in Almondsbury as well. So she had been given no education. Like, I think a typical sort of upbringing in this era for that class of person.

00:27:17.780 so she's put to work at age eight in farms and things like that just sort of manual labor mostly

00:27:23.440 at age 16 she started working at a farmhouse but she left there as the pay was too low

00:27:28.460 even as a poor young working person like she had dreams and sort of standards for herself like she

00:27:35.600 didn't just go to a job and say okay here's my job she's like no i want something better

00:27:39.120 so she just kind of kept moving around getting various jobs there was one part where during her

00:27:43.700 teenage years she went to Exeter and she worked there for a while and she made enough money to

00:27:48.420 buy herself this beautiful white dress and then she went home to her parents and the parents were

00:27:52.940 like that dress is too beautiful you must have stolen it in terms of you know costuming and just

00:27:57.800 like theatricality and presenting herself in different ways this was obviously part of her

00:28:02.200 life so she ended up wandering around begging she winds up in London and she falls ill she's taken

00:28:08.280 to St. Giles Hospital because she this is where she had her head shaved and a cupping treatment

00:28:13.480 was done. So this is by the time she gets to almond spirit later, her hair is grown back in

00:28:17.220 and that's why it's short. And that's why there's the cupping treatment scars as well.

00:28:20.980 Anyway, so she's in London and she was working for someone who seemed pretty nice, Mrs. Matthews,

00:28:25.300 who taught her to read and permitted her to read various books in her collection. So this is part

00:28:29.860 of like Mary's story starts to reveal how did she learn about these different because a lot of the

00:28:34.740 things she were doing were similar to what people do do in various different cultures so this is

00:28:39.760 part of where she starts like acquiring this knowledge to maybe eventually become caribou 0.82

00:28:44.520 so she ended up leaving this position i briefly very briefly she was very taken by their jewish

00:28:52.480 neighbors and by their their customs and their culture and she snuck away to go attend a jewish

00:28:57.680 wedding and that's why she was she lost that job so she's always really interested in other cultural

00:29:02.340 traditions. So when I said, like, this is just as interesting as the caribou story of leaving

00:29:07.200 Javasu, because next she traded in her clothes for men's clothes because she thought maybe I'll

00:29:12.080 make more money begging if I'm a man. At which point she caught up with a gang of bandits who

00:29:16.980 taught her how to shoot a pistol. But then they parted ways after they realized that she was a

00:29:22.160 woman. It's another example of her kind of trying to assume a new identity, in this case, as a man.

00:29:27.900 One of the many figures she encounters on her various travels is this quote-unquote

00:29:35.920 gentlemanly looking man whom she may have married. We don't quite know about that.

00:29:41.480 But what does she learn from this gentlemanly looking man?

00:29:45.160 The only reason we know that he's a gentleman looking man is because that's all that you ever

00:29:49.200 revealed about him or his identity. His name might have been Beckerstein or Baker Stint,

00:29:54.760 which sounds maybe german anyway so they may or may not have actually been married but she became

00:29:59.560 pregnant by him and he had some knowledge of malaysia language and customs so maybe he'd been

00:30:03.920 a sailor or something like that so this is where she learned some of the stuff that she would later

00:30:08.180 perform as caribou he abandoned her he went to calais in france he promised to to send for her

00:30:14.780 but he never did so she is pregnant alone and when the child was born she gave it up to a

00:30:20.520 foundling hospital and the child like so many did in this era died in infancy between leaving home

00:30:27.980 at 16 she's now maybe 24 years old like this has been a adventure packed few years and this is

00:30:34.320 where she heads off towards bristol so she goes begging and she finds that if she acts the role

00:30:39.440 of a foreigner while begging then she people are a bit more sympathetic to her she eventually

00:30:44.960 makes it to Bristol. And there she learns that she can buy a ticket basically to take a ship

00:30:52.160 across the Atlantic to the United States. And she likes the sound of that idea, but she doesn't

00:30:56.720 have the money for it. So what is the plan that she comes up with to acquire that money?

00:31:02.960 Basically, she plans that, okay, there's a ship leaving in I think 15 days. And so she's going to 0.73

00:31:07.680 put on this role of like, I'm a foreigner and just beg for 15 days to get enough money to pay 0.92

00:31:13.360 for the passage on the ship. At this point, she leaves her trunk with her belongings behind with

00:31:19.020 her landlady, Mrs. Neal, and then heads out to go begging, which is why when she's first seen

00:31:25.560 in Almondsbury, she's just looking for a room for the night. Now we're in a position to explain

00:31:29.940 those two mysterious disappearances that we mentioned a few minutes back. What were those

00:31:33.720 all about? Right. So this is where you double back to be like, well, here's what was really

00:31:36.980 happening. So the first time she went away, she had gone to Bristol, where she had gone back to

00:31:43.080 her landlady she went by to get her possessions to then get on a ship to go to america but the

00:31:48.260 ship that she had planned on taking had already left so she paid her overdue rent to the landlady

00:31:53.040 and then returned to almondsbury with this bundle of clothes and at the point at this point she

00:31:58.140 like when caribou returned with a bunch of clothes they're like what what are these clothes and she

00:32:02.360 said oh i these were clothes i had i had left and i had buried earlier and somehow she's communicating

00:32:07.960 this with hand gestures because at that point she's still speaking her native language quote

00:32:14.680 unquote in javasu style and so the second time she went missing this was where well she wound

00:32:19.500 up in bath and that's where she met that doctor but i think she was also eventually hoping to get

00:32:24.640 onto a ship to america but the people in bath told elizabeth world and elizabeth world came

00:32:29.700 and picked her up so all along she's just kind of wanted to get to america you know at this time

00:32:35.820 1817 and maybe still today it's this concept of like that's a place where you can start a new

00:32:40.560 you know start a new identity like build a new life for yourself like clearly that's what she's

00:32:44.400 been constantly trying to do two things just leap out to me when i hear this story first of all can

00:32:50.420 you imagine how flabbergasted these people were even to hear her speak in english to them she's

00:32:55.920 like i could have told you this all along like i i knew english this whole time oh my gosh yeah well

00:33:02.160 and that's where like when you look back at some of the details as well because i mentioned you

00:33:05.540 know there's some of the servants who were suspicious of her and she overheard them talking

00:33:08.900 in English and they said well we're going to stay awake to see if when she's asleep you know if she

00:33:13.200 speaks in English in her sleep but she heard them say that because she understood English so then

00:33:17.900 she would pretend to be asleep and then like talk in Javasu language like pretending to be asleep

00:33:22.460 you know when the the various you know travelers came to visit her she would have heard them say 0.93

00:33:27.580 like oh well in Malaysia this is what they do with their daggers you know they put poison on them so 0.98

00:33:32.760 then she would just do that because she heard them say that in English and they wouldn't have 0.99

00:33:36.340 known that she understood them. Right. They were unwittingly making these suggestions.

00:33:43.340 Yeah. So if they say like, oh, maybe she's a runaway princess. She's like, OK, yeah, 0.88

00:33:46.740 OK, I'll do that. But you're right. You're right. Just the way this would blow everyone's mind to

00:33:51.000 be living with her for a couple of months. And then suddenly she's just like, oh, yeah,

00:33:54.880 I'm Mary. I'm from, you know, like, oh, my gosh. Am I correct here? She's so consistent in using

00:34:02.060 the same javasu word to refer to the same object right yeah yeah that's what everybody remarked on

00:34:09.120 like even you know the the linguistics doctors and stuff like she she just made up this language

00:34:15.080 and committed to it and she was consistent about it like with the language and also with her

00:34:19.060 sort of rituals you know every tuesday climbing on the roof or saying her prayers in a certain way

00:34:24.180 yeah so it didn't seem like somebody just talking no one ever seemed to think oh she's insane

00:34:29.360 This is a person just speaking gibberish. 0.98

00:34:32.120 And there's definitely an intellect to this woman as well. 0.92

00:34:34.500 If she's creating this language and then kind of sticking with it as she invents it, 0.99

00:34:39.740 you know, that's quite an intellectual feat.

00:34:42.440 Well, and the fact that she's just a person who is planning to just 0.99

00:34:44.980 pretend to be a random foreigner for 15 days and then peace out to America,

00:34:49.420 that she ends up for three months having to be the princess of Javasu 24 hours a day.

00:34:54.680 That's the other thing that I wanted to talk about,

00:34:56.620 because I would just love to have been able to sit down with Mary, Princess Caribou,

00:35:02.140 and just be like, okay, wait, take me through this strategy again. Because you mentioned that

00:35:06.340 she thought that she could earn more money as a foreigner because people would kind of take

00:35:11.540 pity on her. I mean, is there any evidence that she tried to beg for money when she showed up

00:35:17.600 in Allmansbury? It seems like she was more interested in like shooting her bone arrow and

00:35:21.540 like climbing trees and stuff it seemed to shift pretty quickly so at first she had she saw some

00:35:27.560 people from france from britney like the breton national costume if you look it up it's like they

00:35:32.740 it involves this sort of like white lace hat and she saw some people from that region begging and

00:35:38.620 being successful so she's like okay i'm gonna just pretend to be a french person then but then she

00:35:43.100 ran into someone who actually was french so then she was like pivot um i'm spanish and then she

00:35:47.800 ran into someone who is who spoke spanish and she's like pivot i speak my own made-up language

00:35:52.460 now i think she was begging like when she got to almond spree she was just like i need a roof over

00:35:56.520 my head and then she got to all the way to the worlds and then she started meeting people who

00:36:02.120 wanted to decode her language and and those were the people who were like oh yeah no she told me

00:36:07.260 that she's a princess she's from javasu she was captured by pirates like it was really sort of a

00:36:11.880 team effort another person might have gotten to the worlds and snuck away the first night

00:36:16.520 but she stayed there climbing trees you know diving in the pond like fencing like she was

00:36:22.880 leaning into it yeah i mean the worlds were also so generous so you imagine that if somehow she

00:36:28.100 just indicated to them that she needed some money they would have just given it to her and she could

00:36:32.900 have gone on her merry way but i get the sense that she was doing this partly out of a love for

00:36:36.860 the game she's like no i'm gonna like i'm committed to this character all along the way she was

00:36:42.420 finding like, you know, she dressed up as a man or she pretended to be from France. Like she was

00:36:46.420 always trying on different identities, changing her last name. So I think she's just like, this

00:36:50.200 is my dream. You know, in another life, maybe she would have been an actress or something. But she's

00:36:54.080 just somebody who gets to just like, let's play this out. Like, how far can I take this? Like,

00:36:57.600 how much fun can I have at these people's expense? Yeah. This story all comes out. And after she has

00:37:05.260 heard everything, Elizabeth Worrell offers to pay for Mary's passage to America. One of the days

00:37:11.440 leading up to her departure like and again at this point she's still generating a lot of media

00:37:16.380 attention right a lot of people are still interested in this story and how it will play out

00:37:21.900 she's so famous at this point yeah like the fact like the mysterious princess caribou is an exciting

00:37:27.500 story people like to read about you know newspapers and pamphlets but now that it's like oh princess

00:37:32.860 caribou is actually a hoax people are even more excited like she's even more famous now because

00:37:38.040 she pulled it off for as long as she did right because elizabeth had her back like and that's

00:37:43.060 the thing too like if she'd been sent to a different magistrate and his wife maybe it would 1.00

00:37:46.480 have been different but she's there's never any talk about sending her to jail charging her with

00:37:50.980 a crime like elizabeth just supports her and she's like and like you just said before like

00:37:55.420 oh she wants to go to america okay i'll pay for my friend to go to america like um elizabeth also 0.94

00:38:00.820 she kind of does her due diligence she sends a man to mary's parents to find out like is that

00:38:06.040 story true and they do they find her parents are just these kind of like normal people and i like

00:38:11.380 this detail the father said that um mary got rheumatic fever when she was 15 years old and

00:38:17.020 ever since then she had not been right in the mind and the only examples he gives of this is

00:38:21.240 that she always wanted to go to america and she only ever drank water not beer clearly unhinged

00:38:28.400 well i guess it was probably dangerous to drink water all the time back then so actually fair

00:38:34.520 but still the fact that his only examples are just kind of like a sort of natural and understandable

00:38:40.540 urge to get out of the small town poor poverty-stricken life you're in it's like i don't

00:38:45.980 think this is like the story of a unhinged person who's like deranged in the mind i think it's a

00:38:50.620 really ambitious interesting smart woman who wanted more than she you know than life was ready 1.00

00:38:57.200 to give her on the one hand there is some appreciation for just her skills like okay 1.00

00:39:02.280 good on you. Like you had us all fooled. That was amazing. But also, I mean, you think about

00:39:07.700 her actual life story, it would elicit sympathy from people because she had a really rough

00:39:14.820 upbringing and lost a child and, you know, had wandered in poverty for so many years. So I guess

00:39:20.420 in that sense, it also makes sense that Elizabeth Worrell would want to help her financially in

00:39:25.380 whatever way she could. That's a really good point. Yeah. Because I think Elizabeth, here's

00:39:29.860 her true story and it's actually heartbreaking you're right like maybe she's not princess

00:39:33.260 caribou but it's still sort of a very sympathetic story so elizabeth gives her everything she needs

00:39:38.140 so she finds her spot on a ship um gives her clothes and money like enough money to support

00:39:42.200 herself until she found a position there and just as to sort of illustrate her fame um the ticket

00:39:47.820 for this ship was purchased under the a fake name the name mary burgess which is her mother's maiden

00:39:53.680 name because um the name mary baker or mary wilcox was so was as famous as caribou at this

00:40:00.440 point so they just didn't want people to i don't know be going to the show there's not paparazzi

00:40:05.620 but you know they didn't want everybody there with their cell phones filming her what one of

00:40:09.920 the people who saw her at the time said um that they they found it notable that she didn't seem

00:40:14.480 to be showing any signs of being guilty for having fooled everybody but instead she seemed proud

00:40:19.560 for how successful she had pulled it off for as long as she had.

00:40:23.880 And I think, yeah, of course she was.

00:40:25.560 This is actually really impressive what she did.

00:40:28.100 Mary is eventually able to board a ship for Philadelphia on June 28, 1817.

00:40:34.960 And I have to confess, at this point in the story,

00:40:37.260 part of me fully expected her just to vanish from the historical record entirely

00:40:41.680 because she's off to America, never heard from again.

00:40:44.520 But that is not at all what happened, is it?

00:40:46.480 So what happens?

00:40:47.200 first of all um so she goes to philadelphia in june 1817 so this is around the same time that

00:40:55.060 napoleon um has been sent to exile in saint helena and so a guy wrote this letter allegedly

00:41:01.660 sir hudson lowe the official who was in charge of napoleon on saint helena and he claimed that

00:41:07.900 the philadelphia bound ship had been uh driven close to saint helena by a storm that mary cut

00:41:14.960 herself adrift, rowed ashore, and she so fascinated Napoleon that he was applying to the Pope for

00:41:20.940 dispensation to marry her. This is not true, listeners. But, you know, it could have been.

00:41:28.560 We want it to be true. And that counts for something.

00:41:32.680 Yeah. Yeah. So this is why you sometimes see her. And there's not a lot out there about her other

00:41:38.560 than the books I was able to find. But sometimes when you read about her, people are like, oh,

00:41:42.380 yeah she was a mistress of napoleon it's like no no i mean in the fan fiction version of the story

00:41:49.620 she definitely was you know what this was absolutely this guy wrote fan fiction to the

00:41:54.180 bristol journal in 1817 imagining what if this happened to her what actually happened to her is

00:41:58.700 she arrived in philadelphia safely um and some people had heard of her and she was persuaded by

00:42:04.160 a showman called sanders to appear like to do a stage performance as princess caribou just like

00:42:09.640 dancing and speaking her language. Apparently the show was not a success. And I think because you

00:42:15.020 would ask me like, what was the show like? So I was digging a bit more into it. And I think

00:42:18.640 she could have put on a great show, but not dancing and speaking her language. I think doing 1.00

00:42:22.380 fencing, acrobatic tricks. I don't know. I don't think Sanders had a good vision for the show. So

00:42:28.620 the show, not a success, not a success. It's one of the great ironies to the story, right? Because

00:42:33.420 she had sort of played the part of Princess Caribou to perfection in Bristol. So you could

00:42:38.920 see why someone would want to put her on stage. But it's so ironic that, you know, you put her

00:42:43.860 within a theatrical context and for whatever reason, it just busts. So unfortunately, Mary

00:42:49.820 does not find much success on stage as Princess Caribou, but she does stick around in the United

00:42:54.900 States for a couple of years. And eventually she returns to Britain. So what happens after that?

00:43:01.860 Can we just wrap this story up for us? Yeah. So she returns to Britain and perhaps she returned

00:43:07.640 because she thought like, well, maybe there I can make it go over the princess caribou

00:43:10.760 routine. And she put herself on exhibition. Like apparently she had, she, it sounds like

00:43:17.260 she set up a booth on the street sort of vibe of just like, come meet princess caribou

00:43:21.800 in London. Again, not successful. At this point, several years have passed, right? Since the whole

00:43:29.280 princess caribou sensation. So maybe it's sort of like, eh, no one cares anymore.

00:43:34.560 I'm sure there's been some new weird thing that's happening. Yeah, it's like seven years later.

00:43:39.540 So we know that by 1828, so that's almost 10 years after the caribou scenario, she had,

00:43:47.320 she got married to a man named Richard Baker. She had a daughter named Marianne. And as far as we

00:43:54.480 know, for the next like 30 years, she successfully runs an operation, a leech business, selling

00:44:02.260 leeches to Bristol Infirmary Hospital because leeches were what you did in hospitals. And

00:44:09.760 someone has to acquire and sell the leeches. And I never thought, you know, it's like such a joke

00:44:15.020 about like old time hospitals like, oh, let's let leeches, let's bleed them. But I've never once

00:44:20.000 thought, well, where does a hospital acquire the leeches from? A business like hers. Eventually, 0.97

00:44:25.320 she died from a fall so December 1864 and she was buried in the Hebron Road Cemetery in Bristol

00:44:33.800 but her daughter Mary Ann continued on the family leech business and then Mary Ann this is just what

00:44:39.900 I read Mary Ann did not get married she lived in a house full of path and then she died in a house

00:44:45.900 fire in 1900 and that's that's the end of Princess Caribou's lineage I guess that's her you know her

00:44:52.420 daughter dies. And that's kind of the end of the saga. But, you know, her portrait still on display.

00:44:57.540 Her story still still known by some people. Still fodder for podcasters. Yeah. And how many,

00:45:05.020 you know, cobbler's daughters from 1817 are still being talked about. Great. Well, that is the story

00:45:11.780 of Princess Caribou. It is quite a wild one. So I'm just curious, are there any lessons that you

00:45:17.260 think we can draw about history from this this story? There's so many interesting and weird

00:45:23.620 stories that can feel really contemporary you know like I think there's a tendency of people

00:45:29.960 to think about history as these very sort of straight-laced like the way that people look

00:45:33.840 in a portrait you just imagine everyone's going around being very formal all the time

00:45:37.500 and you never hear about the poor people but actually like people are out there like Mary

00:45:42.800 was such a fascinating person she was so ambitious she was so interesting and it does feel a bit you

00:45:47.980 know like people who you see now coming out on just people who become a tiktok star or they're

00:45:52.460 on a reality show like it's such a modern way of being to just like completely reinvent yourself

00:45:57.360 pretend to be a different ethnicity then you get cancelled but then you keep going like it's just

00:46:02.420 a reminder to me this story that people have always been people and messy and interesting and

00:46:07.900 like, especially like women from poor classes are never talked about, you know, today, but also when

00:46:15.160 we're looking at history, because we don't know their stories. And if other women were as interesting 1.00

00:46:18.720 as Mary, then I hope we can find more of their stories. That is funny to sort of think of her 0.69

00:46:23.380 as someone who like, he went viral in a 19th century way. Well, I guess that about does it

00:46:30.320 for Princess Caribou. Any last thoughts that you want to share with listeners, Anne? I just want

00:46:36.100 to thank you for inviting me on your podcast and agreeing to do this story. Because again,

00:46:40.840 like I said, it's one that I've always kind of wanted to do on my podcast, but it's never really

00:46:44.600 fit any of the themes that I've been doing. But I was like, this is perfect. There's the portrait,

00:46:49.200 there's the crime, it's ideal for you. So thank you so much for the opportunity. 0.93

00:46:52.980 All right, with that, let's sign off. Thanks again, Anne.

00:46:55.400 Yeah, thank you so much.

00:46:56.580 so i'm joined by gavin whitehead again two years later two years after we've made that recording

00:47:08.260 gavin it's been two years i'm glad that we're still talking about princess caribou though

00:47:14.640 because people should people need to i you know i was just thinking like you and i've recorded so

00:47:19.900 many things since then i i like that as a recording of you and i it's the first thing we ever did

00:47:24.400 together and like you can hear our friendship just solidify 47 minutes it's like the 46 minute

00:47:32.360 mark you're like yep it's happening again and again and again and this is why you've been on

00:47:38.840 vulgar history now like four times or something where i'm just like you're a beloved recurring

00:47:43.480 guest and you know we have life pre caribou you know before we knew about her life after caribou

00:47:50.480 uh-huh it's a dividing line for sure yes you know how has your life changed since you learned

00:47:56.320 this story well i've taken up javasu uh through rosetta stone yeah i yeah i mean it's helped me

00:48:04.480 understand her a lot more well i want to say right now i'm actually drinking what i'm drinking we

00:48:10.940 can't see because it's a podcast but i'm drinking an earl grey tea and this is actually tea that i

00:48:15.260 bought one on my on my recent trip to england i visited bath where princess caribou was

00:48:22.520 for a time and so it's like this tea you know i did a java sushi and prayer ritual um before i

00:48:28.980 drank it obviously of course with your bow and arrow a stride of horse as you do then i climbed

00:48:35.700 a tree yeah and but this is from a place in bath called uh sally lun's tea house which is like the

00:48:42.320 oldest tea house in bath and so i you know it was around when she was there the building itself

00:48:49.680 is from like the 1400s or something it's like insanely old but anyway i just feel like perhaps

00:48:54.280 this is the same tea that princess caribou would have had so i'm just communing with her spirit

00:48:59.560 right i think so yeah that's the way to do it that's the way to do it let me guess there was

00:49:03.260 no blue plaque for princess caribou was there gavin when i tell you i went to the city of bath

00:49:10.380 which i will also mention people there call it boff um boff that is the posh pronunciation of

00:49:18.800 the city i call it bath because i'm north american anyway i went to boff and i'm like okay i know so

00:49:24.260 many things happen here like yes jane austen hang out here for a bit she was here for a minute um

00:49:29.040 but also mary shelley lived here with percy shelley like this is where she like finalized

00:49:33.660 her manuscript of frankenstein i also knew princess caribou spent some time here i also knew

00:49:38.600 a certain later on uh a uh burlesque dancer lola montez um as a teenager was going to boarding

00:49:47.480 school and she ran away from bath as a teenager with a adult man so i'm just like i'm gonna see

00:49:52.700 all these commemorations of all these people who i know no so what i saw was jane austen literally

00:49:58.160 they're leaning heavily into the jane austen of it all every everything's you know there's like

00:50:02.860 a poster of being like come and see a play version of pride and prejudice i feel like there's a play

00:50:06.840 of Pride and Prejudice like 12 months out of the year happening somewhere in back there's like the

00:50:11.260 Jane Austen Center there's you know every other store is like Jane Austen Souvenirs like everything

00:50:16.100 is Jane Austen themed and which you know if if Jane Austen lived near your city like of course

00:50:22.760 you're going to lean into it like this is how you get your tourist bucks right yes yes Mary Shelley

00:50:27.520 I was surprised at how little Mary Shelley there was right I mean yeah it is it is surprising it's

00:50:35.600 like can we get just a little recognition for one of the greatest performance artists of the early

00:50:39.940 19th century in princess caribou though just a little recognition yeah it's like we need princess

00:50:46.260 caribou because she was the same time period jane austen mary shelley princess caribou the regency

00:50:50.980 era they are the trifecta like what you need to do is go to bath listeners dress as princess

00:50:58.040 caribou and just wander around being like you know just like bring that energy into this city

00:51:04.620 that is so overwhelmingly Jane Austen coded.

00:51:08.000 Like we need, and also frankly,

00:51:09.580 like there's like Mary Shelley,

00:51:10.800 like just walk out crying, looking underfed,

00:51:14.180 wearing black, carrying a skull.

00:51:16.360 Like this is the energy that Bath needs, I think.

00:51:19.520 Here's a philosophical question for you, Anne.

00:51:22.600 Is it cultural appropriation

00:51:24.540 if the culture you are appropriating

00:51:26.780 does not actually exist?

00:51:29.180 This is such a good point.

00:51:30.560 And I do want to get into this with you

00:51:32.400 because this is another thing that i learned during my trip so when i was on my trip i went

00:51:38.820 to boff i did a little day and i also did a day trip to um the town of brighton which is like

00:51:44.780 another coastal town and the notable thing about brighton is that is where the husband of carolina

00:51:50.980 brunswick prinny george the fourth built his like fake taj mahal house of horrors palace 0.98

00:51:58.440 fuck yeah which i visited oh it is so fucking bananas it is like it's been restored like he 0.98

00:52:07.400 lived there and it was it was cultural appropriation because he his whole and this 0.99

00:52:12.620 was sort of like the trend at the time but i think he popularized it which was like

00:52:16.040 what is china like let's imagine and all the decor is like fake bamboo because they didn't

00:52:22.020 have bamboo wood and like carved it to look like bamboo and like that's the banisters

00:52:26.400 and there's just kind of like gold pagoda ceilings with like dragons on them but they're not like

00:52:32.800 asian dragons don't have wings but these ones do everything is just right it's not just like oh

00:52:37.700 here's the china themed room it's like every room it's like it's kind of like what if graceland was

00:52:43.980 chinese it's just kind of like maximalism horrifying but this is where i saw that and i was 0.55

00:52:49.380 like this is why princess caribou is so captivating because people in this regency era were just like 0.72

00:52:54.000 they like imagining the east right they don't know what it's like the asia yeah she's from the asia

00:53:03.540 she has brown hair and turban and that is like to them they're just like must be from this

00:53:12.280 mysterious place like they the whole palace the bright it's called the royal pavilion and honestly

00:53:17.320 everyone should go because it's like fucking insane yeah i'm adding it to the list for sure

00:53:23.860 the town of brighton like owns it now it's i'm just like oh god bless this poor town this is 0.93

00:53:29.360 your one heritage is pretty like fake graceland but even from the outside it's like what if you

00:53:35.300 took five taj mahal's and squished them together it's just like so many domed turrets but they're

00:53:40.280 all put together weirdly but it's like that's like what princess caribou was serving up with

00:53:44.380 her like turban her archery dagger i'm just like seeing that put in context the fact that like

00:53:50.480 yes she did this like audacious thing but it's like this is the culture she was living in people

00:53:55.140 were like hungry for it people were loving it yeah but it was also i mean she was inventing

00:54:01.980 this culture too you know okay so arguably in his decor yeah right yeah that's right that's

00:54:08.700 it's like a riff on you know however he and his contemporaries imagined the the orient 0.98

00:54:16.080 okay question for you there's no placard there's jack shit commemorating princess caribou 0.97

00:54:23.500 what would be the best way to commemorate her what should there be oh this is a great question 0.84

00:54:29.860 so when i was there i was i spent some time with a couple of listeners literally two um people who

00:54:36.120 came there and we they were showing me around because they like live in the area that's so cool

00:54:40.140 and i mentioned them i'd forgotten about princess caribou at the time but i just remember

00:54:44.520 montez lived there and then we were thinking oh you should have like lola montez she's famous for

00:54:48.660 her like relax dancing it's like you should have a dance academy but although lola montez i don't 1.00

00:54:53.380 know if you've heard that episode or listeners if you have but she was an irish woman who pretended

00:54:57.840 to be spanish so there's like caribou vibes there so i feel like a language school could be like the

00:55:05.080 princess caribou slash lola montez right and it will teach you not actual languages it's the

00:55:14.600 academy of accent of the academy of ethnic impersonations yeah but you know there could

00:55:21.580 be a real phys ed department like with the archery that's right with a tree climbing like you can

00:55:28.320 really get into some fitness so i would like to see that like training the youth anyone with brown

00:55:33.240 hair can go um and if you don't have brown hair you know what be industrious get a wig

00:55:37.980 and and that's what princess caribou would have done that's what she would have done i i honestly

00:55:44.680 all i would want to see and i don't know what address she lived at but i will say that in

00:55:49.640 boff which is the whole city is very it was really developed like in the regency era

00:55:54.380 and it's filmed like a lot of bridgerton outside scenes are filmed there because it still looks

00:55:58.540 just like that but there's these extraordinarily posh like sort of townhouses that are still the 0.95

00:56:05.120 same original buildings and so when i was looking back through my notes i'm just like god damn it

00:56:08.980 princess caribou when this is where she was this is like the richest of the rich we're living here 0.70

00:56:14.280 yeah i just want to talk being like this where princess caribou was just to talk being like

00:56:20.140 she hung out here once princess caribou was here yes and so were you you know just like

00:56:27.620 take a little plaque with it that's what i would want there you go yeah there's no commemoration

00:56:32.640 but i do think the fact that it's so regency era coded the whole bath they have like all these

00:56:38.300 you know like come and act like it's jane austen times festivals and stuff so show up there in a

00:56:43.760 turban as a white person um and just talk in a made-up language and see if anyone gets what

00:56:49.860 you're doing i do want to say also this occurred because the reason that i'm re visiting this

00:56:55.980 episode there's well there's a couple corrections i want to make and we'll get into that and we need

00:56:59.980 to score her as well vital vital because i understand there's something at stake there is

00:57:06.280 so this is the regency era season and we're kind of swinging towards the end of it and you know as

00:57:11.340 i always do in these episodes like we give people a score at the end and this is leading up to a

00:57:16.040 playoff i'm gonna do to choose like on bridgerton which is also set in the regency era and we're

00:57:21.500 going to choose the diamond of the season and that's going to be voted on by the listeners

00:57:25.900 but i need to have the scores because that's i'm going to seed them you know like it's going to be

00:57:30.380 a classic like march madness type playoff right so you can't be in this playoff unless you have

00:57:35.220 a score and princess caribou needs to be she must be included she must be included well i i have to

00:57:42.060 say i we were talking about this before we started recording but i just listened to your episode

00:57:46.180 about mary bateman and i would just like to say that i would not want to go toe-to-toe with her

00:57:50.940 in one of these um brackets mary pateman's gonna be like she's gonna pull up arsenic 0.95

00:57:57.800 oh you want some oatmeal and i'm like oh yeah sure love oatmeal dead she'll just be like oh 0.82

00:58:05.460 hey i made you this cake mix just like mix it up just mix up this cake mix and then drizzle

00:58:10.160 this honey on it that i'm also providing for you actually yeah that's true i love snacks too much

00:58:16.160 to survive an encounter with mary bateman well and i think mary bateman i did want to touch on

00:58:21.640 this as well because she like she and princess caribou this is like the same era and they had

00:58:27.440 a really similar kind of you know poor background i mean growing up not a lot of options for them

00:58:32.780 they both went in to to try to be housemates did not work out for either of them because of their

00:58:37.460 because of their various criminal tendencies um burning beds in caribou's case um you know

00:58:46.400 stealing things in ray bateman's case but they both they both had these transformative

00:58:50.320 um experiences at festivals meeting like caravans of romani people uh-huh just really

00:58:59.480 inspire them on their grifting journeys.

00:59:03.260 Their grifting journeys.

00:59:06.520 Oh my gosh.

00:59:08.540 It's just a real, you know, they both,

00:59:11.020 their first parts of their lives were kind of similar

00:59:13.240 and then they diverge.

00:59:14.840 And Mary Bateman turned into, you know, 1.00

00:59:16.500 like a murdering witch, that thief. 0.99

00:59:19.880 And Caribou, Caribou's just riding, she's just vibes. 1.00

00:59:23.140 She's not, you know, we're going to score her in a bit,

00:59:26.260 but Caribou is just kind of like,

00:59:27.820 I'll see what I can figure out.

00:59:28.920 I know. I really enjoy toward the end of it. I listened back to the episode yesterday. I really enjoy how she just goes off to America and she's like, you know, I'm going to see if I can make it as a stage performer. Doesn't work out. But yeah, she's like, let's just see. Let's see. Let's see where this takes me. You know, I'm going to do open a leech business. I love it. You know, I feel like that's a choice that a lot of us face in our 30s.

00:59:56.460 It's like, do I go back to school for a law degree or do I open a leech business, you know?

01:00:00.740 Yeah. And actually, that's something else I want to talk about, because when we first recorded this two years ago, it was while I was in the process of writing my book, Rebel of the Regency.

01:00:10.300 And it was before I had done as much research as I have now done on olden days medicine.

01:00:16.300 And so I now understand much better about leeches and how that was a really smart business move, because...

01:00:23.740 I thought you were going to say that it was actually, that it actually worked.

01:00:28.320 Maybe, well, I don't know.

01:00:29.600 Now that we've done more research, no.

01:00:32.400 Yeah.

01:00:33.800 No, what I've learned is that, like, in the Regency era, it's, like, the Regency era was the last great time for, like, leech-based medical medicine. 0.84

01:00:43.080 Love it.

01:00:44.060 It's the golden age of leeches.

01:00:46.080 Yeah, because people were, like, in the, like, late 1700s, like, bloodletting was, like, the cure for everything.

01:00:51.780 that's just how the understanding of medicine was at that point it's just like you got a cold

01:00:56.360 you've got gangrene like they didn't have words for these they're just like something's wrong

01:01:00.540 with you let's take out some blood and see if that fixes it and so they would just like do

01:01:05.200 bloodletting like they would just like cut you let the blood dribble into a little dish that's it

01:01:08.920 and then they realized like wait a minute leeches can do this in a much more

01:01:13.300 less messy way let's just get leeches to suck the blood out hell yeah so there was this leech

01:01:20.780 there's a leech boom at the time that princess caribou um like started her leech but it's just

01:01:28.020 like yeah it's kind of it was like the bitcoin of her day like she just got in exactly when everyone

01:01:33.180 and so people would like whatever like poor people anyone who just like lives near a swamp

01:01:38.880 is just like uh i can get leeches actually very easily because it's a swamp right here

01:01:44.300 i love it you'll buy these for money these like bugs okay so like she really got in there just

01:01:53.660 just when but then it's like her daughter and we talked about that in the episode right like her

01:01:58.060 daughter you know like leeches stopped being as popular so i think at that point it was it was

01:02:02.920 less of a thing but caribou got in there just when like leeches were out there like right she got in

01:02:07.680 on the ground floor of that of that leech biz that leech is i love a career pivot you know i know

01:02:15.840 that's her though i also love in the in the episode the part where you're like i'm a french

01:02:21.700 i'm from france i'm like no i'm french i met someone from france pivot i'm actually spanish

01:02:27.140 oh wait i met someone from spain pivot again now i'm from now i'm javasu like

01:02:32.000 just the constant reinvention it's it's it's wonderful and it honestly worked for her until

01:02:39.300 it didn't and then um oh yeah so the other thing i want to talk about in terms of like health

01:02:44.200 interventions is in the episode we talked briefly about like cupping because she had these like

01:02:48.740 scars and i was like i don't want to think it is so here's what i know about cupping now so it is 0.93

01:02:54.820 it is an ancient okay the concept of not what was done to her because that was just like fucked up

01:03:00.800 regency era bloodletting cupping but like in like historically in like you know chinese medicine and

01:03:07.860 things like that there's um you just create suction somehow and you just kind of like move the fibers

01:03:13.480 you know like the myo the fascia of the skin and this can like bring relief it's like a massage

01:03:18.240 tool or it can also for arthritis and lots of things like helpful can be a helpful thing and

01:03:22.960 people still do it now today massage therapists cupping i don't want to speak out against cupping

01:03:27.700 as a practice in general but cupping therapy in here we go so what was done to her um when she

01:03:37.800 had like her hair cut off she was in like the insane asylum hospital or something like before

01:03:42.620 she became caribou i'm asking you because you listened to the episode yes so um in 19th century

01:03:51.400 england and again i want to say like the overall umbrella of cupping is like a great helpful 0.71

01:03:56.600 therapeutic thing has been done in lots of cultures since time immemorial what was done in fucked up

01:04:03.560 hospitals in regency era england was um they would they would do bloodletting so they would have 0.93

01:04:12.240 these kind of like they make a whole bunch of little cuts they would use um instruments with

01:04:16.260 small spring-loaded blades which just like oh god um to make cuts and then they would they would

01:04:23.460 have heated up little like glass sort of little tiny fish bowls like with fire then they put that

01:04:30.180 on and then it would like draw the blood out really quickly and also burn you and leave scars 1.00

01:04:34.620 so that is what was done to her jeez and that's why there was scars on her body um but that also

01:04:44.600 just means like this is a person who's had medical treatment okay um so i just wanted to say that as

01:04:51.000 a correction um you know i wanted to correct like cupping is a great practice except when done

01:04:57.400 caveat yeah not not in the regency no no like these like spring-loaded blades just like jesus

01:05:07.580 it sounds horrifying it sounds horrifying yeah so a lot was done to her in that way okay so princess

01:05:14.420 do you have any other thoughts like you want to share about princess caribou i mean she's she's

01:05:19.820 an icon she's a treasure i think if she was an icon she would be i think she'd be an influencer

01:05:26.940 like 100 she would be an influencer yeah she'd be like here's how you wrap the huge following 0.50

01:05:34.100 like hawking some bullshit hell for me she's like but this is like from my culture like just take 0.83

01:05:40.500 my word for it like this is what we do and like look at my skin you know yeah now i can just 0.99

01:05:46.500 picture her doing something where she's like this is the javasu tea ritual and people would be like

01:05:52.720 this is actually very offensive and she'd be like i'm sorry that offended you i'm so sorry some 1.00

01:05:59.940 people were offended but like this is my culture so like what's that woman rachel dolezal who's

01:06:05.880 like the white woman who was like i'm actually black oh yes yes oh my gosh i saw her parents

01:06:11.460 interviewed and they were like she is not black it was like the most awkward interview i've ever

01:06:17.920 seen yeah so i think i think with princess caribou her thing is she just leans into it she wouldn't

01:06:23.580 be like you got me i'm actually mary so-and-so i think she'd be like oh no i am i am yeah yeah

01:06:30.140 i mean she couldn't get away with it today because that's part of the thing that was so

01:06:33.280 interesting back in you know back at that time that you get into in the episode is like this

01:06:38.100 was kind of a rural comparatively rural place they didn't nobody's they didn't have you know

01:06:44.120 the education that nobody spoke any languages really and they had limited access to knowledge

01:06:49.820 so they you know they were kind of doing their best to figure out where she could have come from

01:06:53.560 but also there was you know it was it was much easier to like deceive people in the way that

01:06:58.740 she did back then yeah well and that's where like every time she showed up that like every now and

01:07:04.160 then they're like oh i know a guy my friend's brother speaks portuguese right maybe maybe he

01:07:10.000 can help maybe this is portuguese yeah exactly exactly it's such a rural place and i think the

01:07:16.220 same way as like prinny's brighton pavilion he's just like this is what i think china is like and

01:07:21.280 everyone's like probably is we don't know sort of yeah we've never been there you've never been

01:07:26.260 there but this looks like colorful and interesting yeah yeah i okay so we're gonna go through we've

01:07:32.560 got four categories with which to score princess caribou and the first one is scandalousness how

01:07:39.180 scandalous was she seen by people in her era so this is interesting i was thinking about this

01:07:46.480 because she was she achieved notoriety and she was famous but i don't know if she was ever truly

01:07:54.140 scandalous even when she was revealed as a hoaxer you never really got the sense that people were

01:08:01.980 like massively outraged especially her friend elizabeth world like you might actually expect

01:08:07.260 someone like elizabeth world to feel kind of betrayed because you know her friend princess

01:08:13.940 caribou had had deceived her for i forget the exact time now it was several months but

01:08:18.300 but she wasn't angry and you don't get a sense that people were like scandalized by this so i

01:08:23.280 mean i don't know i think it's like it's it's and this is where it's sort of like in terms of like

01:08:29.540 true crime like mary bateman it's like she killed people she killed people people she stole from

01:08:35.700 people princess caribou just kind of showed up and and had a nice time like no one was no one

01:08:41.560 was mad about it and then she just kind of was like okay i'm going to america and they're like

01:08:45.320 great we'll pay for you to do so yep have fun live your best life so i don't know i mean i feel like

01:08:52.000 there's maybe you know one or two people along the way who are suspicious of her and maybe that

01:08:58.960 gets her like one or two points but i i can't really see going much higher than that yeah i

01:09:05.740 think where i i think one or two is fair and part of that for me is the fact that there was

01:09:10.620 um how we know about her is that like her story was written up so it was like enough of like a

01:09:16.040 local curiosity actually i'm gonna say because this is a classic we've had this several times

01:09:20.320 this season it's a classic regency era way too long title um right so the book is called princess

01:09:27.520 Caribou, a narrative of a singular

01:09:29.360 imposition practiced upon the benevolence

01:09:31.640 of a lady residing in the vicinity of the

01:09:33.620 city of Bristol by a young woman

01:09:35.560 of the name of Mary Wilcox, alias

01:09:37.560 Baker, alias Bakerstend, alias

01:09:39.580 Caribou, Princess of Javasu

01:09:41.400 by John Matthew Gutch, 1870.

01:09:46.860 I love these titles that are all just like, here's exactly what the

01:09:49.560 story is. Mary Beatman, her book is a similar thing

01:09:51.560 where it's just like, I'm going to tell you what you're getting in this book

01:09:53.620 because the title is spoilers.

01:09:55.360 so i think also just in position it's sort of like not the strongest down you could go with

01:10:01.920 it's sort of like this is an imposition but like no yeah i don't believe any bones were broken

01:10:06.960 it was sort of just like a bit perhaps an annoyance but we got past it yeah so yeah

01:10:14.300 the difference between scandalous and notoriety like in terms of this podcast and the scoring 0.99

01:10:19.840 scale scandalous tends to be like there was never any sexual scandal attached to her although she 0.52

01:10:24.160 did have this kind of marriage she had had a childhood princess caribou no one was ever like 0.61

01:10:30.940 everyone well they thought she was a princess so they thought she was like you know very

01:10:34.700 sophisticated and i don't know i agree i think this is like as much as it's like a wild and

01:10:40.440 bananas story it's it's not very scandalous let's i'll say two i think a two fair two and like good

01:10:47.540 for her yeah um scheminess is where i think she might step up okay i 10 right 10 i'm thinking 10

01:10:57.600 just for inventing an entire language and the part that i just cannot get over is that she

01:11:03.480 was consistent in the words that she used for specific items it's sort of like have you seen

01:11:10.720 project hail mary i saw it last night actually so you know how in that movie they pretty quickly

01:11:17.580 like ryan gosling was just like i'm just gonna make a computer program that translates rock

01:11:22.300 this kind of like whale sounds into words right i'll allow it let's just like progress this movie

01:11:28.160 but i feel like princess like princess caribou had a similar thing in her brain where she's just

01:11:35.500 like okay this sound means this this sounds mean this and she remembers that she's a little computer

01:11:40.080 in her brain to be so concerned about it yeah but also she's just constantly even before she

01:11:45.920 becomes princess caribou when she's kind of leading that peripatetic existence begging

01:11:51.740 she's constantly like disguising herself as a man at one point and then she's changing nationalities

01:12:00.020 yeah i mean an angle to be like there's so many beggars like we've talked about in this season

01:12:05.120 like there was a wealth inequality in this era you know crops were bad she's just like how can I 0.96

01:12:10.260 like to make a career of being a beggar like I have to stand out from the other beggars

01:12:15.180 she saw that people with accents foreigners quote-unquote maybe did a bit better so she's 0.57

01:12:21.400 like I'll be French oh I'll be Spanish oh I'll just this and I was Spanish right but also the

01:12:28.800 the backstory that she comes up for with for herself is is great too about like oh I was I'm

01:12:34.640 this princess and i was captured by pirates but then i escaped and made it ashore barely clinging

01:12:41.580 to life like she's clearly a great storyteller as well as you know someone with like the smart i

01:12:48.120 mean it really takes smarts to invent this foreign language and stick to it so she's a great storyteller

01:12:53.940 in a second language that she also invented which gives you bonus points to me and even the part

01:13:01.760 where she like um some of the servants thought oh maybe we'll hear her speaking English like

01:13:06.120 in her sleep so then she like made sure I love that I love that like the commitment to the bit

01:13:14.440 and then everything where she like everything like was she was consistent it's like you know

01:13:18.660 she does these prayers but only on Tuesdays and Thursdays and she always does this prayer

01:13:22.560 when she's drinking like she was like here are the cultural things I do and I don't know and

01:13:28.720 part of it where i just like i can't be mad at her um is that everyone just kept giving her more

01:13:35.340 suggestions and she would just like yes and you know and she's just like okay like it just it's

01:13:42.720 like a collective project that yeah and she just took these suggestions and that made people believe

01:13:48.240 her i mean 10 out of 10 10 out of 10 10 definitely scheminess but in like a whimsical way yeah fun

01:13:57.280 like i took an improv class kind of way i'm like let's just let's go okay the next number is

01:14:04.160 significance and i mean i did already say there's not any as far as i didn't you know go down every

01:14:08.940 single street and bath but based on the fact that mary shelley is commemorated i think twice

01:14:13.380 there's a there's a sign saying like this is where she lived when she wrote frankenstein

01:14:17.840 and then there's like an escape room called mary shelley's house of frankenstein i love that i do

01:14:24.700 love that i love that for her but and i went to the gift shop and it was great and i recommend it 0.67

01:14:28.660 the gift shop um because i hate escape rooms but we don't need to i fucking hate escape i've never 0.55

01:14:35.380 tried one but i want to i thought i would like it because i like murder mysteries but i do not 0.90

01:14:42.440 like puzzles and you gotta love puzzles to like an escape room um anyway but maybe mary shelley's

01:14:52.040 House of Frankenstein is great but I just mean Jane Austen is everywhere Mary Shelley who's like

01:14:56.020 arguably as famous as Jane Austen in terms of a writer and a British woman almost nothing there

01:15:02.180 so the fact that Caribou is not there at all is perhaps not surprising because Bath is kind of

01:15:06.280 slow to pick up like the Mary Shelley's House of Frankenstein opened I asked the person in the

01:15:12.040 gift shop it was like four years ago like Mary Shelley was not commemorated in the city where

01:15:16.460 your book frankenstein until 2022 like get it together that's crazy that's crazy i'm probably

01:15:24.800 yeah actually i was yeah it'd be interesting to know i was gonna i was gonna be like really

01:15:31.180 provocative and say like i bet more people have read frankenstein than all of jane austen's

01:15:37.680 novels but then our novels but then i was like actually that might not be true the jane austen

01:15:42.420 nights are like they're serious they're serious like the fact that bath's entire economy is based

01:15:47.960 on people who love jane austen going there like i feel like i think it could be i don't i would

01:15:53.420 be interested to know because a lot of people are assigned frankenstein in school so that's a lot of

01:15:56.780 people maybe never read i i would put them on par in terms of like a woman author who everyone has

01:16:02.880 heard of yeah heard of jane austen you've heard of mary shelley yeah yeah caribou what i will say

01:16:09.760 in terms of her significance and this is worth at least one point is there was a movie made

01:16:13.420 that's what i was that's exactly what i was gonna say i was like biopic okay i don't want to be that

01:16:19.800 person i don't want to put any i don't want to put you down and but are we gonna have biopics

01:16:24.280 made about us i you know not that we know of yet not that we know of yet i think it would be good

01:16:31.500 if it was a biopic of us both yes some sort of like you know a story about both of us coming

01:16:38.140 together as podcasters and friends there we go by our significance i don't know you know not

01:16:43.940 everyone gets a biopic and she not everyone got one very few people who i've talked about on my

01:16:49.360 podcast have had biopics and we're always like where's the movie get on this hollywood and this

01:16:55.600 one they did that's what i'm talking about and what's crazy because i looked it up yesterday

01:17:00.480 the cast is like shockingly stacked kevin klein is in it john lifko is in the princess caribou

01:17:08.600 biopic and i made a solemn vow to myself that if i ever meet john lifko in person i'm gonna be like

01:17:15.580 john your work in princess caribou of 1994 changed my life be like that was it yeah it's like don't

01:17:27.880 know you're from somewhere and he'll be like oh there's this third arc from the sun it's like

01:17:30.880 conclave like princess caribou that's right that's where i know you're from so i do think

01:17:38.660 having a biopic is honestly well i think it's more than one point in significance like because

01:17:43.120 i would say so like who is a biopic like marie antoinette i don't know like mary queen of scots

01:17:47.700 like this is the echelon of people who actually have biopic yeah yeah which is still kind of

01:17:53.360 surprising i would actually be curious to know a little bit about how that movie even got made

01:17:59.200 oh i don't know i'm sure it's some sort of money laundering scheme because oh sure

01:18:03.160 it's a pretty i love i love that it exists and i'm gonna cover it at some point on my patreon but

01:18:08.820 so in terms of significance other than the movie like i don't think yeah i mean i feel like the

01:18:14.080 movie only gets her like i don't know two or three points i'm gonna say three points entirely for the

01:18:23.040 movie there is that one painting and every now and then that shows up is like painting of a

01:18:28.260 person dressed differently than others were in the era so i think it's three combined for the

01:18:33.420 painting and the movie yeah um the final category and this is this will be an interesting discussion

01:18:39.840 because this is the sexism bonus where i give bonus points to people for like persevering in

01:18:44.740 the face of sexism and the princess caribou like before that like yeah she was like abandoned by 0.76

01:18:51.780 this man like she was she had a child she had to give the child a lot of like gender-based 1.00

01:18:56.240 stuff was going on like there wasn't a lot of opportunities for a young poor woman like that 1.00

01:19:00.760 was just the world she lived in this is why she became a beggar um so that affected her certainly 0.92

01:19:06.520 in the first part of her life but the rest of it like you know it's there but i think when she 0.97

01:19:12.680 showed up as a princess right if a if a man showed up as a prince i think he would have been treated

01:19:18.200 very similarly like i don't think she was i don't know um and then she got the leech business like

01:19:24.460 it seems like she kind of she may do yeah i never especially once she's like assumed the princess

01:19:30.360 caribou identity i never really felt like she was running up against sexism no and like there's

01:19:37.260 never even as i think because she was portraying herself as a princess there's never any threat of

01:19:40.980 like sexual violence you know no one was ever like yeah this princess i'm gonna like whatever

01:19:46.600 But like everyone really, but that's partially Elizabeth Worrell, just like vouching for her and kind of being like her patron.

01:19:52.420 Like nobody tried it.

01:19:54.680 And so I don't know.

01:19:55.640 So that's like women protecting women. 0.96

01:19:58.100 Right. 0.57

01:19:58.580 I don't know.

01:19:59.540 I don't know. 1.00

01:19:59.800 But there's definitely the threat of sexual violence implicit in the pirate story that she told.

01:20:07.680 And I think I would, I would say that maybe that never happened.

01:20:11.620 So does that even have any bearing on this conversation?

01:20:14.640 but having part of that as her story i think made people more sympathetic to her thinking like oh

01:20:19.000 this prince has been through so much like i think when i'm thinking about like if a man showed up

01:20:23.440 being like i'm prince caribou from javasu like i think he would be accepted in a certain way but

01:20:29.020 because she was a woman people like extra she's in distress and exactly looked out for her more

01:20:35.240 so it's like yeah it's kind of the chivalrous thing to do yeah yeah i feel like this number

01:20:41.940 is going to be like she certainly gets like one point for like being seduced and abandoned she

01:20:45.760 gets one point for like having to give up her child but like mary bateman you know she just

01:20:51.420 kind of like was like this is what society is like and i'm gonna find a way to thrive do it

01:20:56.800 so i think it's a two i feel fine with the two i i don't see any reason to go much higher than that

01:21:04.380 yeah so this is a quite a low score i knew it would be a low score but it's a score she's on

01:21:09.360 she's here on the list she's on the list i mean she scored 10 in scheminess so in terms of not

01:21:16.760 everybody does you know yeah so let me just double check my math um so it's yeah 17 so where this

01:21:25.720 puts her is i'm just in terms of the scale the fredigan memorial scandal it's just a scale

01:21:32.680 and again these numbers are going to be used to determine the brackets so here's what's

01:21:36.360 interesting about it i've still got a few more people to come so this she is the lowest score

01:21:40.200 of the season so far wow which you know respect whatever um but that means she's going to be

01:21:46.560 facing off against the highest score so which is interesting and so currently the highest score is

01:21:54.240 haitian queen in exile queen marie louise christophe so an actual person an actual queen

01:22:02.240 and actual royalty

01:22:04.720 actual royalty

01:22:06.280 and in exile too it's funny

01:22:10.260 that will be an interesting match 0.97

01:22:13.380 so she's going to 17

01:22:15.020 I will just say comparatively

01:22:16.280 the Bronte sisters have a 19 0.91

01:22:18.420 so she's not far off from them

01:22:20.340 poor people doing their best 0.93

01:22:23.600 in a shitty world 0.78

01:22:24.600 Mary Bateman has a 23 1.00

01:22:28.300 but that's because she murdered people 1.00

01:22:29.920 and therefore was more scandal

01:22:31.440 yes yeah get that little murder bump but i do i do think i kind of put princess caribou and

01:22:38.740 mary bateman in their own kind of little corner of just kind of like grifter corner of just like

01:22:42.920 yeah this is the society you're in and you can either just be an unhappy like domestic servant

01:22:48.740 for your whole life or you can just like dream big and pretend to be a royal who invented a

01:22:54.480 language or murder people like women can do anything you know i that's the most empowering 1.00

01:23:02.320 message i've heard in recent memory yeah exactly like do crime feminism that's right well how many 1.00

01:23:13.620 you know other poor women of this era like did just a life of drudgery or just like had kids and 0.99

01:23:19.380 ran a farm and we don't know their names but we do there's not movies about them but there's a

01:23:23.420 yeah so gavin can you remind everybody please about your amazing podcast and where they can

01:23:30.900 hear more from you yeah sure so i do a podcast called the art of crime it's a history podcast

01:23:37.040 about the unlikely collisions between true crime and the arts and i am just wrapping up a season

01:23:43.120 about artists and espionage and um actually i'm getting ready to release an episode about someone

01:23:51.380 i first heard about i think on your show uh the chevalier day on yeah yes iconic regency era

01:24:00.700 person as well exactly she is really fascinating but it's part of a two-part episode it she's kind

01:24:07.220 of like a major character but the the episodes are really about this guy named pierre beaumarche

01:24:12.520 who was insane like i cannot believe he existed but yeah he was a watchmaker harpist music

01:24:20.880 instructor playwright polemicist spy and international arms dealer here's here's what

01:24:29.280 i'm thinking though like to bring it back to caribou and mary bateman people in this era

01:24:33.120 never had just one hustle no people were just like how can i do every job yes much like today's

01:24:40.920 gig economy it's like you got to be a spy you got to be a harpist like you have to got to be a

01:24:46.120 fencer you know like you gotta sell some amu like some weapons to the american revolutionaries like 0.66

01:24:52.080 just wherever you get the opportunities you gotta take it this is funny actually i mentioned

01:24:56.800 because you brought this up and so we're having like one of these beautiful moments of like

01:25:00.820 coalescing um because so this we're revisiting princess caribou now so she can be in the diamond

01:25:06.560 of the season playoffs next week we're going to be re-releasing my episode about chevalier day on

01:25:11.500 so she can be in the diamond of the season so stay tuned for that listeners because my episode

01:25:18.160 i think my chevalier i think that's coming out next wednesday too so they'll basically they'll

01:25:24.160 be they'll coincide with each other i think you can listen to gavin's episode and then he said

01:25:28.660 like chevalier is kind of like a supporting character and then the next week yeah yeah

01:25:31.960 fill in the gaps like i think it's a nice complimentary situation i think it's perfect

01:25:36.300 and are you not in your spy versus spy season like you're going to be having some sort of

01:25:40.980 playoff also aren't you yeah it's actually got a similar structure to your show so i completely

01:25:46.180 copied you yeah so no i copied you but i feel like you copied it was all good because you copied

01:25:52.160 someone else so it's fine but yeah so there's kind of like a playoff situation every episode

01:25:59.280 uh i have a special guest judge on to adjudicate the spy based on their performance as a spy

01:26:05.840 so yeah it's kind of a fun like you know little playful way to to do it well and that's where on

01:26:14.160 my show so like knowing that you're doing this kind of like mini series about spies with the

01:26:17.900 scores i was like oh i should have something similar for the regency like just because i

01:26:20.520 always score people on my podcast and like sometimes the scores are high and sometimes

01:26:24.880 it's like with princess caribou sometimes the score is low but i'm like oh i'm really rooting

01:26:28.400 for her um that's where i thought about the playoffs so like we're gonna have the scores

01:26:32.920 those will be the seating and then the the listeners will get to vote and then we'll see

01:26:37.180 who ultimately merges as the diamond of the season well you just mentioned that um like the

01:26:42.020 rooting for someone even though they score really low and i had a similar case on spy versus spy so

01:26:49.280 i recently released an episode about matahari and i interviewed an author who has written about her

01:26:55.140 and it's really interesting because matahari is known as like the ultimate femme fatale 0.99

01:27:01.500 super spy sex symbol etc etc but she was actually completely fucking incompetent as a spy like 0.97

01:27:09.040 the worst ever had no idea what she was doing and it was just so funny because she scored 0.99

01:27:15.560 almost the lowest of all the spies but she also has this amazing she's another grifter actually

01:27:21.920 because she claimed yeah she pretended to be a different ethnicity right yes she was like i'm 0.99

01:27:27.880 from indonesia and it's like you're dutch um again it's just like a white woman with brown hair

01:27:34.660 it is it is it's like um you're dutch

01:27:39.260 yeah yeah no matter hurry i think that's a great example because yeah it's like i would

01:27:46.120 your scale is different from my scale but i feel like she's got the significance because she's

01:27:49.460 famous she is famous like spy biz like nothing no no she was so inept they they they try to

01:27:57.860 to make her like write messages and secret and invisible ink and she just like kept dumping it

01:28:03.860 out she's like i'm not doing this like what are you doing yeah so this is exactly so the

01:28:12.720 it's interesting to score people based on things and then at the end you're like oh maybe i should

01:28:17.240 have made this scale different so i can give points to people who i just think yeah but the

01:28:22.420 scale is what the scale is um gavin thank you so much for joining me again for this like i don't

01:28:27.060 know let's call it our anniversary yeah that's right anniversary princess caribou brought us

01:28:32.080 together and and look at us now look at us now um well i yeah i will just say to all the listeners

01:28:41.220 stay tuned next week we're going to be revisiting if you don't already know the story of chevalier

01:28:45.080 diane but listen to gavin's episode about what's the name of the person pierre beaumarche

01:28:49.560 pierre beaumarche just knows chevalier diane is going to show up there and then we'll be talking

01:28:53.980 about her later in mine and i i love in this regency era you know people think about like

01:29:00.760 the royal family and jane austen but it's like there are all these other people there too

01:29:04.680 and i love like fleshing out what the world was like just full of like weirdos like grifters and 0.76

01:29:11.100 arms dealers like yeah it's not just like people going to balls like this is like really wild

01:29:17.580 time yeah yeah uh well listeners thank you so much for listening and i'll talk to you and until 0.98

01:29:23.740 next time keep your pants on and your tits out vulgar history is researched scripted and hosted 0.94

01:29:31.420 by ann foster editor is christina lumagi theme music is by the severin duo regency era artwork 0.98

01:29:37.760 by karen moynihan social media videos by magdalena denson transcripts of this podcast are available

01:29:43.420 at vulgarhistory.com by Aveline Malik.

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Vulgar History - April 22, 2026

Regency Era Grifter ＂Princess Caraboo＂

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Transcript