In April 1817, cobbler Samuel Worrall and his wife met a bewildered young woman wandering in Almondsbury, Gloucestershire. Draped in odd clothes and speaking an unidentifiable gibberish, she communicated through crude gestures. Local scholars and curious elites rushed to decode her mystery.
Enter Manuel Eynesso, a Portuguese sailor who claimed he understood her language. He translated her story: she was Princess Caraboo from the Pacific island of Javasu, captured by pirates, escaped by jumping overboard in the Bristol Channel, and swam ashore. For months, local aristocrats showered her with luxury, fascinated by her exotic habits, such as eating with chopsticks, praying to a god named Allah Tallah from tree branches, and shooting bows and arrows.
She became a sensation in European newspapers. However, the illusion shattered when a lodging-house keeper named Mrs. Neale recognized her portrait in the newspaper.
Princess Caraboo was actually Mary Baker, a cobbler's daughter from Devon who had worked as a servant across England. Inventing an imaginary dialect using scrambled words and invented symbols, she had successfully pulled off one of the Regency era's grandest hoaxes. Unperturbed by her exposure, Mary took her act on tour to the United States, performing her royal persona on stage before returning to England to live a quiet life selling leeches to a Bristol hospital.