Free Fraudsters and Charlatans by Linda Stratmann

her to be feigning. She did make one slip, however: when the Worrall’s younger son, Frederick, accused her openly of being a cheat, she was stung into responding, ‘Caraboo – no cheat!’ 13 But by then she had been in the household long enough for the incident to be explained away by her picking up a few words of English.
    The strain of constantly acting a role began to tell. One day Mary seemed to have disappeared and Elizabeth, searching for her, discovered her sitting high in the branches of a tree. Caraboo indicated that, as the female servants were away, she did not want to be contaminated by the men. It was probably one of the few places she could feel at peace and alone.
    Whether it was Mary’s natural restlessness or a fresh determination to go to America will never be known, but after three weeks at Knole she suddenly disappeared and was missing for a whole day. As Elizabeth sent servants hither and thither, Mary, fearful of pursuit, was cutting across country through hedges and ditches in the direction of Bristol. She took nothing with her, not even the presents she had been given. This is understandable, since the gifts, which included the Malay kris , would either have identified her or led to suspicion if she had tried to pawn them, and if she had stolen anything she would have been pursued as a thief. Mary later claimed she had been trying to get to America, had settled her account with Mrs Neale and sent her trunk to her parents; but she failed to explain where the means to do this came from. What is certain is that carrying a small bundle of clothes she walked back to Knole, arriving footsore, dirty and feverish. She explained that she had recovered the clothes (which were European) from where she had buried them to hide them from the ‘macratoos’. Elizabeth put her to bed and called Dr William Mortimer of Bristol to attend her. He brought a colleague who devised a rather cruel test, stating in the princess’s hearing that he thought she had only twenty-four hours to live. Mary controlled her expression, but her face flushed red. The doctor at once declared that this was proof she could understand what was being said, but the maid pointed out that the flushing was also a symptom of her fever. Those who wanted to believe in Caraboo continued to do so.
    When Caraboo was recovered she wrote a letter of thanks to Dr Mortimer, copies of which were shown to oriental scholars in Bristol and Bath, and sent to East India House, from whence it was passed to Stamford Raffles himself. One visitor at Knole was a friend of Archbishop Richard Whateley, a tutor at the University of Oxford, and a copy of the letter was duly sent to him. ‘On inspecting it,’ wrote the Archbishop many years later ‘I observed among many pot-hooks and unmeaning scrawls, several words and some half sentences in Portuguese . I had lately been in Portugal, and had learnt something of the language. I immediately wrote word to my friend that he had sent me a specimen of the Humbug language.’ 14 Whateley showed the specimen to other scholars, who agreed with his judgement. The only Portuguese whom Mary is known to have spoken to was Eynesso, which suggests a remarkable talent for recall and mimicry.
    This disturbing verdict on her writing may have caused some concern at Knole, but this was soon to be dispelled. It was inevitable that Mary should attract the attention of Charles Hunnings Wilkinson of Bath. Wilkinson, a member of the Royal College of Surgeons, who probably never achieved the MD which would have entitled him to make use of the title ‘Dr’ under which he was known, was a promoter of health cures such as galvanism and inhalations. He was also a self-professed expert in the many branches of science in which he gave lectures. His depth of knowledge may be questioned, but he had many friends and admirers who gained great enjoyment from his lectures and praised him as a man. If Mary