WEBVTT - The Bristol Princess 0:00:00.760 --> 0:00:06.200 You're listening to Hoax, a production of iHeart Podcasts. 0:00:06.240 --> 0:00:06.880 Folks. 0:00:07.120 --> 0:00:12.600 It's a huge. 0:00:12.440 --> 0:00:15.480 When us Evil Blood to see you there. 0:00:20.760 --> 0:00:23.439 Welcome to Hoax, a podcast about the lies we wish 0:00:23.480 --> 0:00:25.759 were true and truths that sound like lies. 0:00:26.280 --> 0:00:27.840 I'm the ghost of Danish Worts and. 0:00:27.880 --> 0:00:31.000 I'm the evil twin of Lizzie Logan. Welcome to the show. 0:00:31.520 --> 0:00:35.120 So Lizzie, this is a rare time in this podcast 0:00:35.200 --> 0:00:37.320 where I am going to be talking about a hoax 0:00:37.400 --> 0:00:39.520 that I have covered on Noble Blood my other. 0:00:39.479 --> 0:00:42.280 Podcast, Self Plagiarisms. 0:00:41.640 --> 0:00:44.280 Self Plagiarism. I did go back to the same well 0:00:44.320 --> 0:00:47.720 of research. But the reason that I wanted to talk 0:00:47.760 --> 0:00:50.080 about it is because I feel like sometimes the format 0:00:50.280 --> 0:00:52.840 of Noble Blood one this is just a quintessential hoax 0:00:52.880 --> 0:00:55.760 and it is delightful. But also I think the form 0:00:56.040 --> 0:00:59.200 of Noble Blood is like a scripted show with a 0:00:59.480 --> 0:01:03.520 one single narratives sometimes means I can't explore things in 0:01:03.640 --> 0:01:05.480 as wide reaching away as I want to. 0:01:06.240 --> 0:01:07.400 It lacks a little Lizzy. 0:01:07.720 --> 0:01:10.200 I mean, that's actually what I was gonna say. I'm 0:01:10.280 --> 0:01:11.440 not on Noble Blood. 0:01:11.600 --> 0:01:14.480 Really, I was gonna say it doesn't have Lizzy's take 0:01:14.560 --> 0:01:16.440 on it, and you know, I would never. I don't 0:01:16.480 --> 0:01:19.880 really often pause Noble Blood episodes to be like I 0:01:19.959 --> 0:01:23.600 always take the historical consensus. But I never paused and like, oh, 0:01:23.720 --> 0:01:25.960 this source is this, and this source says that, and 0:01:26.360 --> 0:01:27.840 I mean, very rarely do I do that. 0:01:28.120 --> 0:01:29.760 So I am excited to. 0:01:29.760 --> 0:01:33.279 Talk a little bit about the broader historical context around 0:01:33.319 --> 0:01:35.800 a hoax called Princess Cariboo. 0:01:36.600 --> 0:01:38.959 Okay, great, I think I've listened to this Noble Blood episode, 0:01:39.040 --> 0:01:41.080 but I think it was a long time ago. 0:01:41.240 --> 0:01:42.000 It was a long time. 0:01:42.120 --> 0:01:45.880 I have a vision of myself listening to it at 0:01:45.959 --> 0:01:48.480 the gym, and it's been so long since I went 0:01:48.560 --> 0:01:50.800 to on Ghim, and I'm like, it couldn't have been 0:01:50.880 --> 0:01:53.080 this year, and it couldn't have been last year. 0:01:54.040 --> 0:01:56.840 It was, in fact, a very long time ago. Okay, 0:01:57.000 --> 0:02:01.280 So we're going to start the story on April Good Friday. 0:02:01.400 --> 0:02:04.440 Some people say it took place at Thursday before, but 0:02:05.080 --> 0:02:09.000 most of the story takes place Good Friday, eighteen seventeen. Okay, 0:02:09.320 --> 0:02:12.880 so Frankenstein's about to be written. I think Bridgerton is 0:02:12.919 --> 0:02:16.440 probably happening around this time. Anatomy a love story if 0:02:16.480 --> 0:02:19.200 you're thinking about costumes and what's happening. 0:02:18.960 --> 0:02:21.000 In England at this time, and we're in England. We 0:02:21.080 --> 0:02:21.560 are in England. 0:02:21.600 --> 0:02:24.239 We're in Bristol, which is the far west of England, 0:02:24.360 --> 0:02:27.600 like almost whales, okay. And a woman arrives at the 0:02:27.680 --> 0:02:31.000 small town of Almondsbury, which is right outside Bristol, and 0:02:31.120 --> 0:02:34.919 she's wearing what are described as exotic clothes, which in 0:02:35.000 --> 0:02:37.880 this case just means like a black turbin a head 0:02:37.960 --> 0:02:41.320 covering a black gown with like a muslin frill at 0:02:41.360 --> 0:02:43.480 the neck and a red and black shawl. 0:02:43.960 --> 0:02:45.919 To me, looking pretty cool outfit pictures of it. 0:02:46.040 --> 0:02:48.760 It kind of looks like a like a stereo, like 0:02:48.840 --> 0:02:51.120 a child dressing like a flamenco dancer. 0:02:51.480 --> 0:02:54.519 Oh funny, Like I'm not an accurate reflection of that, 0:02:54.600 --> 0:02:56.799 but it's like a girl like putting a scarf on 0:02:56.880 --> 0:02:59.560 and being like I'm Spanish, yes, like a child. 0:03:00.600 --> 0:03:00.760 Yes. 0:03:01.000 --> 0:03:04.200 And she has a bundle and this is important, carrying soap. 0:03:04.600 --> 0:03:09.440 Just a few haypennies and a counterfeit sixpence and that's 0:03:09.480 --> 0:03:12.000 all she has. And this young woman goes to the 0:03:12.080 --> 0:03:14.480 house of a cobbler first and talks. 0:03:14.240 --> 0:03:15.040 To him and his wife. 0:03:15.400 --> 0:03:19.400 But she's not speaking English, just sort of an unintelligible language, 0:03:19.400 --> 0:03:22.280 and she mimes that she's hungry. They give her some food, 0:03:22.639 --> 0:03:25.040 and then she mimes like, oh, can I sleep here, 0:03:25.480 --> 0:03:28.760 and they're like no, yeah, no, no no. And the 0:03:28.840 --> 0:03:32.200 cobbler's wife takes this woman to the Overseer of the poor, 0:03:32.639 --> 0:03:35.280 who's a person who's in charge of what It sounds 0:03:35.360 --> 0:03:38.720 like he's like the one who levies taxes on people 0:03:38.840 --> 0:03:42.800 and then manages those taxes to manage poorhouses and distribute food, money, 0:03:42.840 --> 0:03:45.760 and clothing. Feels like the overseer of the poor is 0:03:46.280 --> 0:03:48.320 exactly he should be overseeing this situation. 0:03:49.120 --> 0:03:49.880 That's who you call. 0:03:50.640 --> 0:03:55.040 And the overseer, though also pawnts her off on someone else. 0:03:55.400 --> 0:03:58.600 He goes to like the local magistrate, sort of the 0:03:58.680 --> 0:04:03.320 mayor equivalent of this town. Samuel Wirrel and his American 0:04:03.400 --> 0:04:06.800 born wife Elizabeth to like figure out this whole thing. 0:04:07.280 --> 0:04:10.480 Two questions, how old does this woman appear to be? 0:04:10.760 --> 0:04:17.400 And like what color is she? Young? Pretty? You're asking 0:04:17.560 --> 0:04:19.000 like race, like. 0:04:19.520 --> 0:04:22.960 Just appearance wise, because if she can't talk, then she 0:04:23.040 --> 0:04:26.120 can't really explain her ethnicity, but just like like purely 0:04:26.200 --> 0:04:28.680 on the surface, so again it means she could talk. 0:04:28.880 --> 0:04:33.360 In the nineteenth century, our understanding of race is different 0:04:33.680 --> 0:04:37.359 than it is now. She has dark hair and dark eyes. Okay, 0:04:37.640 --> 0:04:41.960 she is in fact like a white person, but that 0:04:42.440 --> 0:04:45.480 she's also sort of just like swarthy. Okay, so she 0:04:45.560 --> 0:04:46.760 doesn't seem English. 0:04:46.520 --> 0:04:50.160 Maybe doesn't seem English. And again she's not dressed like 0:04:50.200 --> 0:04:53.640 an English woman. She's speaking another language. And she's a 0:04:53.760 --> 0:04:56.159 poor beggar woman. But this is also a case where 0:04:56.160 --> 0:04:59.159 I do feel like pretty privileged really does exist. Oh yeah, 0:04:59.360 --> 0:05:02.760 where this isn't just like an old crone. This is 0:05:02.839 --> 0:05:05.520 like a very pretty young woman, and I think that 0:05:05.680 --> 0:05:07.600 makes a difference in the story. And so as you're 0:05:07.640 --> 0:05:10.040 listening to the story and how people are treating her, 0:05:10.400 --> 0:05:14.000 I think the fact that she is pretty makes a difference, 0:05:14.120 --> 0:05:17.880 oh totally, which is just an unfortunate reality of the 0:05:17.960 --> 0:05:21.200 world then as it is now, I feel like fundamentally 0:05:21.360 --> 0:05:24.000 there was a big to do. I think the equivalent 0:05:24.080 --> 0:05:25.880 to the stories, there's a big to do because there 0:05:25.920 --> 0:05:29.080 was a very handsome convict at one point. 0:05:29.320 --> 0:05:33.800 Do you remember this, oh, like yeah, the hot felon, 0:05:33.920 --> 0:05:36.120 the hot felon, And there's a whole account that's like 0:05:36.320 --> 0:05:39.720 mug Shouty's yeah, like bugshot of like Shouty's. 0:05:39.839 --> 0:05:42.840 I think fundamentally, if you see an unhoused person or 0:05:42.920 --> 0:05:47.480 a convict, a felon who is very conventionally attractive, something 0:05:47.520 --> 0:05:49.760 in you is like, well, that person shouldn't be there, 0:05:49.839 --> 0:05:51.800 they should be doing pilates. 0:05:52.240 --> 0:05:53.480 Yeah, oh yeah, I mean. 0:05:54.000 --> 0:05:57.400 Jim Gaffigan has a whole bit about how actors are 0:05:57.480 --> 0:06:01.520 way too good looking to be believable, like in certain 0:06:01.760 --> 0:06:06.520 roles where he talks about like halle Berry and Monster's Ball, 0:06:06.600 --> 0:06:08.839 He's like, she played that poverty stricken woman. 0:06:08.880 --> 0:06:09.400 The whole time. 0:06:09.440 --> 0:06:11.800 I was like, why doesn't she just become a model? 0:06:12.680 --> 0:06:14.279 She could be the next sale Berry. 0:06:15.200 --> 0:06:18.760 So basically they bring her to this magistrate to figure 0:06:18.760 --> 0:06:21.880 out what her deal is, and she acts pretty unusually. 0:06:22.120 --> 0:06:25.159 She sleeps only on the floor of the room, even 0:06:25.160 --> 0:06:28.200 though there's a bed. And then when they bring her 0:06:28.279 --> 0:06:31.560 to like a local inn called the Bowl, their botanical 0:06:31.640 --> 0:06:33.960 prints are very popular around this time, like on the wall, 0:06:34.160 --> 0:06:37.120 and she sees a botanical print of a pineapple and 0:06:37.240 --> 0:06:40.840 says nanas, which is nanas are like is a word 0:06:40.960 --> 0:06:43.520 for pineapple and Indonesian but also a lot of other 0:06:43.720 --> 0:06:47.720 different languages, and people are like, oh, she knows what 0:06:47.880 --> 0:06:50.840 the exotic fruit, pineapple is and then they show her 0:06:50.880 --> 0:06:53.839 pictures of China and she gets like very animated and excited, 0:06:53.880 --> 0:06:56.200 even though they don't know what language she's speaking. So 0:06:56.279 --> 0:06:59.600 they're like, Okay, maybe this woman came from Asia. So again, 0:06:59.640 --> 0:07:03.600 sam Old Worrel is the magistrate of this town, but 0:07:04.080 --> 0:07:07.760 he doesn't want to be associated with a counterfeitter because 0:07:07.800 --> 0:07:11.480 they had found a counterfeit coin in her purse, and 0:07:11.600 --> 0:07:13.560 he's like, I don't want to get in trouble for this. 0:07:14.120 --> 0:07:16.560 I'm going to have this woman be tried for vagrancy 0:07:16.840 --> 0:07:19.200 in Bristol because he thinks she's just a vagrant. 0:07:20.040 --> 0:07:23.720 I don't want to get in trouble for being around 0:07:23.800 --> 0:07:25.120 this person who did this crime. 0:07:25.360 --> 0:07:26.960 Yeah, it's my job. 0:07:27.200 --> 0:07:29.880 Well you should turn her into the authorities, all right. 0:07:30.400 --> 0:07:34.760 I will also say different sources sometimes characterize Samuel Warrel 0:07:35.000 --> 0:07:37.920 very ungenerously, like people are like he's a drunk and 0:07:38.000 --> 0:07:41.440 a cruel man, and I take those with the grain 0:07:41.480 --> 0:07:44.320 of salt, because a lot of contemporary sources just don't 0:07:44.360 --> 0:07:47.080 comment on his personality. And I think if you are 0:07:47.200 --> 0:07:50.680 embellishing this story, you want to like add a little 0:07:50.720 --> 0:07:52.960 spice to the side. Characters and you're like, ah, well, 0:07:52.960 --> 0:07:55.080 he sent her to be tried for vagrancy. What a 0:07:56.000 --> 0:08:00.160 cruel man, presumably a drunkard. So you might see when 0:08:00.240 --> 0:08:02.760 researching this story, might see things like that. I just 0:08:02.840 --> 0:08:04.400 am like, I don't know. He didn't want to get 0:08:04.440 --> 0:08:06.960 involved with this strange woman acting in a weird way. 0:08:07.440 --> 0:08:10.920 But she is briefly imprisoned, and it's while she's in 0:08:11.000 --> 0:08:15.240 Bristol that she meets a Portuguese sailor and sometimes in 0:08:15.360 --> 0:08:18.080 some sources he's named Manuel Ennis, but I've also seen 0:08:18.160 --> 0:08:22.480 Manuel Inesso, and he says that he actually understands the 0:08:22.600 --> 0:08:25.840 language that she's speaking, and he's able to translate and 0:08:25.960 --> 0:08:29.320 says that according to this woman, her name is Princess Caribou. 0:08:29.720 --> 0:08:32.920 She's from the island of Javasu in the Indian Ocean, 0:08:33.040 --> 0:08:36.560 right off of Sumatra. She was kidnapped from her homeland 0:08:36.640 --> 0:08:40.319 by pirates, managed to escape by jumping overboard, and that's 0:08:40.360 --> 0:08:44.359 how she ended up in Bristol. And from this translation 0:08:44.559 --> 0:08:47.520 of the Portuguese sailor, we learned that she's the daughter 0:08:47.760 --> 0:08:51.199 of a Chinese person of rank and a male woman, 0:08:52.040 --> 0:08:56.360 which is a indigenous tribe to this group, like an 0:08:56.400 --> 0:09:00.959 indigenous ethnic group in what we now call the Indonesian Islands. 0:09:01.480 --> 0:09:04.440 Javasu again located off the coast of Sumatra. 0:09:04.559 --> 0:09:05.240 But I'm going to do a. 0:09:05.280 --> 0:09:08.760 Brief spoiler for people who maybe are like, I don't 0:09:08.760 --> 0:09:12.160 know where Javasu is. That's not a real place. Oh yeah, 0:09:12.760 --> 0:09:16.480 it doesn't sound real. It well sounds kind of like Java, yes, 0:09:16.840 --> 0:09:21.120 and Sumatra. But you're like, okay, sort of put them together. Yeah, 0:09:21.240 --> 0:09:24.160 but it's not real. But what's happening right now in 0:09:24.320 --> 0:09:29.160 England is the exotic is very exciting. 0:09:29.360 --> 0:09:29.560 Yeah. 0:09:30.280 --> 0:09:32.839 And so this woman is let out of prison and 0:09:32.960 --> 0:09:37.120 the worlds, drunk and cruel, are not take her back 0:09:37.320 --> 0:09:40.520 to their house. And this is where like two months 0:09:40.600 --> 0:09:44.760 of the best summer we ever had started. So she 0:09:45.040 --> 0:09:47.839 is staying with the worlds in this small town and 0:09:47.960 --> 0:09:48.720 it is just like. 0:09:49.360 --> 0:09:52.959 Do they keep this Portuguese guy around to continue translating? No, 0:09:53.040 --> 0:09:55.800 it seems like he's really key to this whole thing. 0:09:56.160 --> 0:10:00.040 By this point, she's able to communicate enough, okay, And 0:10:00.080 --> 0:10:03.840 I think part of like her childlike inability to articulate 0:10:03.960 --> 0:10:07.400 things is part of her I'm gonna say air quotes charm. 0:10:07.559 --> 0:10:07.839 Okay. 0:10:08.520 --> 0:10:11.480 I also again want to be like she's very pretty. 0:10:11.920 --> 0:10:14.599 She has this sort of childlike approach to things, and 0:10:14.679 --> 0:10:17.000 I think that's why people get very excited about her. 0:10:17.240 --> 0:10:21.079 There's a great YouTube video that as far as I know, 0:10:21.400 --> 0:10:24.160 this YouTube video is what coined the term, but it's 0:10:24.240 --> 0:10:27.360 a term that people use now to describe this character 0:10:27.960 --> 0:10:33.200 trope in movies mostly born sexy, yesterday born sexy. 0:10:33.320 --> 0:10:34.760 That's exactly what she is. 0:10:35.040 --> 0:10:39.439 Where it's like Leelu in The Fifth Element or a 0:10:39.520 --> 0:10:44.599 little bit Madison and Splash, Yeah, or Bella in a 0:10:44.880 --> 0:10:48.599 Poor Things, where it's usually a woman who has the 0:10:48.720 --> 0:10:51.560 body of a hot woman and the brain of a child, 0:10:52.640 --> 0:10:55.440 not for creepy reasons, but for like sci fi reasons. 0:10:55.600 --> 0:10:59.400 Yeah, and so she's very helpless and then she's also 0:10:59.520 --> 0:11:00.520 very sex for. 0:11:00.600 --> 0:11:03.360 Some reason, my brain also goes to like mermaid things. 0:11:03.520 --> 0:11:06.559 So I'm going to like, you know, the woman in 0:11:06.640 --> 0:11:12.240 Splash Yeah, like in Aquamarine, Yes, that girl where it's 0:11:12.280 --> 0:11:15.160 just like I'm just so helpless and silly and naive 0:11:15.240 --> 0:11:18.360 with my strange custom Yeah, like how do this work? Yeah, 0:11:18.480 --> 0:11:21.400 it's othering a foreigner, but it's not racist. If she's 0:11:21.440 --> 0:11:21.880 a mermaid. 0:11:22.240 --> 0:11:25.880 It's infantilizing a grown woman so that you can still 0:11:26.160 --> 0:11:29.160 want to fuck her, and also she has no agency. 0:11:29.320 --> 0:11:31.880 That is exactly what's happening with this woman. So a 0:11:32.000 --> 0:11:35.080 ton of visitors are coming through Almondsbury because they're all 0:11:35.280 --> 0:11:38.080 so excited to see her. The Worls are very excited 0:11:38.160 --> 0:11:41.040 that they have a royal visitor. And Samuel Wirrel is 0:11:41.080 --> 0:11:44.079 actually starting a private bank at this time, and he 0:11:44.240 --> 0:11:47.000 feels like the publicity and sort of the esteem of 0:11:47.120 --> 0:11:51.240 having a royal guest is like bolstering his local business. 0:11:51.720 --> 0:11:54.040 Surely the answer to this question will be no. 0:11:54.840 --> 0:11:58.800 But does anyone have the idea of like, oh, we 0:11:58.840 --> 0:11:59.920 should probably get her home. 0:12:00.800 --> 0:12:04.640 No, Okay, she's an England now, I wonderful. She's a 0:12:04.760 --> 0:12:06.880 princess where she's from. Why does she want to leave 0:12:06.880 --> 0:12:10.240 with these people? Because maybe because she's having a freaking blast. 0:12:11.240 --> 0:12:12.520 She's a princess, I know. 0:12:17.720 --> 0:12:20.800 So there's all these anecdotes because a few I'm not 0:12:20.880 --> 0:12:23.280 to jump ahead, but newspapers get word of her and 0:12:23.360 --> 0:12:25.120 we'll write all these anecdotes. So a lot of our 0:12:25.200 --> 0:12:30.000 sources for these unusual things she does come from newspapers. 0:12:30.080 --> 0:12:33.120 But according to one source, this gentleman who had visited 0:12:33.240 --> 0:12:37.320 Malae in recent years brought out a souvenir sword and caribou. 0:12:37.400 --> 0:12:40.760 The princess gets very excited and recognizes it as belonging 0:12:40.840 --> 0:12:44.360 to her country, and they even say she tries to 0:12:44.440 --> 0:12:47.679 grab at it, but quote from prudence, it was denied her, 0:12:47.760 --> 0:12:49.240 which is very born sexy. 0:12:49.320 --> 0:12:52.880 Yesterday it's like, well, she can't have a night, uh, and. 0:12:52.920 --> 0:12:56.079 Then she but she placed the dagger to her right side, 0:12:56.240 --> 0:12:59.160 where according to this gentleman who had visited Malley, the 0:12:59.280 --> 0:13:02.600 Malay people wore it, which quote confirmed to this gentleman 0:13:02.679 --> 0:13:06.720 that she perfectly understood the custom, though not the language 0:13:06.760 --> 0:13:09.680 of that country, because she is not speaking malee okay, 0:13:09.840 --> 0:13:12.960 she is in fact not speaking any language that anyone 0:13:13.040 --> 0:13:17.640 really recognizes. There's a sort of a local expert, like 0:13:17.720 --> 0:13:21.720 a polymath named doctor Wilkinson, who shows her this book 0:13:21.880 --> 0:13:25.599 Edmund Fry's Pantagraphia, which has is like a manual of 0:13:25.640 --> 0:13:29.679 different languages, and she picks hers, which he identifies as 0:13:29.760 --> 0:13:33.560 one called Reijng, which is I believe spoken in Sumatra. 0:13:34.160 --> 0:13:37.480 And this doctor also identifies that she has strange markings 0:13:37.600 --> 0:13:41.080 on her head, scars that could only have come he says, 0:13:41.120 --> 0:13:45.720 from Eastern medicine practices, some sort of barbaric surgery. 0:13:46.400 --> 0:13:49.440 Wow, okay, so she's from like all over. 0:13:49.679 --> 0:13:52.160 Yeah, she has some strange scars on her head and 0:13:52.280 --> 0:13:54.280 we're like, we don't know what that is. They send 0:13:54.480 --> 0:13:57.280 samples of her language to Oxford to be like, do 0:13:57.400 --> 0:14:00.640 you know what this is? And they're like no, so 0:14:00.840 --> 0:14:04.760 no one quite. I mean this doctor Wilkinson identified what 0:14:04.880 --> 0:14:07.280 he thought the language was, but no one quite knows 0:14:07.400 --> 0:14:10.240 what she's saying, even though some of the words she's 0:14:10.360 --> 0:14:14.720 using are specific to Indonesian languages. 0:14:15.880 --> 0:14:18.880 Did you in middle school read The Island of the 0:14:18.920 --> 0:14:19.600 Blue Dolphins. 0:14:19.760 --> 0:14:23.000 Yes, I love that book. It's like the real version 0:14:23.080 --> 0:14:25.960 of this, real version of Island of the Blue Dolphins. Well, no, 0:14:26.200 --> 0:14:27.840 the Island of the Blue Dolphins is based on a 0:14:27.920 --> 0:14:31.480 real lady. What a woman's whole family left her behind 0:14:31.560 --> 0:14:34.440 on an island. I think they all died or something. 0:14:34.560 --> 0:14:37.000 And then she was like the if I'm remembering fourth 0:14:37.040 --> 0:14:41.600 grade correctly, she got separated from her family or whatever 0:14:41.960 --> 0:14:44.680 and became the last person in the world who spoke 0:14:44.720 --> 0:14:45.360 her language. 0:14:45.760 --> 0:14:47.960 Okay, I did not realize Island of the Blue Dolphin 0:14:48.040 --> 0:14:49.400 was inspired by a real story. 0:14:50.440 --> 0:14:53.320 Can we very quickly check if I'm write yes. 0:14:54.680 --> 0:14:58.200 Yes, the lone woman of San Nicholas Island left the 0:14:58.200 --> 0:14:59.240 one for eighteen years. 0:15:00.040 --> 0:15:00.240 Wow. 0:15:00.560 --> 0:15:03.840 Yeah, yeah, this woman crazy again. No one, it's it's 0:15:03.920 --> 0:15:05.840 hard to get to the place that she came from. 0:15:05.960 --> 0:15:08.480 No one really understands the language. But they're having just 0:15:08.560 --> 0:15:12.520 a fun summer with Okay, she's doing She swims naked. 0:15:12.960 --> 0:15:13.640 Hot hot. 0:15:13.880 --> 0:15:18.600 She practices archery and is apparently very good at it. Okay, good, badass, 0:15:18.760 --> 0:15:22.880 badass cooks a chicken curry, performs a war dance with 0:15:22.960 --> 0:15:26.320 a gong, and prays on the roof to a god 0:15:26.400 --> 0:15:28.720 that she calls a La tala, which is also a 0:15:28.880 --> 0:15:31.080 name for a god in a bunch of a few 0:15:31.120 --> 0:15:31.960 other languages. 0:15:32.200 --> 0:15:36.600 Allah is yeah, most great. Yeah. 0:15:37.320 --> 0:15:41.120 She also declines to drink alcohol. She brings one or 0:15:41.160 --> 0:15:43.520 both of her hands to her forehead to greet people. 0:15:43.960 --> 0:15:47.640 She quote bathed more than more often than was the custom, 0:15:48.360 --> 0:15:52.440 and we're a shawl while praying. They also just put 0:15:52.480 --> 0:15:56.160 her in exotic clothing and have her portrait painted and 0:15:56.280 --> 0:15:58.840 throw a ball for her in her honor and bath. 0:16:00.120 --> 0:16:02.400 Kind of like et. Yeah, but they're all having a 0:16:02.480 --> 0:16:04.880 great time. I mean, what to do next? 0:16:05.560 --> 0:16:09.000 So this doctor doctor Wilkinson, who examined her head and 0:16:09.280 --> 0:16:13.760 examined her language, published her findings. There's a Telegraph article 0:16:13.800 --> 0:16:14.560 written about her. 0:16:15.240 --> 0:16:16.240 This is you know, June. 0:16:16.280 --> 0:16:19.600 At this point, one of the war el servants, allegedly 0:16:19.880 --> 0:16:22.880 who's a Greek Man, doesn't think she's legit, and he 0:16:23.040 --> 0:16:24.880 decides to test her, and in the middle of the 0:16:25.000 --> 0:16:27.600 night he walks around and shouts fire to see if 0:16:27.640 --> 0:16:30.440 she would react, because that would prove that she knew English. 0:16:31.200 --> 0:16:31.760 But she didn't. 0:16:33.280 --> 0:16:36.520 This story, over the course of about eight weeks, gains 0:16:36.560 --> 0:16:42.440 in popularity. I think I understand why, which is kind 0:16:42.480 --> 0:16:44.360 of I don't want to get ahead of myself. But 0:16:44.480 --> 0:16:47.040 the reason people are so interested in this story, I 0:16:47.080 --> 0:16:50.920 think is kind of the main fascination here. But this 0:16:51.040 --> 0:16:55.320 story becomes so well known that this woman named missus Neil, 0:16:55.360 --> 0:16:58.320 who runs a boarding house in Bristol, hears about it 0:16:58.440 --> 0:17:02.760 and sees a photograph photographs he's a drawing of this 0:17:02.920 --> 0:17:06.240 young woman in the newspaper, and she recognizes the picture 0:17:06.280 --> 0:17:09.159 of her published in the Bristol Journal and goes to 0:17:09.320 --> 0:17:12.920 inform the worlds that, oh, this girl that you're calling 0:17:12.960 --> 0:17:16.600 Princess Caribou, I know her. She's a former servant and 0:17:16.680 --> 0:17:19.240 her name is Mary Wilcox and when she lived in 0:17:19.320 --> 0:17:21.520 the boarding house that I ran, she just like would 0:17:21.560 --> 0:17:23.760 sometimes wear a turban and do a made up language 0:17:23.760 --> 0:17:24.120 for fun. 0:17:26.040 --> 0:17:28.800 I'm obsessed with her. I love her so much. This 0:17:28.960 --> 0:17:32.480 is incredible. I love how much she has committed to 0:17:32.480 --> 0:17:32.719 the best. 0:17:32.840 --> 0:17:35.879 She's She's really the patron saint of committing to the bit. 0:17:36.160 --> 0:17:41.159 I mean, this is like Nathan Fielder wishes like, this 0:17:41.400 --> 0:17:45.919 is jury duty, but uno, reverse Uh, this is. 0:17:46.400 --> 0:17:49.080 Just her turning everyone else into the jury duty. 0:17:49.160 --> 0:17:53.240 She's just pranking. I mean, the greatest character actress of 0:17:53.320 --> 0:17:53.880 our time. 0:17:54.119 --> 0:17:54.320 I do. 0:17:54.600 --> 0:17:56.480 I want to point out, and we'll get to this 0:17:56.520 --> 0:18:00.680 a little later. She is exploiting in other people of 0:18:00.720 --> 0:18:04.679 different races. Yeah, to be like a slight buzzkill here, 0:18:04.920 --> 0:18:08.320 she's not just doing like a quirky character, but she 0:18:08.480 --> 0:18:09.639 is the queen of committing to the bit. 0:18:10.480 --> 0:18:14.680 I'm gonna not give her a pass for being of 0:18:15.240 --> 0:18:21.720 her time, but I'm gonna contextualize her as being of 0:18:21.840 --> 0:18:23.720 all of the things that people are doing. 0:18:24.200 --> 0:18:27.919 Yes, in the pre Civil war world, I. 0:18:27.960 --> 0:18:31.280 Realize this is in England. Yeah, this to be does 0:18:31.359 --> 0:18:32.720 not rank among the atrocities. 0:18:32.840 --> 0:18:35.680 So not the atrocities to people of color, and I 0:18:35.760 --> 0:18:37.600 also want to point out I don't think the problem 0:18:37.800 --> 0:18:40.919 is as much with her as it is everyone around her. 0:18:41.320 --> 0:18:44.760 Yeah, if they didn't want to believe in racist stereotypes, 0:18:44.800 --> 0:18:47.000 there would have been no stereotypes for her to exploit. 0:18:47.160 --> 0:18:47.720 That is it. 0:18:47.880 --> 0:18:52.440 It's everyone around her delighted that she is indulging exactly 0:18:52.520 --> 0:18:54.320 the racist stereotype that they. 0:18:54.320 --> 0:18:56.200 Want to enjoy. What a grifter? 0:18:56.480 --> 0:19:00.160 Yeah, So who is Mary Wilcox. She was born we're 0:19:00.160 --> 0:19:03.600 in seventeen ninety one or ninety two in Devonshire. Her 0:19:03.680 --> 0:19:06.600 father was a cobbler. We don't know anything about her mother. 0:19:06.720 --> 0:19:08.760 Is that why she went to a cobbler house? Oh? 0:19:09.400 --> 0:19:11.840 Because she was like, I know how to get around 0:19:11.880 --> 0:19:15.399 a cobbler house. Maybe I never even put that together. 0:19:16.160 --> 0:19:19.680 This is what I do. These things are not coming 0:19:19.760 --> 0:19:20.280 up on Noble. 0:19:21.200 --> 0:19:23.520 Her dad apparently said that when she was young she 0:19:23.600 --> 0:19:27.280 suffered from rheumatic fever, which affected her mentally after that. 0:19:27.800 --> 0:19:29.760 So we don't even know what's going on up there. 0:19:29.840 --> 0:19:32.960 She little kookie, she's a little kookie. She left home 0:19:33.040 --> 0:19:35.720 at nineteen, came to London and she got very sick 0:19:36.160 --> 0:19:39.760 and went to a poorhouse hospital and received an improperly 0:19:39.880 --> 0:19:42.639 done cupping operation on her head and that was what 0:19:42.800 --> 0:19:45.640 gave her the scars, which I find very funny. It's 0:19:45.720 --> 0:19:49.679 like people being like, oh, only a primitive Eastern country 0:19:49.720 --> 0:19:51.720 could have possibly done this her, and it's like, no, 0:19:51.960 --> 0:19:54.800 this happened in London. Yeah bye, because she was a 0:19:54.840 --> 0:19:58.000 poor person at the hospital. Yeah, it's people not realizing 0:19:58.200 --> 0:20:02.159 the barbaric practices are what they're doing in their own communities. 0:20:02.760 --> 0:20:02.960 Yeah. 0:20:04.560 --> 0:20:07.040 She worked as a nurse maid for a family in 0:20:07.119 --> 0:20:09.960 Clapham and apparently the children really liked her. She was 0:20:10.080 --> 0:20:13.240 very imaginative with stories, so I like it. Then she 0:20:13.359 --> 0:20:17.879 got very interested in their Jewish neighbors. She just like 0:20:18.000 --> 0:20:21.000 loved their language and their prayers. I mean, we love 0:20:21.000 --> 0:20:23.160 an ally, we love someone being interested in the community. 0:20:23.920 --> 0:20:27.600 What it's an anti Semite, like a pro Semite. 0:20:28.160 --> 0:20:31.160 She gets fired from her job for attending a Jewish wedding. 0:20:32.320 --> 0:20:33.840 I know that is insane. 0:20:34.040 --> 0:20:36.320 I know it's I like, I love an Ally, but 0:20:36.440 --> 0:20:39.320 I also there's like the bit of balance here where 0:20:39.560 --> 0:20:42.320 she was like maybe a little too interested in their 0:20:42.400 --> 0:20:44.320 prayer and language, where I do feel a little like 0:20:44.840 --> 0:20:47.320 have you read that Judge Judy interview with RuPaul? 0:20:48.280 --> 0:20:48.440 Oh? 0:20:49.040 --> 0:20:54.080 Yes, yes, We're like, incorporating Judaism into your personality is 0:20:54.119 --> 0:20:55.320 maybe something you don't need. 0:20:56.080 --> 0:20:58.879 Yeah, but like attending a wedding to me is like 0:20:59.320 --> 0:21:01.680 the wedding is great, Like that's fun. 0:21:01.840 --> 0:21:05.320 Yeah, Like go celebrate, Go celebrate. She shouldn't have gotten fired. 0:21:05.640 --> 0:21:09.359