32. Princess Caraboo - Fake Princess

Lucy Worsley and her all-female team of detectives travel back in time to meet con artists, hoaxers and crooks from across the world. Women living extraordinary lives in a world made for men.

In this episode of Lady Swindlers, Lucy meets Princess Caraboo, a woman abducted from palace gardens in Indonesia, traded by pirates and carried away to South West England in 1817. Or so she says…

Lucy is joined in the studio by writer and broadcaster Salma El-Wardany, presenter of BBC Radio London’s Breakfast Show, to delve into this sensational story. Lucy then heads to the village where it all happened to meet Lady Swindlers in-house historian Professor Rosalind Crone.

Together, they follow Caraboo’s journey from wandering vagrant to star attraction. They ask how a woman with no money, no papers and not a word of English could walk into a rural community in Regency England and wind up living in a grand manor house as an honoured guest. They consider her very ‘unladylike’ behaviour: climbing trees, swimming naked in the lake, shooting arrows and gutting pigeons. They reflect on the influence of nearby Bristol, a cosmopolitan city rich on profits from the transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans.

The team discuss how we judge strangers, particularly women, and whether desperation can justify deceit. Would we judge Princess Caraboo any differently today?

Producer: Sarah Goodman Readers: Clare Corbett and Jonathan Keeble Sound Design: Chris Maclean Executive producer: Kirsty Hunter

A StoryHunter production for BBC Radio 4.

If you're in the UK, listen to the newest episodes of Lady Killers first on BBC Sounds: https://bbc.in/3M2pT0K