Speaker 1: Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and Grim and Mild from Aaron Minkie. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 1: In the early hours of the morning on Good Friday
Speaker 1: in eighteen seventeen, when the streets were still dark but
Speaker 1: the faintest glow of sunrise was just appearing on the horizon,
Speaker 1: a strange woman wandered into the village of Almondsbury, to
Speaker 1: the northeast of Bristol. She wore strange mixed matched clothes,
Speaker 1: a heavy black stuff dress with a full fringe at
Speaker 1: her neck, a red and black shawl, a large black
Speaker 1: turban covering her dark hair. She looked tired, but still
Speaker 1: her big brown eyes were pretty and bright. She had very,
Speaker 1: very white teeth. A cobbler happened to be outside at
Speaker 1: dawn and he saw the woman. Was she a girl
Speaker 1: strolling up the main road. He stared at her while
Speaker 1: she came closer, and then, to his astonishment, she continued
Speaker 1: to come closer to approach him. A beggar, he thought,
Speaker 1: a pretty beggar, but a beggar. Nonetheless, he waited to
Speaker 1: hear her appeal for money, but it didn't come. The
Speaker 1: woman just looked at him and then gestured towards her
Speaker 1: stomach and her mouth. She said something, but it was
Speaker 1: in the language he didn't understand. He sighed it was
Speaker 1: a stranger and she was hungry. The least he could
Speaker 1: do was offer her some food. He invited the woman
Speaker 1: into his home. By this time his wife was awake,
Speaker 1: and the cobbler explained the situation. The cobbler's wife found
Speaker 1: some bread and milk, which the stranger ate hungrily, as
Speaker 1: if she hadn't eaten in days. The cobbler and his
Speaker 1: wife watched her as she drained the cup of milk
Speaker 1: and returned the cup to the able with the satisfied
Speaker 1: lip smack. She thanks them, at least it seemed like
Speaker 1: she thanked them in whatever foreign language she spoke. And
Speaker 1: then she started gesturing that you would like a place
Speaker 1: to sleep. The couple exchanged a look, oh no. The
Speaker 1: cobbler's wife said, enough of this. Take her to the overseer. Mr.
Speaker 1: Hill was the town overseer of the poor, the man
Speaker 1: charged with collecting taxes and distributing help to those in need.
Speaker 1: Like the cobbler and his wife. He was baffled by
Speaker 1: this young woman who looked to be about twenty five
Speaker 1: in her well exotic get up a woman who seemed
Speaker 1: to be unable to understand a single word of English.
Speaker 1: Mr Hill decided, not knowing what else to do, that
Speaker 1: he would bring the girl to Knowl Park, the estate
Speaker 1: led by the town clerk, Samuel Whirl. She doesn't speak
Speaker 1: any English, it seems, Mr Hill said, I can't actually
Speaker 1: tell what language she speaks. Ms his Whorrel listened from
Speaker 1: the next room. Nothing unusual tended to happen in Almondsbury.
Speaker 1: It was a small village where the most exciting going
Speaker 1: on of that year was Mr Warrell trying to start
Speaker 1: a local Tolsie bank. But something about this woman aroused
Speaker 1: equal parts fascination and suspicion. Mr Hale, Samuel Warrell and
Speaker 1: Mrs Warrell all came into the parlor to try to
Speaker 1: speak to the woman, to try to understand her story,
Speaker 1: where she was from, who she was, But it would
Speaker 1: be another week before her story was discovered. She was
Speaker 1: a princess from an island called Java Su in the
Speaker 1: Indian Ocean. She had been kidnapped by pirates but managed
Speaker 1: to make a daring escape by jumping ship. When the
Speaker 1: vessel neared Bristol, she wasn't a beggar. No, she was
Speaker 1: a romantic heroine, one who fulfilled every regency England obsession
Speaker 1: with the exotic from distant lands for a summer. Princess Caribou,
Speaker 1: as she came to call herself, would captivate and dominate Almondsbury.
Speaker 1: And then the newspapers and the truth arrived. I'm Danish
Speaker 1: Swartz and this is noble blood. Though Samuel Worrell was
Speaker 1: the town's minister, he still had a bit of an
Speaker 1: unsavory reputation. He was a drinker, and there were rumors
Speaker 1: of behavior as unsavory as gambling, but those rumors were
Speaker 1: in the past. He would make sure of it. He
Speaker 1: lived with his American born wife, Elizabeth, in the large
Speaker 1: house called Noell Park. Every day he went into town
Speaker 1: to try to start his Tolsie bank, but it turned
Speaker 1: out that most of the at work would be just
Speaker 1: trying to prove to the townspeople that he was trustworthy again.
Speaker 1: When Mr Hale, the overseer of the poor, arrived on
Speaker 1: Good Friday, Samuel and Elizabeth were already awake. Mr Hall
Speaker 1: explained what he knew that this girl with big brown
Speaker 1: eyes and strange clothing had just wandered into town, had
Speaker 1: asked the cobbler for some food and a place to sleep,
Speaker 1: and then it seemed like she couldn't understand English. The
Speaker 1: Worlds had a valet from Greece who had traveled in
Speaker 1: his youth and could speak half a dozen languages. They
Speaker 1: called on him to try to understand the girl, but
Speaker 1: after a few seconds of her speaking, the Greek valet
Speaker 1: just shrugged his shoulders. It doesn't sound like any language
Speaker 1: I've ever heard, he said, and I've heard a lot
Speaker 1: of languages. The stranger had very few belongings with her,
Speaker 1: a bundle of soap tied in linen, a few halfpennies,
Speaker 1: and his single sixpence, which was counterfeit. When they examined
Speaker 1: the items, the girl just smiled up at them blankly.
Speaker 1: Well this is no good, Samuel Warrell said, finally, holding
Speaker 1: the counterfeit sixpence. I'm trying to start a bank. We
Speaker 1: can't have a girl staying with us who's involved in counterfeiting.
Speaker 1: Samuel had decided that the woman was just a random beggar,
Speaker 1: maybe addled in the brain, but Elizabeth refused to send
Speaker 1: her back out onto the streets. Since the woman couldn't
Speaker 1: stay at their house. Elizabeth went to the local inn
Speaker 1: called the Bowl, and got the stranger a room. Elizabeth
Speaker 1: began setting up the bed, but to her shock, the
Speaker 1: stranger lay on the floor ready to go to sleep there.
Speaker 1: How strange, Elizabeth thought. She benevolently showed the woman that
Speaker 1: she could instead sleep in a soft bed, which the
Speaker 1: woman eventually did with a bemused acceptance. The next morning,
Speaker 1: the town clergyman arrived at the Bowl, carrying in his
Speaker 1: arms a stack of books, ready to meet the visitor.
Speaker 1: The stranger sat with him, eyes bright, smile ready as
Speaker 1: he flipped through the travel books, showing illustrations of distant places.
Speaker 1: When he reached the chapter on China, she became excited,
Speaker 1: clapping her hands. When he pointed at a picture of
Speaker 1: a pineapple, she shouted, ananas. That settles it. The clergyman said,
Speaker 1: she must be from Asia. That's the word for pineapples there.
Speaker 1: The real fact of the matter is that didn't narrow
Speaker 1: it down at all. Ananas, or a close variation of
Speaker 1: that word, is the word for pineapple in almost every
Speaker 1: language except English, around the world, from Azerbaijan to Finland
Speaker 1: to Turkey. The poor girl is stranded. Elizabeth Worrell said
Speaker 1: to her husband, we have to put her, Absolutely not,
Speaker 1: Samuel Warrell said, she's a beggar and a counterfeiter no
Speaker 1: matter where she's from. She stayed one night in town,
Speaker 1: but now it's time for the authorities to take care
Speaker 1: of this. The stranger was brought to Bristol, where the
Speaker 1: mayor and magistrate there tried her for vagrancy and imprisoned
Speaker 1: her in the St. Peter's Hospital for vagrants. But Elizabeth
Speaker 1: Warrell couldn't stop thinking about the mysterious woman. There had
Speaker 1: to be someone who could identify her language, someone that
Speaker 1: she could communicate with. Samuel still refused to have the
Speaker 1: stranger stay at their house, and so Elizabeth went into
Speaker 1: Bristol and brought the woman out of the vagrancy hospital
Speaker 1: to stay at her husband's office in the city. All
Speaker 1: the while, she invited anyone back who might be able
Speaker 1: to solve the riddle of the stranger's language to come
Speaker 1: and try to speak with her. Finally he appeared at
Speaker 1: the door, a Portuguese sailor named Manuel Ennis, who had
Speaker 1: briefly been with the stranger at the vagrancy hospital. He
Speaker 1: came to the World's Office and told Elizabeth that he
Speaker 1: could translate on behalf of the woman. Her name was
Speaker 1: Princess Carribou, and she was the daughter of the king
Speaker 1: of a wealthy and distant island called Java Su. She
Speaker 1: had been kidnapped by pirates, but while they were sailing
Speaker 1: in the Bristol Channel, she managed to jump overboard her clothes. Oh,
Speaker 1: these weren't her original clothes. She had been wearing a
Speaker 1: dress of silk interwoven with gold, but when she came
Speaker 1: ashore in England, she traded clothes with a woman who
Speaker 1: lived in a cottage. No, she couldn't say who the
Speaker 1: woman was or exactly where the cottage was located. Elizabeth
Speaker 1: Whorl was elated. The visitor wasn't a random vagrant. She
Speaker 1: was a princess, a beautiful princess from a amorous foreign land.
Speaker 1: Elizabeth took the woman home with her to Nol Park immediately.
Speaker 1: What followed was a summer at Nol Park that could
Speaker 1: only be described as triumphant. Samuel Laurel, who was initially
Speaker 1: so dismissive of the foreigner who might reduce confidence in
Speaker 1: his banking endeavor overnight, instead became delighted at the legitimacy
Speaker 1: that was lended to his bank. Now that they were
Speaker 1: hosting a royal visitor, with a slew of admirers and visitors,
Speaker 1: reporters and hangers on, Nol Park became the center of
Speaker 1: the Bristol social scene that season, full of people eager
Speaker 1: to meet Princess Carribou and see what strange and exotic
Speaker 1: thing she did next. Carribou would write in her native
Speaker 1: Javastu language to people ooing and aweing over her shoulder.
Speaker 1: She cooked a curry and showed off archery skills. She
Speaker 1: bathed naked in the garden and went swimming in the
Speaker 1: Bristol Channel. It was a one woman parade of a
Speaker 1: foreign culture no one had heard of. She did a
Speaker 1: war dance with a gong, climbed onto the roof to
Speaker 1: pray to her god, whom she called Allah Talah, and
Speaker 1: took a live pigeon, cut its head off, buried the head,
Speaker 1: and then poured its blood into the dirt. She refused
Speaker 1: to eat any meat that she didn't prepare first with
Speaker 1: that ritual before every Tuesday, she fasted. Slowly, more details
Speaker 1: emerged about her life on Javasu, astonished Brits listened to
Speaker 1: her tell stories about her mother, who had blackened teeth
Speaker 1: and a painted body, who wore a jewel in her
Speaker 1: nose with a chain extending from it. Carribou's father, the King,
Speaker 1: had three other lips and traveled only via palanquin. Eventually,
Speaker 1: the worlds had Carriboo choose her own clothing from materials
Speaker 1: and fabrics they provided for her, and she fashioned a
Speaker 1: dress with a short skirt but with sleeves long enough
Speaker 1: to reach the ground. She wore no stockings and twisted
Speaker 1: her hair atop her head, securing it with a skewer.
Speaker 1: Princess car Aboo fulfilled every fantasy that nineteenth century englishmen
Speaker 1: and women had about the foreign and exotic life in
Speaker 1: the quote Far East meant strange customs for them to
Speaker 1: gawk at and celebrate in their delightful and entirely unthreatening eccentricity.
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Warrel made sure that Carribou had a proper social reception.
Speaker 1: She had her portrait painted, and she was the guest
Speaker 1: of honor at a ball in Bath. The only person
Speaker 1: who didn't seem enchanted by the visit a ng royal
Speaker 1: was the world's Greek valet, Convinced that Carbou was a fraud.
Speaker 1: He shouted fire when she was alone in the parlor
Speaker 1: one afternoon to see if she would react, to prove
Speaker 1: that she understood English. She didn't react and just continued
Speaker 1: writing in her strange language on the sheets of paper
Speaker 1: that the worlds had provided. But clearly an expert was required,
Speaker 1: and so in came a man named Dr Wilkinson, a
Speaker 1: polymath from Bath who made his living giving subscription lectures
Speaker 1: on any scientific subject that there ever seemed to be
Speaker 1: an audience for. He would be the one to figure
Speaker 1: out the truth about this show called car Aboo. He
Speaker 1: brought with him to Almondsbury a massive tone Edmund Fries pantographia,
Speaker 1: and he identified the language that Carbou was speaking as rage,
Speaker 1: the native tongue of Sumatra. Next in his examination, he
Speaker 1: studied Carbrew's head. She had a number of strange scars
Speaker 1: lining the base of her skull, usually hidden by her hair,
Speaker 1: but Dr Wilkinson ran his fingers across them, just as
Speaker 1: I suspected. He said these scars could have only come
Speaker 1: from Indonesian rituals. Confident in his assessment, Dr Wilkinson began
Speaker 1: to make plans to go down to London, to get
Speaker 1: funding from the Foreign Office to pay for Princess Carbrew's
Speaker 1: care and to pay for passage for her to return
Speaker 1: to her native land. Dr Wilkinson published the findings of
Speaker 1: his report in the Bath Chronicle, writing quote, nothing has
Speaker 1: yet transpired to authorize the slightest suspicion of Carribou, nor
Speaker 1: has such ever been entertained, except by those whose souls
Speaker 1: feel not the spirits of benevolence, and wished to convert
Speaker 1: into ridicule that amiable disposition in others. But it turns
Speaker 1: out those cynical souls were right. As soon as Carribou
Speaker 1: story hit the national press, a woman named Mrs Neil
Speaker 1: contacted Elizabeth Worrell to tell her the unfortunate truth. The
Speaker 1: woman calling herself Carriboo all summer used to live in
Speaker 1: a boarding house that Mrs Neil ran. Princess Carribou was
Speaker 1: the daughter of a cobbler born in Devon, and she
Speaker 1: was named Mary Wilcox. Elizabeth Warrell, shaken by the news,
Speaker 1: told Carriboo that the artist painting her portrait needed one
Speaker 1: final sitting from her, and that they would need to
Speaker 1: go into Bristol. But when they arrived, they met not
Speaker 1: with the artist, but with Mrs Neil. Confronted face to face,
Speaker 1: Princess Carribou burst into tears and in perfect English, confessed
Speaker 1: to everything. When Mary Wilcox was still an infant, she
Speaker 1: came down with rheumatic fever. According to her father, she
Speaker 1: was never entirely right in the head after that. At nineteen,
Speaker 1: she left the village she was raised in and made
Speaker 1: her way to London, where at some point afterwards she
Speaker 1: received a crude, poorly done cupping operation at a poorhouse
Speaker 1: hospital that gave her the scars that she would bear
Speaker 1: for the rest of her life. If you're not familiar
Speaker 1: with what a cupping operation entails, or perhaps if you
Speaker 1: only associate it with Olympic swimmers, the writer George Orwell
Speaker 1: described it during a visit to a Paris hospital in
Speaker 1: his essay How the Poor Die in nineteen forty six. Quote.
Speaker 1: First the doctor produced from his black back a dozen
Speaker 1: small glasses, like wine glasses, and then the student burned
Speaker 1: the match inside each glass to exhaust the air. And
Speaker 1: then the glass was popped onto the man's back or chest,
Speaker 1: and the vacuum drew up a huge yellow blister. Only
Speaker 1: after some moments did I realize what they were doing
Speaker 1: to him. It was something called cupping, a treatment which
Speaker 1: you can read about in old medical textbooks, but which
Speaker 1: till then I had vaguely thought of as one of
Speaker 1: those things they do to horses. Orwell's essay was written
Speaker 1: in over a hundred years after Mary's procedure had been
Speaker 1: done in a poorhouse hospital. Back then, cupping also involved
Speaker 1: slicing the skin so that the cups could draw out blood.
Speaker 1: Mary's quote wet cupping operation was meant to relieve the
Speaker 1: pressure on an overheated rain. The back of her head
Speaker 1: was shaved and then blades were used to cut parallel
Speaker 1: slices in her scalp before hot glasses were applied to
Speaker 1: suck out blood. Eventually, Mary got a job working as
Speaker 1: a nursemaid for a family and Clapham called the Matthews.
Speaker 1: It was a role she seemed born for. She would
Speaker 1: captivate the children by making up stories for them Before bed.
Speaker 1: Mary's employers lived next door to a Jewish family, and
Speaker 1: when she was on her brakes, Mary would watch them,
Speaker 1: fascinated by their clothing and customs. She found out that
Speaker 1: the daughter of the family was going to get married,
Speaker 1: and so she asked her boss, Mrs Matthews, for the
Speaker 1: evening off so she could attend the wedding. Mrs Matthews
Speaker 1: said no, but Mary, so desperate to see the Jewish
Speaker 1: rituals she had only ever heard about second hand, in
Speaker 1: vinced a servant at another nearby house to write a
Speaker 1: forged letter pretending to be the lady of the house.
Speaker 1: The letter said that they were short on domestic staff
Speaker 1: for a dinner, someone was sick, would they mind terribly
Speaker 1: sending Mary along for an evening to help. The letter
Speaker 1: worked and Mary left and then went to the wedding.
Speaker 1: But then a few days later Mrs Matthews ran into
Speaker 1: her neighbor. She asked how the evening had gone and
Speaker 1: how everyone was feeling. Of course, the neighbor was utterly baffled.
Speaker 1: When Mrs Matthews confronted Mary, Mary ran and never returned.
Speaker 1: Mary's next up was a Magdalene hospital for fallen women,
Speaker 1: or in other words, women who had worked as sex workers.
Speaker 1: Mary had never been a prostitute, but she liked the
Speaker 1: costumes that the women at the hospital wore, long sleeved
Speaker 1: brown dresses and flat straw hats. She would want the
Speaker 1: group of them walking slowly in the park in the afternoon,
Speaker 1: and she imagined what it would be like to have
Speaker 1: a place to belong. When they found out that Mary
Speaker 1: wasn't let's say, qualified to actually be at the Magdalen hospital,
Speaker 1: she was kicked out from there. She traveled, taking odd jobs,
Speaker 1: living in a workhouse, traveling to France and back, eventually
Speaker 1: getting pregnant, but leaving the baby at a foundling hospital
Speaker 1: and coming up with several different stories about who the
Speaker 1: father was. For a little while, she traveled with Romani peasants.
Speaker 1: Pieces of the Romani language and culture would eventually circle
Speaker 1: back into her carbow routine, but not quite yet. While
Speaker 1: she was begging in Bristol, Mary noticed that the girls
Speaker 1: who tended to get the most money from passers by
Speaker 1: were the Breton girls who wore traditional Celtic headdresses, and so,
Speaker 1: having learned a bit of French, Mary pretended to be French,
Speaker 1: which worked a little too well because she was brought
Speaker 1: to the local French consul. Naturally, once she got there,
Speaker 1: she claimed to be Spanish. What a coincidence. The clerk
Speaker 1: helping her said, our cook is Spanish here, let me
Speaker 1: get him. It was then that Mary realized for her
Speaker 1: act to work, she needed a language that no one
Speaker 1: else could speak, and so Princess Carribou was born. I
Speaker 1: don't know if the Portuguese sailor was in on the
Speaker 1: bit to begin with, whether he was working with Mary,
Speaker 1: or whether he made up a story and Mary decided
Speaker 1: to yes and him all the way to a brand
Speaker 1: new character. But however it happened, the character of Princess
Speaker 1: Carribou came together and for a summer all of Almondsbury
Speaker 1: was fooled. After the news of the fraud came to lay,
Speaker 1: the newspapers that had been fonding over Princess Carribou for
Speaker 1: weeks immediately about faced into abject mockery of Dr Wilkinson
Speaker 1: and Mr and Mrs Warrell. You can almost imagine the
Speaker 1: reaction to this sort of scandal that would happen if
Speaker 1: Twitter had been around the memes and photos of Dr
Speaker 1: Wilkinson that would circulate Samuel Warrell's bank collapsed. It was
Speaker 1: also around this time that Samuel Warrel received word back
Speaker 1: from Oxford University, where he had sent pages of Quote
Speaker 1: car Abows writings to be studied. Archbishop Weighty wrote that
Speaker 1: it was a humbug language. This must be some sort
Speaker 1: of joke, he said. The text has quote, many pot
Speaker 1: hooks and unmeaning scrawls, several words and some half sentences
Speaker 1: in Portuguese. It is the writing of no known language.
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Quarrel took pity on the humiliated Mary and booked
Speaker 1: her passage to America. In Philadelphia, Mary took up with
Speaker 1: a showman who had her peer as Princess Carribou for shows,
Speaker 1: but none with any success. After seven years in America,
Speaker 1: Mary returned to the UK and tried to exhibit herself
Speaker 1: once again as Carribou, charging a shilling in London to
Speaker 1: anyone willing to pay to see her. The Carribou act
Speaker 1: died there. Mary changed her last name to a cousin's
Speaker 1: to prevent recognition. She married a man named Richard Baker
Speaker 1: and got a job that she'd work at for the
Speaker 1: rest of her days until she'd died at age seventy.
Speaker 1: Mary Wilcox Baker, formerly known as Princess Carribou, the woman
Speaker 1: who spent her youth begging on the streets and then
Speaker 1: taking money from people she fooled, had a successful business
Speaker 1: for the rest of her life selling an essential medical
Speaker 1: tool to hospitals, leeches. That's the story of Princess Carribou,
Speaker 1: or should I say quote Princess Carribou, But stick around
Speaker 1: after a brief sponsor break to hear one more legend
Speaker 1: from her life. In the meantime, just a quick reminder
Speaker 1: that you can support Noble Blood on Patreon at patreon
Speaker 1: dot com slash Noble Blood Tales if you want access
Speaker 1: to behind the scenes information, my bibliographies and episode scripts,
Speaker 1: and you can follow me on Twitter at at Danish
Speaker 1: wartz with three z s. There's one final, let's say,
Speaker 1: wrinkle in the story of the legendary Princess Carribou, one
Speaker 1: final mark that Mary Wilcox hit before she retired her
Speaker 1: act and lived a quiet domestic adulthood. When Mary's ship
Speaker 1: was sailing from Bristol to America, the ship was run
Speaker 1: off course by a storm and ended up not too
Speaker 1: far from Saint Helena, the island where Napoleon Bonaparte was
Speaker 1: being exiled. According to the journal of a man named
Speaker 1: Felix Farley, on September thirteenth, eighteen seventeen, Mary Wilcox came
Speaker 1: to Saint Helena, pretending to be a carboo. She introduced
Speaker 1: herself to Sir Hudson Low, the man in charge of
Speaker 1: Napoleon on the beach, as soon as she came ashore,
Speaker 1: and said that fate had intertwined her with the former
Speaker 1: French emperor and that she wanted to meet him genially.
Speaker 1: I suppose Low agreed, and according to our source, Napoleon
Speaker 1: was charmed. Quote he intimated his determination to apply to
Speaker 1: the Pope for a dis in station, to dissolve his
Speaker 1: marriage with Marie Louise, and to sanction his indissoluble union
Speaker 1: with the enchanting Caribou. There you have it, and act
Speaker 1: with one final mark, and a pretty good one with that.
Speaker 1: Noble Blood is a production of I Heart Radio and
Speaker 1: Grimm and Mild from Aaron Manky. The show is written
Speaker 1: and hosted by Dana Schwartz and produced by Aaron Mankey,
Speaker 1: Matt Frederick, Alex Williams, and Trevor Young. Noble Blood is
Speaker 1: on social media at Noble Blood Tales, and you can
Speaker 1: learn more about the show over at Noble Blood Tales
Speaker 1: dot com. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit
Speaker 1: the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows.