Speaker 1: Ridiculous Crime is a production of My Heart Radio. Hey, Sarony,
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Dutton, you know it's ridiculous, Yeah, I do. Actually,
Speaker 1: do you know if you tried one new Coca Cola
Speaker 1: product every day, it would take you nine years to
Speaker 1: try them all? Wait, Coca Cola? Like? Are you talking
Speaker 1: about Coca Cola the beverage con so, but any of
Speaker 1: the like or whatever their various They make more than
Speaker 1: thirty five hundred different beverages. My stars, that's a lot.
Speaker 1: I had no idea. That's just straight up ridiculous. I
Speaker 1: kicked diet coke not too long ago. I used to
Speaker 1: drink a lot of it and it spend a couple
Speaker 1: of months and I happened. What water that stuff? I
Speaker 1: only drink water and iced coffee. Now, Hm, you know,
Speaker 1: run and clean? Okay, let me tell you something else.
Speaker 1: It's ridiculous, all right. Later on me chasing century clout
Speaker 1: and conning the public by pretending to be a princess
Speaker 1: from an imaginary island. I like that me too. This
Speaker 1: is Ridiculous Crime, a podcast about absurd and outrageous capers, heists,
Speaker 1: and cons. It's always murder free and ridiculous. So is Naron,
Speaker 1: I have a question for you. Have you ever told
Speaker 1: a significant lie about yourself to other people? Have I ever?
Speaker 1: In fact, one of my best friends I made our
Speaker 1: like our friendship was made based on a lie. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So what happened was who is orientation in college? It
Speaker 1: was like the first day, like your orientation, and there's
Speaker 1: this bus that there's loading students. I'll think, we'll take
Speaker 1: you down to the each and have like the whole thing.
Speaker 1: So I'm like, cool, I'll roll into the beach. You
Speaker 1: know I love beaches, so you do moon dogging. So
Speaker 1: I get on this bus moondogging in it up and uh,
Speaker 1: I see this all these really hot Spanish girls at
Speaker 1: the back of the bus and a bunch of Spanish dudes.
Speaker 1: They're all like, also hot if you're into Spanish dudes, right,
Speaker 1: So just a bunch of attractive Spaniards are in the
Speaker 1: back of this bus and there's one dude, this Korean
Speaker 1: dude sitting there in the Chicago Cubs hat talking in
Speaker 1: Spanish to them. No. I understand enough Spanish to get around,
Speaker 1: but not enough to really do my thing. So I
Speaker 1: went up and told him, hey, man, are you from Chicago.
Speaker 1: He's like, yeah, and so I then told him I
Speaker 1: was from Chicago and we bonded over that so that
Speaker 1: way I could go and talk to all those hot
Speaker 1: Spanish girls and by hanging out with him, and we
Speaker 1: went down to the beach and we all partied together
Speaker 1: and it worked out great. He and I became the
Speaker 1: best of friends. Did he ask you what neighbor? Oh? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know Chicago well enough that I could like name
Speaker 1: high schools and stuff, But you could name high schools
Speaker 1: in Chicago like New Trier High. I knew like plenty
Speaker 1: of Lincoln Lincoln Wood anyway, so that's disturbing, Thank you.
Speaker 1: I just listened to two stories. I had all these details. Anyway,
Speaker 1: he meets my mother for the first time. What's his
Speaker 1: first question? Hey, what part of Chicago do you live in?
Speaker 1: And I was like, oh right, I forgot i'd ever
Speaker 1: tell him. So that's what we found at the truth
Speaker 1: we never lived in Chicago. And he looked at me
Speaker 1: like the darts in his eyes. How long was this
Speaker 1: from the bus ride to the reveal? Probably ten months. Wow,
Speaker 1: that's a long time to keep you know, I wasn't
Speaker 1: committed to it. I forgot you talk like that would
Speaker 1: have been the fun part that if I would do
Speaker 1: it again, I would definitely be like, Okay, all right, lying, Well,
Speaker 1: we've all done that. We've all kind of painted ourselves
Speaker 1: as someone else, right, especially when we're young. Oh yeah, totally.
Speaker 1: And we exaggerate, we fabricate, so like people in their resumes,
Speaker 1: why do we do that? I'm good at XCEL proficient, extraficient,
Speaker 1: But like, why do we do that? We do that
Speaker 1: to make ourselves more interesting, or to get further in life,
Speaker 1: or to avoid questions. So we think about people who
Speaker 1: don't tell the truth or who exaggerate, and I think
Speaker 1: a really good example of that is a lady named
Speaker 1: Mary Wilcox. Mary Wilcox no w I L L C
Speaker 1: O c K S stop, I'm gonna stop. So Mary
Speaker 1: was born She's born in in England, in a little
Speaker 1: village in Devonshire, just north of Exeter. Is this making
Speaker 1: any no is anywhere close to frog? Well? Oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: she's like right near frog, well super close to frog.
Speaker 1: Well she's really eccentric, prone to depression, rad little kid.
Speaker 1: And but you know the time, girl, and the thing
Speaker 1: is is that she's not rich. She's you know, her
Speaker 1: dad's a cobbler and her mom spins wool and she
Speaker 1: also the mom like we did corn fields or something
Speaker 1: or wheat fields like English peasants viage shoes one right,
Speaker 1: and here she's eccentric and prone to depression. But I
Speaker 1: think the only the rich are allowed to be eccentric,
Speaker 1: especially in England. Yeah, anywhere then you kind of otherwise
Speaker 1: you look down upon, but you get to be weird.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, if you're you're rich eccentric. If you're poor,
Speaker 1: you're crazy. Right, So, but she wants more in life,
Speaker 1: you know, like she sees the world in a different way.
Speaker 1: She's this crazy wanderlest She just wants to see the world,
Speaker 1: which really was not open to her at that time.
Speaker 1: It's difficult. You're stuck in Devonshire in correct. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: when she came into this world. But she she kind
Speaker 1: of figures out how she can navigate that world and
Speaker 1: make it interesting for her. She learns how to read,
Speaker 1: which was a big deal then for someone and no
Speaker 1: and like peasants, and you know, it just wasn't it
Speaker 1: wasn't something that was sort of on offer. I would imagine. Um.
Speaker 1: She also learned how to swim, and that was a
Speaker 1: big deal. You know, they preferred their their poor people drowning.
Speaker 1: And so she gets a gig as a servant. That
Speaker 1: makes total sense. You can see that happening. And next
Speaker 1: door to where she is working, there's this Jewish family
Speaker 1: and first she'd be friends their servant, and then she
Speaker 1: befriends the whole family and they, um, they teach her
Speaker 1: how to write, and they teach her all in English,
Speaker 1: in English, but they teach her also they teach her
Speaker 1: the Hebrew alphabet, and they teach her all this really
Speaker 1: cool stuff, the Jewish diet, and they just sound like
Speaker 1: this really neat family that it's just gets along with everybody. Um.
Speaker 1: She gets fired from her gig though, because she's not
Speaker 1: she's a little bit flaky, you know, she's kind of
Speaker 1: a daydreamer. Uh. And so after she's fired, she gets
Speaker 1: arrested because she stole a piece of cloth and she
Speaker 1: do is going down how fast? Yeah, And she started
Speaker 1: to get more and more desperate. She dresses herself like
Speaker 1: a man and gets a job as a footman on
Speaker 1: the back of a like a servant. Yeah. On and
Speaker 1: h one night she's in this snowstorm and she's trying
Speaker 1: to make her way back to where she works, the
Speaker 1: home where she works, and she's all wet and cold
Speaker 1: and like shivering, and they take her in and they
Speaker 1: go to help change out of her clothes and they're like,
Speaker 1: that's not a man, she's not. She's so cold, she's
Speaker 1: so cold, she's like chattering at her teeth, and she's
Speaker 1: trying to like I did, don't do, and then they
Speaker 1: like strip her down, thinking it's just going to be
Speaker 1: some dude. No, So then she gets fired again, and
Speaker 1: I write around that time. She then gets married, but
Speaker 1: it's me and then also, oh it's not a love marriage. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she gets married. She only married, she's only married to
Speaker 1: the guy for nine months, and she has a kid.
Speaker 1: So what that makes me think is that that's why
Speaker 1: she got married. So she has a kid. She marries
Speaker 1: the guy whose last name is Baker, and so she
Speaker 1: becomes Rry Baker keeps us in mind, are you getting
Speaker 1: are you okay? Good? You're writing it down. She has
Speaker 1: to give the kid up because she's so broke, and
Speaker 1: you know, the guy splits. The kid passes away not
Speaker 1: long after he's given up, So it's just like a
Speaker 1: really hard luck story. She starts to sort of moving around.
Speaker 1: She makes her way up to Bristol, which is north
Speaker 1: of where she was from near Wales, and she gets
Speaker 1: lodging with this woman named Mrs Neil, and yes you do,
Speaker 1: Mrs Neil. Now she's totally desperate to go to America.
Speaker 1: That's her absolute dream. And in the meantime she's entertaining
Speaker 1: Mrs Neil's kids by making up languages and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: And one day she's down at the docks and she
Speaker 1: sees these French women women down by the docks. I
Speaker 1: don't know what they were doing. It's weird for a
Speaker 1: weird place for French French women. Long we're still coastlined
Speaker 1: down by the docks. Yeah, they're just you know, hanging out, vibing.
Speaker 1: They were there for the chowder. Um. But Mary notices
Speaker 1: that they're getting all this attention. Now I think I
Speaker 1: know why they're getting but it marries you. She's like, oh,
Speaker 1: they're so exotic, they're so interesting, and she sees all
Speaker 1: the attention they get. So she dresses up and goes
Speaker 1: down to the docks and is all all hall like
Speaker 1: making up languages and pretending to be French or like
Speaker 1: speaking with a French accent. And she's asking for money
Speaker 1: and she's getting it. People are like, oh, you're so
Speaker 1: beautiful and exotic. Here, here's this a tuppance, there's here's
Speaker 1: that I don't know what they're giving up. And she's like,
Speaker 1: I'm going to save up this money to make it
Speaker 1: to the US of a this new nation that's out there.
Speaker 1: Um so here this is just building it up. Right
Speaker 1: if you were in her position, like, if you wanted
Speaker 1: to go somewhere and you had absolutely nothing, what would
Speaker 1: you do? What do you mean, like, am i her?
Speaker 1: Am I a woman in England? Or am I a
Speaker 1: woman in England? Yeah, it would be a different story.
Speaker 1: Like you in England, black man in England, I have
Speaker 1: a very different So I'm like, okay, what am I stealing?
Speaker 1: And how I'm getting to the box and stealing a boat?
Speaker 1: My hiding. So it's just something to think about, think
Speaker 1: about what her options were. And then we're going to
Speaker 1: take a quick commercial break, okay, because I'm gonna need
Speaker 1: to do some math. Yeah, you're definitely going to. Then
Speaker 1: we're gonna come back and I'm going to let you
Speaker 1: know how Mary brought the ridiculous Okay, so we're back. Hi, Hey,
Speaker 1: how you doing. I want you to picture this. It's Thursday,
Speaker 1: April three, eighteen. A woman staggers into Almondsbury, England, into
Speaker 1: the town square. It's Mary, but she's no longer Mary.
Speaker 1: How does that work? I'm about to tell you. She's
Speaker 1: wearing all black and a turban. She's learned to tie
Speaker 1: a turban completely, Yeah, she's learned to tie a turban.
Speaker 1: She's it's very sort of Mrs Howell from Gilligan's Island
Speaker 1: in my mind. And so she's got this turban on.
Speaker 1: It's her outfit has almost like an Asian styling to it.
Speaker 1: So it's she looks way out of place in Almondsbury
Speaker 1: and everyone is talking about her amazing eyebrows. They are
Speaker 1: on early fleet. They're beautifully arched. I'm imagining them as
Speaker 1: those nineties really thin, like oh yeah, probably not. Maybe
Speaker 1: they're like maybe she just penciled them on like wicked heavy.
Speaker 1: But she got like chardon eyebrows are like super high. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's what is That's what she's doing. But she's also
Speaker 1: got the turban. She's a looker, I wish, oh yeah.
Speaker 1: But she's also tired and hungry, and she had like
Speaker 1: a couple coins on her, and one of them is
Speaker 1: a fake sixpence, which just fun fact at the time
Speaker 1: counterfeit money. If you had it, it could be punishable
Speaker 1: by death. Wait, just on your person, not that you
Speaker 1: made it or you were to be using it. You
Speaker 1: have it possession is yeah, that sounds okay, We're going.
Speaker 1: So she's got some coins, she has some soap. She
Speaker 1: has a little piece of soap wrapped up in a
Speaker 1: cloth and like pinned to her outfit. Is there some
Speaker 1: keep clean? I thought maybe she was like writing on soap.
Speaker 1: I'm from I don't know about she was going around
Speaker 1: soaping people's windows. She knows how to write, and so
Speaker 1: she because she's stumbling in and she's really not saying anything,
Speaker 1: and she's just just like disheveled mess. They take her
Speaker 1: to the house of the county magistrate and his name
Speaker 1: is Samuel Warrel. Don't worry about it, and the county
Speaker 1: magistrates basically the old school sheriff. Yeah, and I don't know,
Speaker 1: I mean hose also like the lawyer these the law
Speaker 1: of the land. Uh. So he and his wife have
Speaker 1: this Greek servant who speaks all these languages and none
Speaker 1: of them, none of the three of them can understand
Speaker 1: what she's saying. She's like la and they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: that doesn't what can you keep going? So they finally
Speaker 1: figure out that her name is Caribou, but not like
Speaker 1: the animal like c A R A b oo, so
Speaker 1: it's like the heart, the boo of my heart. So
Speaker 1: she's like pointing at herself, all Caribou, Cariboo, like whatever
Speaker 1: you say, lady, and everyone is trying to decode what
Speaker 1: she's saying. So like travelers come through there sending out
Speaker 1: messages like send us your language experts, and people show
Speaker 1: up there. I don't know what she's saying wild. She
Speaker 1: becomes like a challenge, like totally she's the she's the
Speaker 1: local puzzle. Finally, this Portuguese sailor comes to town, which
Speaker 1: like you know, I suppose happens, and he says, oh,
Speaker 1: I can I can figure out what she's saying. It's
Speaker 1: not a pure language, it's a mix. It's some from
Speaker 1: the coast of Sumatra and other kind of aisles from
Speaker 1: the east. And she tells him that she's from an
Speaker 1: island called Java su Okay and that she was abducted
Speaker 1: by pirates and that she jumped overboard and swam to shore. Okay,
Speaker 1: and there she is. She's okay. So she's in Java,
Speaker 1: Java Sue, sorry, Java Su, speaking her weird language. She's
Speaker 1: abducted by pirates. The pirates then take her somewhere to
Speaker 1: the Atlantic, where she jumps overboard. I would hope, so
Speaker 1: unless it's like five miles off and she's one of
Speaker 1: those long distance swimmers. So basically she's had to cross
Speaker 1: the or either around like the Cape of Africa to
Speaker 1: the Cape of Good Hope, South Africa, and then you
Speaker 1: come back up around the top and then she's got
Speaker 1: to get up like trade winds, cross the equator and
Speaker 1: then like get all the way up to England. That's
Speaker 1: like heck of a journey. Yeah, that's her. And then
Speaker 1: at the end of that she's like, you know what,
Speaker 1: I'm getting off this boat. But I've got my soap
Speaker 1: and I've got my phony coins. So she she that's
Speaker 1: how she said. Now we're she in the Portuguese sailor
Speaker 1: and on this and he's like, oh, no, I can understand,
Speaker 1: Like if he's saying she speaks this mix of languages,
Speaker 1: don't know, he sounds fishy. Have you seen an istar? Yes,
Speaker 1: there's the scene with Dustin Hoffman is doing the fake
Speaker 1: language and Warren Beatty comes down and he pretends he
Speaker 1: understands him that's going on. And I think that she
Speaker 1: looked like Warren Beatty and he looked exactly like Dustin
Speaker 1: Hoffman in the in the like the lithograph in my
Speaker 1: head of Warren Batty was wearing a turban. So wait,
Speaker 1: is that her life story? Um? So she he probably
Speaker 1: was running his own con the Portuguese. He probably wasn't
Speaker 1: even a Portuguese sailor. He's just you know, he's from Devonshire. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he's just pretending. So. But the thing is is
Speaker 1: that everyone has this like hunger for the exotic, right.
Speaker 1: They want to have this interesting person that's come into
Speaker 1: their little village life and the worlds. The magistrate and
Speaker 1: his wife are skeptical, but they decide, you know what,
Speaker 1: we're all in. We believe her. This is great, We've
Speaker 1: got this weird oddity in town. I think too that
Speaker 1: this is like, this is the Georgian era. What does
Speaker 1: that mean? I mean, I know what it means. What
Speaker 1: does it mean? Well, I think what's more important it's
Speaker 1: also the Romantic era, when you're talking about literature and
Speaker 1: the arts, the Romanticism. So the writers and poets of
Speaker 1: the day words Worth, Shelley Blake keats byronic huge influence
Speaker 1: as those are the Romantic poets, um and they they
Speaker 1: think that deep feelings are the most real thing, more
Speaker 1: than reason, and everything is sort of pastoral. And they
Speaker 1: also there's like a huge lean on orientalism in the
Speaker 1: Romantic era. So you have like Samuel T. Coleridge's Kubla
Speaker 1: Kan super heavy on the orientalism, and it becomes really,
Speaker 1: you know, big thing with the public. There's always all
Speaker 1: these exotic settings, supernatural, exotic, extravagant events, the characters, all
Speaker 1: this other stuff. Right, So keeping that in mind of
Speaker 1: what's kind of the zeitgeist of the time, Mary Slash
Speaker 1: Caribou starts telling people she was born in China, and
Speaker 1: I guess she's using her made up language to convey this.
Speaker 1: She says she's born in China. She says her dad
Speaker 1: is named Jessu Mandu. He's a nobleman. Natural, yeah, super
Speaker 1: Chinese name. Says my dad was a farmer always yeah,
Speaker 1: just like when people are reincarnated, it's yeah. And she
Speaker 1: said her mom was a Malay woman and she her
Speaker 1: mom was killed in a fight between cannibals. Between two
Speaker 1: cannibals were fighting, and as she tried to stop it,
Speaker 1: feeling like she had like a pirate adventure romantic era
Speaker 1: um refrigerator magnet side, she's just thrown up. She's a pirates,
Speaker 1: cannibals Chinese nobleman. Now this is also, this is this
Speaker 1: English woman. I don't know how she's passed for Chinese. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess if you don't travel much, you
Speaker 1: didn't know what Chinese looks like, a little bit like,
Speaker 1: oh well this this must be Yeah, she said so,
Speaker 1: but here's some other stuff. Right, so we know she
Speaker 1: knows how to read, right, she knows the Hebrew alphabet.
Speaker 1: She knows how to swim. She's also a really good fencer.
Speaker 1: Why is she where is she getting less? I don't know.
Speaker 1: So she's a fencer. She can use a bow and arrow.
Speaker 1: Of course, I'm not even a question anything anymore. So,
Speaker 1: I mean, this is the thing is that you see
Speaker 1: this woman and she's telling these crazy stories. But at
Speaker 1: the same time she's got these mad skins, crazy skills. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm with it. So it's like what you can believe her. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she's really in the skinny dipping Okay, who is it that? Really?
Speaker 1: She also prayed to this god that she called Allah Talah.
Speaker 1: She just always takes something and goes just to the
Speaker 1: left of it. I've heard about Allah. What if it
Speaker 1: doubled up? She's like, really know enough about Islam, so
Speaker 1: I'll do an islam adjacent Ala to law. They stole
Speaker 1: from our people, but from my people, and they took
Speaker 1: that name. Like this incredible. You know, she's amazing grouping
Speaker 1: of cultures that she's compiled, I suppose through her reading.
Speaker 1: But again, how do you know how to fence? But
Speaker 1: also this is like what eighteen fifteen, there's very little known.
Speaker 1: There's very few people could be like that's actually not true, right,
Speaker 1: But she would challenge people to sword fights and like
Speaker 1: apparently she could fight with a sword in one hand
Speaker 1: and a dagger in the other. She's like fighting Pirates style. Yeah,
Speaker 1: totally her. And so do we know if she actually
Speaker 1: ever was with pirates? No, the timing doesn't work that
Speaker 1: she when she walks basically from Bristol and then it's
Speaker 1: like help, help, somebody help, I just washed up on shore.
Speaker 1: She shows up like seventy years past the end of
Speaker 1: the age of piracy, so it's like, yeah, an old
Speaker 1: pirate new she's like a leftover it was. It's like
Speaker 1: you know those the guys like in World War two
Speaker 1: who didn't know the war was over and there, Yeah, totally,
Speaker 1: So like she's on one of those pirate ships that
Speaker 1: they're just like like, why isn't there anything good? We're lost, man,
Speaker 1: I've been drinking their own pe for like a decade. Sorry,
Speaker 1: so help me a lot to law. Uh. They keep
Speaker 1: trying to decode her language because don't forget she still
Speaker 1: is acting like she doesn't speak English the whole time,
Speaker 1: the whole time. And yeah, so she starts to you
Speaker 1: know what, I'll write down my language. I am supposing
Speaker 1: that we've retained the Portuguese sailor this whole time. So
Speaker 1: he's like, let me act as the translator. She says,
Speaker 1: she'll write it down. So she starts writing down her language.
Speaker 1: They send it off to Oxford to be like where
Speaker 1: where is this from? Help us? And they you know,
Speaker 1: there's a down at Oxford in a row. He looks
Speaker 1: it over and he gives this official verdict. What is it?
Speaker 1: He calls it humbugs Oxford. You know, they have nothing
Speaker 1: better to do than sit there and go no, big nope.
Speaker 1: And this news comes back and people are still like,
Speaker 1: she's amazing, isn't she This Chinese pirate queen. She's so convincing.
Speaker 1: So she's acting like she doesn't understand English, and she's
Speaker 1: eavesdropping on what people are saying about her, so she
Speaker 1: can kind of know what they're expecting. And like someone's like, well,
Speaker 1: if she is really from that region, she's probably I'm
Speaker 1: not going to drink alcohol, and so she would turn
Speaker 1: it down. So when they come in and they like
Speaker 1: try and tricker like here have some brandy, and she's
Speaker 1: like in her language, no, no, no, you know please no,
Speaker 1: A lot to law wouldn't allow it. And she's like, oh,
Speaker 1: well you know what she got us. So they're all
Speaker 1: talking in front of her like, oh, she doesn't understand
Speaker 1: what we say, but she knows everything. She's also secretly
Speaker 1: studying these maps of like so that she can point
Speaker 1: things out, and people would come with documents and she's
Speaker 1: like reading them upside down because they think she can't
Speaker 1: read in English, and she's really sneaky. Then she starts
Speaker 1: making these appearances in London. They're like sending her off
Speaker 1: to London as this amazing oddity, and she's getting into
Speaker 1: the papers and it's getting oh yeah completely, so she's
Speaker 1: like and they're like, oh my god, she's so amazing.
Speaker 1: And then she like runs around with a dagger and
Speaker 1: it really was and it doesn't take much. And so
Speaker 1: she's in the papers and she's just like getting more
Speaker 1: and more fame, which she knows she's got to love.
Speaker 1: And then Mrs Neil picks up a newspaper. Remember Mrs Nei,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, you told me to remember her. Yeah, did
Speaker 1: you check your notes? So Mrs Neil reads about her
Speaker 1: and it's like, you know what, I'm going to Bristol,
Speaker 1: that little b I'm going down. She's just like she's
Speaker 1: I'm sure that she's like all mesmerized by this story.
Speaker 1: And then sees a picture of her and it's like no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: no no, that's not Cariboo. No no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: load up, everybody. She calls her footman, load up and
Speaker 1: off they go. So the jig looks to be up
Speaker 1: that Cariboo has no idea that Mrs Neil has made.
Speaker 1: There's no way. So she's just you know, doing some
Speaker 1: light NiFe knife fighting in the yard and skinny dipping
Speaker 1: and doing her thing, and here comes Mrs Neil galloping.
Speaker 1: But maybe she's on lone horseback. She didn't load up
Speaker 1: a carriage. Yeah, just like she she put her pocketbook
Speaker 1: on and just got on the horse. Yeah. So I'm
Speaker 1: gonna leave you with that tension of Mrs Neil racing
Speaker 1: to Bristol. Don't and think about that, and then we're
Speaker 1: going to take a short commercial break. So as I
Speaker 1: was saying, Mary Slash Princess Cariboo, my girl doing her thing,
Speaker 1: you know, she's naked in a lake and Mrs and
Speaker 1: then she drives off and reapplies her arched eyebrows, ties
Speaker 1: up her turban dagger. Yeah. The other thing too, is
Speaker 1: that like she was following like a vegetarian diet, which
Speaker 1: freaked people out then because meats such like a you know,
Speaker 1: commodity of like it's a good thing. And she really
Speaker 1: liked curries and stuff really Yeah, so that was another thing.
Speaker 1: We're like, oh, so anyway, so she's just like eating
Speaker 1: a bowl of curry, some lentils. I just want to
Speaker 1: she just got out of the lake Mrs Neil walks
Speaker 1: into the house and let's pretend she just kicked the
Speaker 1: door and yeah, and she says, ah, Mary, why are
Speaker 1: you here? Wait a minute? She has all this time,
Speaker 1: and that's her entry line. I mean, you gotta come on.
Speaker 1: I thought that was stone cold Mary. Why are you here? Mary?
Speaker 1: Why are you here? That's how I read it, And
Speaker 1: she has an American accent. It's crazy. Yeah, I'm with you,
Speaker 1: I'm with you. It just means like I would be
Speaker 1: like thinking about that line the whole way. Yeah, she was,
Speaker 1: and she just honed it. Her eyes narrowed when she
Speaker 1: said it, Mary, why are you here? There's so many
Speaker 1: ways that you can Yeah, why are you here? Why
Speaker 1: are you here? You can do that? Are you here? Mary?
Speaker 1: The French? Mary comes clean? Because stone cold Mrs Neil
Speaker 1: came in, squinted at her, said, sounding exactly like Clint Eastwood,
Speaker 1: why are you here? And Mary's like, okay, fine, fine,
Speaker 1: She starts speaking English. Everyone's just a dog like. Their
Speaker 1: eyes went out of their faces. On springs. There's what
Speaker 1: people like. People are running around, little kid's hair caught
Speaker 1: on fire, Strangers are running into each other. It was chaos, pandemonium.
Speaker 1: Cats and dogs living together. Everything comes crashing down for
Speaker 1: Mary Cariboo and the poor townspeople. Their worlds or doesn't.
Speaker 1: So now everybody knows that princess Herbs a fraud and
Speaker 1: everything is exposed. Mrs Neil's like, oh no, she's not
Speaker 1: a princess. Her dad's a cobbler. Oh no, her mom picks,
Speaker 1: you know, weeds out of a wheat field. She was
Speaker 1: once arrested for stealing a piece of cloths. This new
Speaker 1: petty as yeah, and so you know, everything's exposed, and
Speaker 1: what do you think happened? What? What do you think
Speaker 1: happened to marry? At that point, the charming Portuguese gentleman
Speaker 1: returns to the story, whisks her away, puts her on
Speaker 1: her fishing vegetable, and they go down to the coast
Speaker 1: of the Iberian Peninsula and live happily ever after eating
Speaker 1: much better food that you know what Mary would have
Speaker 1: Mary would have really liked that. Yeah, but see it's
Speaker 1: not as not as bad as you think it'll be.
Speaker 1: Instead of having this blame and calling her a fraud,
Speaker 1: everyone feels really bad for her. They pity her. They're like,
Speaker 1: oh man, she her life was so terrible. She had
Speaker 1: to make all this stuff up, this poor little you know,
Speaker 1: sprite Princess Cariboo. And the Press, the precursor to the
Speaker 1: Daily Mail, they're like, this is awesome, this is amazing,
Speaker 1: and they find it super amusing and entertaining. So they're
Speaker 1: writing all these pieces about how she pulled one over
Speaker 1: on all the rich people. And she's she's so talented
Speaker 1: because i mean, let's face it, she does have all
Speaker 1: these crazy skills. Um. But they love they love that
Speaker 1: so many people fell for it. It was just like it.
Speaker 1: They looked at the people who fell for it as
Speaker 1: the idiots, and she was. She was a smart one
Speaker 1: who got one over on everybody. It's kind of a
Speaker 1: come up in's for the rich that everybody enjoys. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the press is like, you know what, you guys
Speaker 1: were all asking for this to happen because you're so
Speaker 1: caught up in how magical and exotic things are and
Speaker 1: you want the latest weird stuff in your life. Well
Speaker 1: this is what happens. So she's she's unscathed, right, So
Speaker 1: she has you know, all of her benefactors and land
Speaker 1: that have been parading her around and you know, treating
Speaker 1: her to all this stuff. They decide that they are
Speaker 1: going to help her reach her lifelong dream. Do you
Speaker 1: remember what her lifelong dream was? Yes, they do, yes, Okay,
Speaker 1: long time listener, first time call her. She wanted to
Speaker 1: go to America. America. Yes, she like she wrote the
Speaker 1: song that Neil Diamond would later record, Come and do
Speaker 1: America exactly the very same. Think about it though, is
Speaker 1: like we've just gone through the war, just gone through
Speaker 1: the War of eighteen twelve. Oh yeah, fighting the British. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and she's like, give me out of here, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go there and they'll love me. Then, so they put
Speaker 1: her on a ship to America with three chaperones. Three
Speaker 1: chaperones are they more like minders? There are three religious ladies.
Speaker 1: I guess they're just there to make sure she doesn't
Speaker 1: wild out in America. I've never been chaperone. I don't
Speaker 1: know how it goes well or by three religious ladies.
Speaker 1: No less well, you don't know about that. So this
Speaker 1: is in June of eighteen seventeen. Now remember when did
Speaker 1: this first all go down? You said you were taking notes. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: she was born in sev eighteen fifteen, I think is
Speaker 1: when she was going April of eighteen seventeen seventeen. So
Speaker 1: they put her on They put her on a boat
Speaker 1: to America in June of eighteen seventeen. Account she only
Speaker 1: got away with it for two months, but it was
Speaker 1: the best two months. So she she gets to America
Speaker 1: and she goes to Philadelphia, a city brother we love.
Speaker 1: So she's all Caribou takes Philly. Um, she was not
Speaker 1: much of a success. There was a tough city, tough,
Speaker 1: tough town. They say through all batteries at people. Is
Speaker 1: that where they have where's gritty? Yeah? He's the mascot
Speaker 1: for the note for the Philly Flyers, right, Yeah, so
Speaker 1: maybe she tried to perform in an early gritty costume
Speaker 1: and it's just tall went. I think Philly has just
Speaker 1: always been a really tough town. It's pretty amazing town.
Speaker 1: It's great. I love it, but it's it's saying it's
Speaker 1: a town. Everything that New York thinks about themselves Philly
Speaker 1: is Yeah, they are actually walking the walk Philly and
Speaker 1: Jill Scott's from Philly, Chilly from Philly. Yeah. So here's
Speaker 1: Princess Caribou taking the stage. She's not really a financial success.
Speaker 1: She's just this weird oddity that people are like, why
Speaker 1: did I pay to see this woman like shadow box,
Speaker 1: you know, a pirate. I don't know. It's strange, So
Speaker 1: that kind of peters out. Then she decides to go
Speaker 1: to New York, New York City get a rope, so
Speaker 1: she writes letters to the folks back home. She's complaining
Speaker 1: about the horrors of celebrity, right, Okay, so it's like
Speaker 1: she we know that she does not have a really
Speaker 1: strong relationship with the truth. So she goes over there
Speaker 1: and no one's really, you know, lauding her, and she's
Speaker 1: this kind of sideshow act. But I love that she's
Speaker 1: writing home, like, oh my god, I owe all. I
Speaker 1: am dogged by my fans. My fan base is just
Speaker 1: really strong. And I've been picturing her as Angelina Jolie
Speaker 1: this whole time, and I think it works. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: just like the personality, the way she's like, I'm an
Speaker 1: eccentric and like I don't belong here, so I'm gonna
Speaker 1: speak a made up language. And then you go to
Speaker 1: New York goes I hate the celebrity yea. I wish
Speaker 1: they would leave me alone. They're like who Yeah, It's
Speaker 1: like the people who talk about their haters and no
Speaker 1: one even knows who they are. I love when people
Speaker 1: do that for you, you know, thank you, Like I
Speaker 1: don't want to listen to the haters, Like people have
Speaker 1: no idea who you are, what you're doing, so that
Speaker 1: you don't even have dislikers. Yeah, Caribou was, she was
Speaker 1: on that on that vibe back then. So she wears
Speaker 1: out her welcome in New York because no one cares.
Speaker 1: She goes back to England. No one cares, especially for
Speaker 1: someone like her. But she decides to, you know, just
Speaker 1: live her life. So she is reformed. She's no longer
Speaker 1: Princess Cariboo. She's back to being Mary, and she still
Speaker 1: Mary Baker, Mary Baker. Yeah, and she marries a really
Speaker 1: nice guy, has a baby girl baby you know, grows up,
Speaker 1: thrives um. She spends the rest of her life doing
Speaker 1: a job. And take a guess. If you're a former
Speaker 1: Java supe princess who knows how to fight pirates in
Speaker 1: sword play and I'm good and close with a knife
Speaker 1: for close up work, yeah, I would say my next
Speaker 1: job is probably gonna be giving guided tours of the
Speaker 1: mermaids off the coast. That's close. That's close. She she
Speaker 1: sells leeches for the rest of her life, like surgeons,
Speaker 1: I need something to believe. Yeah, but you know what
Speaker 1: the thing is in my mind, my imagined detail is
Speaker 1: that she gathers the leeches by skinny dipping, and then
Speaker 1: she gets out and it's like peel them from my buddy. No,
Speaker 1: I'm not skinny dipping, And then a bunch of leeches
Speaker 1: were attaching themselves to her body, like yeah, well, anyway, um,
Speaker 1: what is this Japanese animal? She went from having being
Speaker 1: like the local novelty to making her way to America
Speaker 1: and making it into the papers and such comes back
Speaker 1: lives this life of anonymous leechmongering. And she got buried
Speaker 1: in an unmarked grave, so we can't even go lay
Speaker 1: some leeches on her headstone. But that's the story of
Speaker 1: Princess Caribou. There's an interesting in September of eighteen seventeen,
Speaker 1: so she'd already hoofed it back to England by then.
Speaker 1: This there's a newspaper in Newbern, North Carolina that ran
Speaker 1: this little piece. I'm going to read it to you.
Speaker 1: It's it's such a typical sentence structure of that time.
Speaker 1: And Meanders takes his time Okay, are you gonna read
Speaker 1: it in like an accent? It's from North Carolina. I
Speaker 1: could do that, but I'm not going to. So the bubble,
Speaker 1: which during the last five or six weeks has formed
Speaker 1: a rich theme for the ridicule of every person who
Speaker 1: deserves credit for an ordinary share of common sense, has
Speaker 1: at length burst. Miss Caribou, who talked heathen Greek, swam
Speaker 1: like a fish, dived like a duck, worshiped the sun,
Speaker 1: flourished a dagger, and ate curry, and they italicized Curry
Speaker 1: in the paper, proves to be neither more nor less
Speaker 1: than playing Mary Baker, the erratic child of honest parents
Speaker 1: in the humble village of with Ridge in the County
Speaker 1: of Devon m So. I thought that sums it up
Speaker 1: really nicely. Like here, you know, all these people who
Speaker 1: should have common sense, and like this her story is
Speaker 1: totally illogical. They got caught up in it. She has
Speaker 1: all these skills, but she's just playing all Mary Baker,
Speaker 1: the curry eaten son, worshiping, dagger, flourishing duck, diving, fish, swimming,
Speaker 1: heathen Greek speaking Queen Mary. So she had a good
Speaker 1: six week run, and I really hope it gave her
Speaker 1: a lifetime of good memories. Oh yeah, I respect to
Speaker 1: charlottean game. What's your ridiculous takeaway here? Um, don't go
Speaker 1: swimming to attract leeches. Only if you have to dive
Speaker 1: off a pirate ship, exactly. And if you get offered
Speaker 1: a chance on a pirate ship, don't jump off. Don't
Speaker 1: jump off, just stay on. She could have, well she didn't. Actually, Um,
Speaker 1: you know, Joan Didion said, we tell ourselves stories in
Speaker 1: order to live. Oh, it's one of my favorit quotes.
Speaker 1: And so we want life to be you know, interesting, exciting,
Speaker 1: and sometimes we know that they're just stories that we
Speaker 1: tell ourselves, but believing those lies makes us feel better.
Speaker 1: It's like I said, lying is good, no harm, no
Speaker 1: foul on that one. Tell me beautiful lies, Tell me lies.
Speaker 1: Don't be sorry. That's beautiful, keep going not. You can
Speaker 1: find us online at at Ridiculous Crime on both Twitter
Speaker 1: and Instagram. If you have a tip about a ridiculous
Speaker 1: crime that you'd love to hear us yammer about, or
Speaker 1: if you want to tell us about a ridiculous crime
Speaker 1: that you've committed, please email us at ridiculous Crime at
Speaker 1: gmail dot com. So we will see you next time,
Speaker 1: and take care of yourselves, liars, and be good to
Speaker 1: each other and lie pretty to each other. Ridiculous Crime
Speaker 1: is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and Zaren Burnett, produced and
Speaker 1: edited by Crown Prince Dave Kusten. Research is by Countess
Speaker 1: Marissa Brown. The theme song is by Sir Thomas Lee
Speaker 1: and Travis Dutton, Fourth Duke of Flavortown. Executive producers are
Speaker 1: Captain Ben Bolland and Admiral Noel Brown. Ridiculous Crime is
Speaker 1: a production of iHeart Radio. Four more podcasts to my
Speaker 1: heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows.