Princess Caraboo

Mary Baker pretended to come from a far off island kingdom. She fooled a British town for some months. British press made much of the hoax at the expense of the duped rustic middle-class. In 1824 she returned to Britain and exhibited herself for a short time in New York as Princess Caraboo.

About Princess Caraboo in brief

Summary Princess CarabooMary Baker pretended to come from a far off island kingdom. She fooled a British town for some months. The British press made much of the hoax at the expense of the duped rustic middle-class. In 1824 she returned to Britain and exhibited herself for a short time in New York as Princess Caraboo. She briefly travelled to France and Spain in her guise, but soon returned to England. She was living as a widow in Bedminster under the name Mary Burgess. She died from a fall in Bristol in December 1864 and was buried in the Hebron Road cemetery.

The hoax provided material for a script, written by Michael Austin and John Wells, which added some fictional elements to the story. A full story of her death in a fire in February 1900 was made into a film, The hoax, starring Michael Austin, John Wells and John Huston, which was released in 1994. The film was based on a true story of a woman who claimed to be a princess from an island kingdom in the Indian Ocean. The story was about a woman named Mary Willcocks, a cobbler’s daughter from Witheridge, Devon.