On April 3, 1817, a strange girl in exotic clothes and with a turban on her head appeared on the road near the village of Almondsberry.
A local shoemaker passing by decided to ask if she needed help, but she murmured something in an incomprehensible language. The man understood - in front of him was a foreigner.
He took the girl to the warden Hill, whose duties included monitoring beggars, crooks and vagrants, as well as their distribution to prisons and workhouses. But Hill did not know what to do with the mysterious stranger.
After some consultation, the men decided to show it to the county magistrate Samuel Worrall. They reasoned that a learned servant of the Worrall, who knew several languages, would be able to shed light on this matter.
However, they were again disappointed - neither the magistrate himself, nor his American wife, nor their servant could identify the language.
Mrs Worrall was fascinated by the exotic look of the girl, but her husband was suspicious of her. He examined her hands and, making sure that they were not traces of hard work, ordered to send her to a local hotel.
The girl spent several days there. All this time she behaved strangely - she ate only vegetables, drank tea, prayed, covering her eyes with her hand and slept on the rug by the bed. With gestures, she was able to explain that her name was Karabu and that she arrived in England by ship.
In the end, following the letter of the law, Karabou was admitted to St. Peter's Hospital.
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Girl story
In a crowded, dirty hospital, the girl immediately refused to eat and did not sleep on the bed.
And then a lucky chance intervened! A Portuguese sailor named Manuel Aineso said that he understands the language spoken by the girl.
And that's what he told from her words.
Karabu was the princess of the small island of Javasu in the Pacific Ocean. She was kidnapped by pirates, after which she went on a long journey. But one day she threw herself overboard and swam to the English coast.
This story was enough for Mrs. Worrall to take the girl with her.
Karabou surprised everyone with her habits. She excelled in bow and swordsmanship, danced strange dances, swam naked in nearby lakes, climbed trees and prayed to God Allah-Tallah.
All the high society of Bristol flocked to the Worrells, and the girl was already playing out the scene of the abduction with might and main and progressing noticeably in learning the language.
Within a few weeks, all the headlines were filled with portraits of Princess Karabu. But this is what killed her.
Exposure
Mrs. Neal, who lives in Bristol, recognized the girl as her tenant named Mary Baker, who spoke to the children in a made-up language and wore a turban.
But trouble does not come alone. I recognized the "princess" and the man with whom she walked along the Bristol road, and then ate steaks and drank rum in a brothel.
Stunned Mrs. Worrall could not believe it, but the girl confessed that she was really Mary Baker, née Willcox, the daughter of a poor shoemaker.
The question arose - what to do with it now. She was eventually sent to Philadelphia, USA.
There she continued to impersonate Princess Karabou for a while, however, her story did not have much success.
In 1924, she returned to England and entered the not-royal position of saleswoman for leeches in a hospital. Mary got married, gave birth to a daughter and lived a long life until she died of a heart attack at 75.