Andrew Cochrane Johnstone had apparently disappeared, but in 1826 the Audit Office, calculating that he owed the Government £600,000 on some bills of exchange drawn while he was Governor of Dominica, made efforts to discover his whereabouts. It was found that in either 1814 or 1815 he had arrived in Dominica, where he still owned some property, and remained there until 1819 or 1820, when he bought an estate in Demerara and settled there. In 1823, following a disagreement with his creditors, he was obliged to sell up and leave Demerara and move to Martinique, but after a few months he returned to Paris, where, realising that the Treasury was looking for its money, he wrote from an undisclosed address asking to be excused from his debts. The last known letter from him was written in 1828, and in the absence of any further correspondence on the matter it is to be assumed that he died not long afterwards. Holloway, Lyte, McRae and Sandom returned to that obscurity from which they had briefly emerged.
The actions of Richard Gaythorne Butt after his release from prison strongly suggest he had undergone severe mental suffering as a result of his conviction. On the advice of friends who thought it would be best if he left England, he voyaged to Dominica to find Cochrane Johnstone and recover £4,800 he believed was owing to him, but returned empty-handed. He became obsessed with the idea that he had been found guilty solely so that Lord Ellenborough could pocket the £1,000 fine, and indeed that the noble judge had actually done so. All arguments to convince him that he was wrong were useless. When applying at Bow Street Magistrate’s Court for a warrant to apprehend Lord Ellenborough, he became so violent that the magistrate threatened to commit him. Butt also accused Lord Castlereagh, leader of the House of Commons, of lying to the House in suggesting that he (Butt) had petitioned for mercy to have the sentence of the pillory removed. Butt wrote to the newspapers, which unsurprisingly refused to print his accusations, and neither could he find anyone willing to publish them in pamphlet form. He eventually had 200 posters printed and distributed. In March 1817, The Times commented: ‘Yesterday, Mr R. G. Butt, who has for some time past taken singular pains to be prosecuted for libel, had at last his wish gratified … ’.20 When arrested it was found that he had prepared placards against other public figures that he was about to distribute. ‘It is apprehended that Mr Butt is somewhat deranged in his mind but not in such a state as to be irresponsible for his actions,’ it was observed. ‘He is respectably connected but his relations have not thought fit to give bail for him and as he had dissipated all his property they are not inclined to issue a Commission of Lunacy against him.’21 Butt was found guilty and sentenced to a total of fifteen months in prison. In 1821 he was writing almost daily letters about his case from White Cross Street debtors’ prison. Like Cochrane, he maintained to the end of his life that he was innocent of any fraud. When Cochrane was eventually exonerated, Butt peppered parliament with petitions, demanding the same treatment. They were ignored. He died, aged 73, in 1849.
Charles Random de Berenger managed to put the whole affair behind him. Abandoning the idea of making his fortune in America, he married an Englishwoman and brought up a large family. He wrote a book on self-defence and invented a waterproof rifle. In 1831 he opened a sports club at Cremorne Gardens, Chelsea, where he taught shooting. He never recovered his lost inheritance, and died as he had lived, in debt, in 1845.
TWO
The Princess of Javasu
When Mary Willcocks was baptised in November 1791 in the isolated farming village of Witheridge, in Devonshire, her future must have seemed predetermined. The daughter of a cobbler who had fallen on hard times, she was one of eleven children, only four of whom lived to adulthood. Destined like her mother for a life of obscurity, worn by toil and childbearing, nevertheless Mary became, albeit briefly, the toast of Britain and the talk of two continents. The imposture that brought her lasting fame was not, however, a calculated deception, but evolved from Mary’s character, skills and experiences. It was as if the first twenty-five years of her life were merely preparation for the greatest part she would ever play: Caraboo, the Princess of Javasu.
Restless and unsettled, Mary always seemed to be striving for something better in life, with a spirit of determination and self-reliance, as if she had something to prove. As a child she loved climbing trees, playing cricket and fishing. An excellent swimmer, she thought nothing of diving into the river. Although small and slightly built, she was strong for her size, and active. Her dexterous physicality lent her a feral and wayward charm, which was to be important later on when she would need to persuade her dupes that she was not an Englishwoman.
Receiving only the minimum of schooling, she reached adulthood barely able to read and write. Her wild and independent ways led some observers to conclude incorrectly that she was simple-minded, but Mary was both naturally bright and gifted with an extraordinarily retentive memory and considerable talent as a mimic. The one thing she lacked was creativity. Hers was the kind of mind that fed eagerly on facts and stimuli, quickly utilising them for her own purposes – so rapidly that it seemed to others as if her ideas were fresh and startling. She was capable of becoming what others wanted her to be, reinventing herself again and again as it suited her. At a time when many people rarely went beyond the bounds of their own village, she was unafraid of travelling long distances, often alone, and dreamed of going to America.
Sent to work on local farms weeding cornfields, she preferred to drive horses or try to prove to the farm boys that she could carry loads just as heavy as theirs. At the age of 15 she suffered a severe bout of rheumatic fever, which was to recur throughout her life. Later, her father, deeply embarrassed at her notoriety, was to suggest that she had never been quite right in the head ever since this illness.
At 16 she went to work as a nursemaid for a family called Moon who farmed at nearby Bradford Barton, but two years later, after asking for and being refused a pay rise, she walked out. Her next occupation was domestic service in Exeter, but only eight weeks later she decided the work was too hard, and left. This abandonment of positions which other girls might have thought acceptable was to be a feature of her life. Her restless nature preferred the stimulus of risky change to drab but safe certainty. Wandering the streets of Exeter with her wages in her pocket, she saw a beautiful white dress for sale, something so different from the plain working clothes she had always worn that, impulsively, she spent all her money on it. When she arrived home wearing it her outraged father thrashed her with his belt. Her family and friends, all convinced that she had come by the dress through theft or prostitution, regarded her with cold hostility. Mary was distraught, but by now she had perfected her strategy for dealing with situations she found unpleasant: she ran away.
Exhausted, ill and hungry, Mary arrived in London, where she was taken to a fever hospital. There she was given a treatment known as wet cupping. The back of her head was shaved and the skin scarified with an instrument set with a series of parallel blades. Hot glasses were then applied, which filled with blood. This treatment, intended to relieve the pressure on her overheated brain, left permanent scars, which gradually became hidden as her hair regrew. Once she was well, normal practice demanded she be sent back to Witheridge, but Mary was adept at finding sympathetic male protectors, who helped her to bend the rules and found ways of excusing her eccentricities. The first in this series of mildly besotted yet virtuously platonic admirers was the hospital clergyman, Mr Pattenden, who found her a job as a nursemaid with a family called Matthews early in 1811. Mrs Matthews, a worthy and religious lady, later commended Mary as a good servant whose conduct was always correct, ‘except that she told terrible stories, yet after all they were such as did no injury to others, or good to herself. Her behaviour was always so strange and eccentric, and her ways so mysterious … that no–one who did not know the girl would believe them …’.1 Mrs Matthews failed to elaborate, but it is very probable that Mary told stories of travel abroad, gypsies, highwaymen and dramatic adventures. She sometimes stopped eating for several con
secutive days to prove how long she could go without food. After Mary had been with the family a year, Mrs Matthews asked Mr Pattenden to speak to her about her stories and pranks. Unable to face him, Mary ran away. Despite this, she was forgiven and allowed to return. Mrs Matthews and her daughter taught Mary to read and write, finding her quick to learn, and soon she was able to send letters home, enclosing money she had saved from her wages.
Mary also began to take an interest in the customs of the orthodox Jewish family who lived next door. The Devon girl who would later become an Eastern princess was fascinated by the prayers chanted in Hebrew, the extraordinary alphabet, the romance of ritual. She became friends with the Jewish family’s cook, talking to her over the garden fence as she pegged washing on the line, and may have questioned her about the Jewish diet.
In 1813 a member of the Jewish family was to be married, and Mary was invited to the wedding. It was a promise of enchantment, like being transported to a strange, wonderful and unknown country. When she asked for permission to go, however, Mrs Matthews refused. Mary, not a girl to be thwarted, got a friend to write a letter inviting her to a christening. Permission was granted, but Mary went instead to the Jewish wedding. When Mrs Matthews found out the truth there was a bitter argument, and Mary packed her things and left. Staying briefly with a lady who made plumes for hats, she persuaded a friend to write to her parents saying she had left England.
Mary had in fact obtained admission to the Magdalen Hospital in London, a home for fallen women. She later claimed that she had mistaken the establishment for a nunnery, but it is obvious from the record of her admission that she knew the nature of the place and lied to get in, saying that she was an orphan and had led a loose life. She gave the name Ann Burgess, Ann being her middle name and Burgess her mother’s maiden name. She was unsettled and restless from the start, and on being asked who her friends were said she would hang herself if it was discovered who she was. By July she was begging to be allowed to leave, and was eventually permitted to go.
For the next four years her story, as she later told it, is a fantastical traveller’s tale. She claimed to have spent time disguised as a boy and to have fallen in with highwaymen, only narrowly escaping with her life after they suspected her of being a police spy. Much of the time she was actually in service, or on the road, taking lifts on carts or just walking. Begging, she knew, was fraught with risks. If caught, she could have been imprisoned, transported, or forcibly returned to her own parish and placed in a workhouse. She therefore developed a subtle technique, in which she never appeared to be directly soliciting money but presented herself as a forlorn and weary creature, tearing her clothes better to play the part, and was often assisted out of sympathy. The most momentous development was the liaison which led, in February 1816, to the birth of her son, John Edward Francis Baker. She was to give several conflicting accounts of both the identity of the father and the location of the birth. Mr Pattenden helped her have the child admitted to London’s Foundling Hospital, where Mary gave the father’s name as John Baker and his occupation as a bricklayer of Exeter. She next went into service with a family called Starling. Mrs Starling seemed to like Mary, although she, like so many, found her odd and eccentric to the extent that she sometimes thought the girl must be out of her mind.
She was very fond of the children, ‘but told them such strange stories about gypsies and herself, that she frightened them out of their wits. She once came into the parlour, and had dressed herself up so like a gypsy, that the children did not know her.’2
Mary claimed that she had been to the East Indies and America, and that her child, whose father was a Frenchman, had been born in Philadelphia by the side of a river. At the end of October her son died. Mary soon lost whatever grip she had had on reason and began setting fire to the beds in the Starling home. She was sacked.
In February 1817 Mary returned to Devon, telling her parents she was about to depart for the Indies. She impressed them with her learning, and spent time with her younger sister, 15-year-old Susan, prattling away to her in a language which her father believed to be French. This was probably what she later referred to as her ‘lingo’,3 a language she had made up, probably to amuse children, and lend her stories of foreign travel some verisimilitude. After ten days she sent a trunk of clothes to Bristol and set out on the road alone. She later claimed to have spent three days living with gypsies.
Arriving in Bristol on 10 March with enough money for cheap lodgings, Mary met Eleanor Joseph, a Jewish girl who was staying with a Mrs Neale and her two daughters and who let Mary share her room for a shilling a night. A ship was due to sail for America at the end of March, for which the cheapest fare was five guineas, providing she bought her own food. To raise money for the fare, Mary and Eleanor went out begging together, but at first they were not successful. While on the road, Mary saw some French lace-makers from Normandy, and was fascinated by their high lace headdresses. More importantly, she saw that their unusual appearance was attracting attention. Mary was wearing a black shawl and Eleanor suggested she wear it as a turban. It took but a moment for Mary to ‘outlandish’4 her appearance, adding to the effect by talking in her lingo.
There was one drawback to the scheme, which Mary had not anticipated. French was not as exotic as she had supposed – there were many people in the city who spoke the language, and she was often obliged to be fast on her feet to avoid detection. One gentleman, eager to help her, wrote the name of the French consul on a sheet of paper for her. Still lacking the fare, Mary did what she was best at: on 1 April 1817 she abandoned her possessions and left Bristol. She may have reasoned that in the country she was far less likely to encounter people who spoke French. Three miles north-west of Bristol was the country home of Lord de Clifford, where the estate workers took pity on the poor lost foreign lady and gave her a dinner of roast veal, greens and potatoes. Assuming she was French, they decided to take her to see Lord de Clifford’s French cook. Mary tried to get away, but was obliged to go in, where, confronted by the cook, addressed him in lingo. He asked if she was Spanish, and she quickly replied ‘Si’. If he had been able to speak Spanish she would have been in some trouble, but he could not; however, one of the servants had some Spanish friends in Bristol and offered to take Mary there. At the very first opportunity, Mary bolted.
When she was able successfully to pull the wool over people’s eyes, Mary regarded her escapades as a huge joke. Thus far, this was probably the most fun she had ever had. Begging a bed for the night at the cottage of a farm labourer named Yates, she was able to hear him talking to his wife in the next room. Having admitted her to their home, they were both now quaking with fear in case she should be a robber in disguise. Mary was obliged to stifle her fits of laughter.
The following day she met a man on the road, the son of a wheelwright, who, intrigued by her lingo, decided to attach himself to her. He introduced her to a French governess, when again Mary managed to convince her listeners that she was Spanish, and slipped away. The wheelwright’s son was not to be eluded so easily though, and caught up with her as she was resting outside a public house. When he announced that he had been given money to look after her, the locals all gathered around Mary and started offering her things to eat and drink, which she declined. Told that she was Spanish, they offered her brandy, which she refused, as she disliked alcoholic drinks. She finally accepted a little rum well diluted with water, and some biscuits. On the road again, the wheelwright’s son doggedly by her side, she met two men, one of them claiming he could speak Spanish. By now Mary must have thought she could tough out anything and boldly spoke to him in lingo. He spoke back to her, neither of them understanding the other. Eventually the others asked him what she was saying. Having boasted he spoke Spanish, he was unwilling to admit he could not understand her and said that she was indeed Spanish, that she came from Madrid Hill and that her father and mother were following her.
Mary moved on, the wheelwright’s son still trotting after her.
She tried to discourage him by showing him the paper with the name and address of the French consul on it. Instead, after treating her to a beefsteak dinner, he took her back to the French governess, where she was shown off to some visitors, and it was suggested that he take her to a Spanish family. Mary had by now learned some valuable lessons: first of all that people were fascinated by foreigners, and anxious to help; and also that some would pretend to understand her lingo rather than admit ignorance. The last people she wanted to see, however, were the Spanish family, and on the way to see them Mary finally managed to give her unwanted companion the slip. On the following day she made her way along the road to the village of Almondsbury, some 7 miles north of Bristol.
This pretty village of just a few hundred inhabitants, its cottages nestling in the shelter of Almondsbury Hill, had for some years attracted the attention of wealthy merchants from Bristol, who built manor houses there. Of these, the finest was sixteenth-century Knole, with a distinctive octagonal stone tower, its magnificent hilltop location affording views across the Severn. The Knole estate covered 1,500 acres, and included a deer park, woodlands, dairy farms and cottages. It was an ideal setting in which a mysterious feral girl could wander at will.
Fraudsters and Charlatans Page 4