As it’s 3 April, we must celebrate the anniversary of the arrival in Almondsbury, Gloucestershire, of the exotic Princess Caraboo, who came from a far-off land and could only communicate through mime.
She could speak, but her mother tongue was so indecipherable, the only thing she managed to get people to understand, according to an anonymous 1817 account of the tale, was her name.
She’d presented herself at a cottage, and got her hosts to grasp the name by gesturing at herself and repeating the word ‘Caraboo’ until they got it.
Soon, she came to the attention of Elizabeth Worrall, wife of the local town clerk and/or magistrate, who was sympathetic. Her husband Samuel, however, according to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, was
known as ‘Devil’ Worrall and a notorious drunkard.
He had her sent to Bristol and tried for being a beggar, where she was (according to antiquarian-priest-scholar Sabine Baring-Gould) “consigned to St Peter’s Hospital for Vagrants”, but his kinder hearted wife intervened:
At some point, as luck would have it, a Portuguese sailor, Manuel Enes (or Eynesso, depending on whose account you’re reading) pitched up, understood every word the young woman said, and related her sorry tale.
Sabine Baring-Gould has a longer, more thrilling account of her travels involving PIRATES! CANNIBALS! And ESCAPE!
She was daughter of a person of high rank, of Chinese origin, by a Mandin^ or Malay woman, who was killed in war between the Boogoos (cannibals) and the Mandins (Malays). Whilst walking in her garden at Javasu attended by three sammen (women), she was seized by pirates commanded by a man named Cheeming, bound hand and foot, her mouth covered, and carried off. She herself in her struggles wounded two of Cheeming’s men with her creese ; one of these died, the other recovered by the assistance of a justee (surgeon). After eleven days she was sold to the captain of a brig called the Tappa-Boo. A month later she arrived at a port, presumably Batavia, remained there two days, and then started for England, which was reached in eleven weeks. In consequence of ill-usage by the crew, she made her escape to shore. She had had a dress of silk embroidered and interwoven with gold, but she had been induced to exchange this with a woman in a cottage whose doors were painted green, but the situation of which she could not describe.
This was marvellous news, obviously — and with absolutely no holes in. She was installed at the Worralls’ house, Knole Park, and — what with her being an Actual Princess — everyone wanted to come and gawp. ODNB again:
In one account of her life, she’s pictured, surrounded by admiring new friends:
There was a pesky Greek manservant who thought her a fraud, but thankfully a local polymath, Dr Wilkinson, “who gave subscription lectures on everything from electricity to washable wallpaper”, identified her native dialect as Rejang, spoken in Sumatra.
According to William Donaldson’s Brewer’s Rogues, Villains & Eccentrics, the good doctor informed the Bath Chronicle about her eating habits and her modesty around potential suitors:
Samuel Worrall was won over — and ran a business, the private Tolzey Bank, which he needed to promote — so he allowed Wilkinson to publish his findings in the newspapers, and see if any readers could tell them more about Javasu.
Which was when things started to unravel. As the ODNB says, “for a short time she was internationally famous”, and the problem with being widely seen is that someone might have known you in The Before Times.
Perhaps if Mary Willcocks, daughter of a Devonshire cobbler, had travelled a little further from home, she’d have been OK, but a Bristol landlady who’d put her up for a time recognised her and said so publicly. Princess Caraboo was exposed an impostor and fraud…
According to her father, Mary had had rheumatic fever as a child and
never been right in the head since.
Perhaps he meant well.
Remarkably, Mrs Worrall remained supportive, to the extent that she paid for Mary to flee to America. By November 1817, Mary was in New York, and stayed in America until 1824. Four years later, though, the former Princess was back in Bristol, where she made a respectable living for 30 years supplying leeches to the infirmary.
Obviously.
She was embarrassed, occasionally, by children chasing after her in the streets shouting “Caraboo!”, but the business thrived, and she handed it on to her daughter, who lived
alone … in a house full of cats until her death in a fire in February 1900
The story of Princess Caraboo was told in a 1994 film, in which Phoebe Cates plays Caraboo, and real-life husband Kevin Kline is the suspicious Greek servant. It got mixed reviews, but gentlemen of a certain age may harbour a wish to see it nonetheless…
