I know You're a Fraud, But What Am I?

gonna be great. As we did in our first two seasons, we planned to look at some of history's transgressions and get a better understanding of what really went down. So we're gonna take a look at how these crimes might be seen through today's eyes. As we always say, a little distance goes a long way. We do always say that. So today we're going to talk about a woman who pretended to be royalty from a far away island. But first we have to talk about what makes an impostor.

Just to set this whole season up, impostors are people who pretend to be someone else for their own game. Often that's financial gain, but it's not unheard of for an impostor to be dishonest to improve their social status or social gain. Some make up a new identity, or they steal your identity. Some impostors do it in order to circumvent on just rules we're going to talk this season about, you know, women who dressed like men in order to fight in wars or to go to school.

And some are simply criminals looking for an easy way to evade capture. So in today's world, impostors might impersonate people in organizations that you would ordinarily trust. When someone feigning to be the I r S Calls about an unpaid bill, you would be inclined to assume that's the real deal. They might also pretend to be someone that you know, and they may pretend to work for play pass such as the Social Security Administration or even your

local electric company. No matter who they pretend to work for, though, their main goal is usually to get you to pay them or to get enough of your personal information so that they can pay themselves at your expense, and they

will try anyway they can to get that info. Modern imposter scams often begin with an unsolicited phone call, email, text, or even social media message, and our technology allows people to use techniques like social engineering, which would be fishing for confidential or personal information that they might use for fraudulent purposes against you. You can also meet many of today's impostors on dating sites or like we said, social media, where they can have easily created fake profiles. We even

have the term cat fishing for this behavior. So it's super common even with our technology, though it's the same destination at always has been no matter what the story. Many impostors are in it for money, and they will eventually ask you to transfer funds to them, usually for a reason that sounds pretty plausible and in jail. Right. So all of that explained, let's finally set our scenes. So our first impostor is a woman who was born

Mary Wilcox in sevente or two. Anyway, she was born to a poor family living in Devon, England, and as she became an adult, she adopted a disguise that she hoped would make her more interesting to those she considered commoners. So she became Princess Caribou, a fictional royal who pretended to come from the far far away island of Java Suit.

Java Suit she claimed was located in the Indian Ocean. Okay, it's a little bit early, but we're going to take a break here for a word from our sponsors so that we can keep the narrative of this impostors got eyes altogether, and we're going to talk about the woman who fooled a whole village into thinking she was royalty. After this, welcome back to Criminalia. Let's meet the woman

who called herself Princess Caribou. One day in the spring of eighteen seventeen, a woman in her mid twenties appeared in the town of Almondsbury, near Bristol, speaking a never heard before language, not a word of English. She wore unusual clothing and a black turban on her head, and she carried a small bundle with her that contained a few necessities, so a few halfpennies and a counterfeit sixpence.

When she first encountered a resident of the village, it was the cobbler, and he initially assumed she must be a foreign peasant or some sort of beggar. The cobbler and his wife took her to a man named Mr Overton, who was the overseer of the local poorhouse. And if you're not familiar with a poorhouse. It was a government run facility that was used to house poor people in a time before social services existed, But it wasn't as benevolent as it may sound. The reality was that poor

houses were places of involuntary servitude. Upon seeing the person that they would come to know as Princess Cariboo, Overton was, as others in the town, mystified by her language and how she dressed, and so he decided to take her to the home of a man named Samuel Warrell, who

was the town clerk of Bristol and a magistrate. Samuel Warrell and his wife Elizabeth, actually took this woman into their home in Noll Park, and there the person we know is Mary convinced Elizabeth that she was a lost princess from the East Indies, which was what they would have called it at the time. How she did this we don't know. We're presuming a lot of hand gestures and pointing at maps as sumed that she was homeless

and with a counterfeit coin in her pocket. A family such as the Worlds, they were high standing family in the town. It really couldn't provide accommodations to a woman who actually might be a criminal. They didn't know it would look poorly among their peers, though she had made quite an impression on them. Elizabeth arranged for a room for the woman she believed to be a foreign visitor at a local inn called as far as we can figure,

I love this the Bowl. My new retirement goal is to start an in and call it the Bowl, and it'll just be our little in. Joe can let me feel this. Although the worlds were still pretty unsure one way or the other about Mary or Princess Cariboo and who exactly this was, it was decided that she was a beggar and should be taken to Bristol and tried for vagrancy. And as an asside, we are not actually

sure who made this decision. It could have been the authorities, or it could have been the very busy and involved villagers of all Insburg. This decision was made to take her to Bristol to be examined both by John Haythorne, who was the mayor of Bristol, and then at St. Peter's Hospital, which was a facility that cared for the

poor and her vagrance. But after causing many problems, and we can only speculate on thoset problems because there doesn't seem to be a record of her time spent at the facility record in detail, she was actually returned to the world's home. So, as you can imagine, by this point everyone knew about this eccentric foreign stranger, and despite any of those earlier suspicions, the villagers treated her as

though she were a visiting head of state. Right, So this is amazing, and not only because she was deceiving them all. What's amazing really is that they let her stay in their village at all. The years following the Napoleonic Wars were volatile and any mysterious strangers were looked upon suspiciously as probable spies or maybe polite agitators, or just unwanted people in the village. That's not only the authorities who thought that. Everyday people thought that as well.

So in a small town like Almondsbury, foreign beggars were most likely to be transported to Australia, and Australia was where England sent their criminals. The counterfeit sixpence that she carried with her was a serious offense and it could in some cases, I mean a death sentence. Don't miss around a fake currency is the rule here, kidding, watch

out for your sixpence. Like everyone at this point was desperate to find out where Princess Cariboo was from, and at first, despite her very European appearance, she kind of implied that she had actually come from China, and it really wasn't until a Portuguese sailor or a pirate depending on your source, who may or may not have been her accomplice in this whole ruse arrived about ten days after her, and that's where her narrative actually starts to

be told. There are actually two versions of the story. In the first, the sailor slash pirates claimed to understand her dialect, and he told a story of how she'd ended up near Bristol. In the second version, the sailor pirates said he was able to communicate with her through gestures and signs. The foreign woman, he said, was born in China, which was actually she called it Kanji. She had been kidnapped by pirates, jumped overboard to escape them,

and swam through the English Channel to shore. She also told of her home on the far away island of jabaf Su and that she came from royalty. What we don't know, though, like Holly mentioned earlier, is if Mary and the sailor pirate were somehow in cahoots. I don't know how this works. If they're not, I know, right, if she were just to go along with it and be like, well, you are also a con person, all right,

let's play. Oh you understand I made up blank? Which let's talk like So, this entire yarn was utterly enthralling to the townspeople, and they actually had come to kind of love their new eccentric guest, and she, for her part, put on quite a show for them. She entertained audiences that included not only people from Almondsbury. She fascinated a lot of people, including linguists, artists, physiognomists. Those were people that practiced the rather dubious science of judging a person's

mental character from their facial appearance. She also fascinated craniologists, people that claimed to be able to read your character from the size and shape of your skull. Whether entertaining a vagrant or a dignitary, the princess's strange behavior did not disappoint any of her audiences. Her portrait was painted and reproduced in a local newspaper, while her authenticity was attested to by a doctor Wilkinson, who was a polymath

and scientific lecturer. Wilkinson claimed he identified her language by using Edmund fry S Pantagraphia, a book that was said to contain accurate copies of all the known alphabets in the world. Can you imagine how big that would be now? He stated that marks on her skin had been done by and we're quoting a very outdated term here, oriental surgeons. Other newspapers began publishing stories about the princess, and she

began to develop national acclaim. What none of them knew was that Mary had made up her language and she was really a native English speaker. She would listen to what everyone was saying while they thought she could not understand, and that must have been heaven for her as an impost right, and it was a big part in how long she was able to pull off this hoax. It's just so funny. I'm sure she sat in her head thinking, gosh, these people are fool right, all bought in completely exactly.

She always seemed completely credible to the villagers, but it was because they didn't know she was reading them to manipulate the That's a common way that people scam others. And so just for clarity, when we say she was reading them, we mean she was able to interpret things like people's body language and tone of voice and then use that to her advantage. Perfect for someone who was Princess Caribou. Uh So, the princess was eccentric and she was scandalous. She wore flowers in her hair, and she

swam naked in the lake. How dare she? She knew how to use a bow and arrow, and she gave fencing demonstrations and it said with a blade that had been dipped in poison. I don't know if it's arsenic, but I got to bring it up every season before eating or sleeping. She prayed to a god she called Allah Tala. She was, it would seem, from all accounts, having a fine time in Almondsbury. And for Elizabeth Worrel's part, she was living out her own wish fulfillment because she

thought she was hosting a princess. But this ruse only lasted for about three months, and the media was her undue ing. The paper seized upon Baker's story during and after her exposure, and even ran poetry and ballads, both flattering and not so flattering, composed in her honor. But it was when the Bristol Journal, which was a local newspaper, ran a story about her with an accompanying photo she

was recognized as a woman named Mary Baker. Mrs Neil, who owned a lodging house in Bristol, recognized Mary because Mary had stayed there about six months prior, and according to Mrs Neil, as a tenant, Mary would often Donna Black Turban while she danced around the house, speaking in her own invented languages. It was like she did her

practice run and Mrs Neil's boarding the jig is up. Yeah, So the worlds confronted the so called princess, who did not, of course want to tell the truth, at least at first, but she did eventually admit that her name was Mary Baker and that she was from Witheredge. So the way this story played out made the papers across the United

States pick it up as well. The Carolina Federal Republican, for example, round a story first describing a strange woman who seemed initially to have no command of the English language, and then went on to explain what finally led to her confession. It was Dr Wilkinson's efforts to help her and get the East India directors involved, And we have

a quote here from that specific news story. Dr Wilkinson proceeded to London on a charitable mission on Tuesday and was to be followed the next day by Cariboo herself. But affairs were becoming too formidable. The idea of appearing before the metropolitan scrutinizers was too terrible for the tender

nerves of the Princess of Java suit. She therefore thought it was prudent to throw off the mask, and after inviting her humane patroness to a private audience, surprised her by speaking in her native tongue, plain downright English, declaring herself an impostor. So we're going to take a break here and have a word from a sponsor, and when we're back we will talk about exactly how a town was hoodwinked and what happened thereafter. Welcome back to Criminalia.

Let's meet Mary Baker. So Mary Baker did not, of course, come from the far flung imaginary island of Java su. She was exposed as a cobbler's daughter who came from a village near Bristol. She had worked as domestic help, but her employers had always thought she seemed rather odd. And do you remember those marks that we discussed earlier, and the marks on the back of her head, Yes, the one that came with a racist diagnosis of what it was exactly so actually it's not that at all.

They were scars from a poorly done wet cupping procedure that was used to relieve pressure on we quote, an overheated brain. It was performed in a poorhouse hospital when she was a child and clearly had gone a little wrong. Upon her exposure, the press went into an absolute frenzy, but it didn't go exactly as you may expect. Yes, of course, they absolutely ignored their own part in creating

the sensation around Princess Cariboo. But instead of vilifying Mary Baker, which would seem like a reasonable response, they ended up lampooning and condemning not only Wilkinson, but in some cases also the worlds as well as the people of Almondsbury and any and all of the intellectuals, doctors and other professionals who had been hoodwinked essentially blaming them all for

being so easily fooled. Various newspapers published several satirical pieces about Princess Cariboo's origin based on what the experts who had met her had theorized. So it's the alternate universe Princess therapy, right right. So, as we mentioned earlier, we're going to do a little bit more on press coverage of Mary's ruse because it's really quite interesting to get into. If you start looking at the stories from that time, you start to see why the newspapers wouldn't really want

to turn against Cariboo or Mary Baker. I guess we should call her now. She was selling newspapers and at the end of the day, to them, that's all that mattered. That, Yeah, they did not want to get rid of that cash cow. One example we have is the Morning Chronicle of London. That was a paper that started running ads in the late summer of eighteen seventeen about the story that they were getting ready to run about her whole nuttiness a foreigner near Bristol in an effort to get their readers

really hyped up. Those ads read quote in the course of next week will be published a narrative of a singular imposition practiced upon the benevolence of a lady residing in the vicinity of the city of Bristol by a young woman of the name of Mary Wilcox alias Baker, alias Cariboo, Princess of Java. Su I would love to see these illustrations, really and and also I particularly like this story because they're not afraid of using caps. No, they'll throw it all caps for the longest period of time.

Like newspapers were not shy about throwing some caps into their ads of their stories. And man, I always appreciate that. Moving on more than anyone. Though, it was Dr Wilkinson who were skewered by the press for being taken in by Mary's fictional tale. The Hampshire Telegraph and Naval Chronicle of Portsmouth ran a piece about how naive Wilkinson had been,

and we have a quote from that too. So it says the young woman who has appeared at Bristol as an unknown female designated by the name of Caribou, and concerning whom Dr Wilkinson of Bath excited great curiosity last week by the interest which his pen imparted to her tail is found to be an impostor. Her real name

said to be Mary Baker of with Rage Devon. The Doctor was so far carried away by his feelings in this interesting creature's case that he determined to make an appeal to the East India Directors directly on her behalf, as he had no doubt of her being a native of Java. Yet, just to avoid confusion, that is Maria reading the quote as it was written in the paper. We're not sure why they shortened it to Java versus

Java Sue. My guess is that they recognized Java Sue was not a real place and thought there had been some sort of accident or confusion in the conveyance of the information, so they looked up a real place. But that same month, the Exeter Flying Post ran a similar story, this time detailing previous criminal activity on Mary's part, and that was a completely new angle in the press. This

piece started out Caribou with an exclamation point. It will be seen in a preceding page of our paper that the wonderful female who has outwitted the doctor, puzzle the learned and astonished the multitude, turns out to be a vile impostor, a vagrant wanderer and daughter of a poor cottager in the village of Witherage in this county. We have made some inquiries respecting this extraordinary young lady, and there is great reason to believe that she was for

some time an inmate in the Devon County Bridewell. As it appears that in the summer sessions of eighteen fourteen, at the Castle of Exeter, a Mary Anne Baker, then aged twenty one, was tried, convicted, and sentenced to six months imprisonment for stealing a piece of cloth a young man. Her sweetheart, the receiver of the stolen goods, was tried at the same time and transported for fourteen years. Big was that piece of cloth? Right? There's just a long

time for a piece of fabric. It made out of gold, magic and gold threads. Ultimately, by June of eight seventeen, the town of Almondsbury gave her boat fair to the United States, specifically to travel to Philadelphia. She was accompanied by, it said to or maybe three eight strict chaperones who were chosen by Elizabeth Worrell. Because the story of Princess Cariboo was already known in America, Mary was greeted like Royalty. When she arrived, she stayed in the US and gave

performances as Princess Cariboo in theaters. And several years later she did return to England. And when we say that she was greeted as royalty, that includes the press using her false name, even though they already knew that that was a ruse and she was not actually a princess of any kind. Noticed in this quote that we're about to read that nowhere does the name Mary Baker appear. Uh. And this ran in a paper in the US. Quote.

The extraordinary young woman who about two years ago excited considerable attention at Bristol by representing herself as the Princess Cariboo, daughter of a great Eastern prince, has lately returned to with rich, her native place, on a visit to her mother. It is understood that once she left Bristol, she went to America with two ladies of the country. When she left home about seven years ago, she was a servant

in a farmer's house. She now appears as a well educated woman, perfectly genteel in her manners and dress, and extremely fond of books, but very reserved in her communications, respecting herself, not as an interesting description about Mary Baker, so her hoax was really well known at this time. But she continued to give performances as the character of Princess Cariboo in and around London's New Bond Street, as

well as in Bath and Bristol. Mary Baker as Princess Cariboo had her final appearance in a London gallery where visitors were charged a shilling apiece to see her. It was in Bristol in eight where Mary married. It was probably her second marriage, because we know that while she was pretending to be a princess, she had confessed her real name was Mary Baker, but we're not presuming. There are a lot of mysteries there about how her name changed over the years. However, things get really quite fuzzy

after this point in her story. We also know that she gave birth to a daughter in we know that she no longer performed as Princess Cariboo or impersonated Royalty, and by eighteen thirty nine she was making ends meet by importing and selling leeches, mainly to the medical community, which included the local Bristol Infirmary hospital. However, and here is that really fuzzy part. There's a question about a

woman named Mary Burgess. This was our Mary. But is the surname changed from marriage or the change that was meant to hide a grift. Some reports suggest this name change was due to her second marriage, after her husband Richard Baker, left her and traveled abroad. Alternatively, their source is that suggests she was living under her cousin's name,

Burgess Mary Wilcox Baker, a k a. Princess Caribou. Maybe Burgess died on Christmas Eve in eighteen sixty four and she is buried in an unmarked grave in Heaven Road Burial Ground in Bedminster. We do have a little bit of a side note that doesn't play well with someone's death. Here, Holly, I'll give it to you. This story is actually made into a movie, if you'd like to see it. That movie was made and starts the absolutely spectacular Phoebe Kates right.

I've never seen it personally. I didn't know it existed. So here we are with our very first drink for season three. Ali Well, I thought for season three we would flip our segment on its head a little a bit because we're talking about imposters. Since they're masquerading his cocktails in this segment will be mocktails. There will though be for my drinkers in the crowd. Don't panic. There's gonna be also a way you can modify any of these to have a little oochin them if that's your jam.

But they're perfectly delightful on their own without any alcohol in them. So the first one is called Princess Cariboos Tender Nerves because when I was reading about that version where they paint her as this really like delicate, I'm so scared to go in front of the public. I'll tell them all I'm lying. I'm like she's telling you,

she's lying. I'm telling like you, sweet baby girl. But anyway, I wanted to think about something that always makes me feel soothed when I am maybe a little nervous myself. But also I'm one of those people that I don't want anything that will overcome me, because usually if I'm nervous, it's because I gotta get something done. I knew I wanted to do a T, but I wanted to do a T that is not like a cam of meal or like an herbal I wanted something that still has caffeine.

So you're gonna brew a cup of chi and you're gonna let it cool down a bit into that cup of chi, and I would put this in a cocktail shaker if you have one. You're gonna put a half ounce of spicy mango syrup, pour that chi in with it, mix it up a little bit because the chi, if it's room temperature, it's gonna mix a little more easily with the sugar. It will dissolve rather than if it's cold.

And then once it's mixed a little you're gonna pour in two ounces of milk and some ice and you're gonna shake a shake, a shake a shake it because you really want everything incorporated. And it makes this nice, very frothy if you've got a really good shaker action going on. Beverage that is yummy and it's like a a latte, but it's also not And the mango syrup

is a weird thing. About to ask you about that, I'm like spicy mangoes, Like I don't even think I've seen that, Like it sounds delicious, but you can buy. But also if you can't find it somewhere, but you can't find like mango syrup. You could also add in something to give it a little bit of check, whether that's like a little dash of cayenne pepper or just anything that has a little bite to it, Like I have a little Garama sala I put in everything. That's

another good one to mix in. If you've had a chi latte, they're just beautiful on their own and you get that yummy, soothing thing, but then there's this like extra flavor where you're like, that seems a little different. It's yummy, but you you clock it, you're aware that there's something strange in the mix. And I feel like

that's a good representation of Princess Carricin right. People liked her a lot, but they also were like, something's up with this one and um, And then for my drinkers in the crowd, if you do not want to have Princess Cariboos tender nerves in its non alcoholic state, I threw an announce of vanilla vodka and it became like

the perfect summer refresher. This is also a good time for us to be doing mock tails because I feel like we're at least in the Northern Hemisphere heading into summer and most mock tails are very fruity and refreshing, so that's another reason why we're going that route this time. But you can always add a little something if you want to make an adults. You could make this as a warm drink if you want to. I thought about that as soon as you were talking about it being chai. Yeah,

but I like a little cold chai. I think it's fun, so yeah. Options, options, options. Also, if you're like a girl, I don't want to do that spicy mango thing, you can add any other flavored syrup. This would also be it's beautiful With a raspberry syrup. It's a little less surprising to your palate, but it's super duper yummy and it gives it a broader body like you just you feel like you're drinking something that's like a sweet, almost

dessert beverage. Then play around with syrups, see what's going on there. Um, You could just use simple syrup if you don't want to infuse it with any kind of flavor, or you could also just do a drop or two of any baking flavors. That works too. I actually think a pumpkin version of this would be perfect for fall. As you're heading into late summer and early fall. I think that might be something that you need to test now.

Just I'll go do it so you're prepared. We thank everybody for listening and spending this time with us, particularly now that we are in a whole new season. If you've been hanging in for the first two, we hope you enjoyed this one. Also, if you're new to the show, there's plenty for you to go back and listen to. But otherwise we will see you back here next week with another story of an imposter, another mock tail that can also be made into a fabulous adult beverage, and

hopefully a lot more laughters. Thanks everybody. Criminalia is a production of Shonda land Audio in partnership with I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from Shonda land Audio, please visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.