Fraudsters and Charlatans (5 page)

The public had no doubts about Cochrane's innocence. On 16 July, amid scenes of exuberant acclaim, he was re-elected as Member of Parliament for Westminster at an open hustings. Meanwhile, de Berenger, totally unaware of the reaction he was provoking, continued to write to Lord Cochrane asking for assistance, expressing increasing surprise that the noble Lord did not reply to his letters. To de Berenger's rage, Cochrane simply had the letters published. In time, pleading turned to threats, and de Berenger eventually took his revenge by publishing
The Noble Stock-jobber
, which gave a detailed account of how the fraud was carried out, and placed Lord Cochrane at the thick of the scheme. While conclusive proof of Cochrane's innocence is not available, his known behaviour on the day of the fraud strongly suggests that he knew nothing of the plot, and his presence at the meeting of 19 February is to be doubted, since he was later able to supply evidence that he had been visiting his wine merchant at the time.

Cochrane was to deny his guilt with anger and defiance for the rest of his life. He published
A Letter to Lord Ellenborough
, accusing the judge of misleading the jury, and tried unsuccessfully to have him impeached for ‘Partiality, Misrepresentation, Injustice and Oppression'.
¹⁹
Cochrane's later career was one of courageous and distinguished service, but for official recognition that he was innocent of the fraud it was necessary for him to outlive the men of the Admiralty and politicians who had regarded him as such a dangerous rebel. In 1832, Cochrane, now the 10th Earl of Dundonald, was restored to the Navy list as Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, and in 1847 he was again awarded the Order of the Bath. He remained in active service well into his seventies, and the last years of his life saw many honours come to him, but he never, however hard he campaigned, managed to get the £1,000 fine repaid, or receive compensation for his years spent on half pay. His
Autobiography of a Seaman
, published in two volumes in 1859 and 1860, showed that even in old age the fires of indignation still burned brightly. He died in 1860, a few weeks short of his eighty-fifth birthday.

Andrew Cochrane Johnstone had apparently disappeared, but in 1826 the Audit Office, calculating that he owed the Government £600,000 on some bills of exchange drawn while he was Governor of Dominica, made efforts to discover his whereabouts. It was found that in either 1814 or 1815 he had arrived in Dominica, where he still owned some property, and remained there until 1819 or 1820, when he bought an estate in Demerara and settled there. In 1823, following a disagreement with his creditors, he was obliged to sell up and leave Demerara and move to Martinique, but after a few months he returned to Paris, where, realising that the Treasury was looking for its money, he wrote from an undisclosed address asking to be excused from his debts. The last known letter from him was written in 1828, and in the absence of any further correspondence on the matter it is to be assumed that he died not long afterwards. Holloway, Lyte, McRae and Sandom returned to that obscurity from which they had briefly emerged.

The actions of Richard Gaythorne Butt after his release from prison strongly suggest he had undergone severe mental suffering as a result of his conviction. On the advice of friends who thought it would be best if he left England, he voyaged to Dominica to find Cochrane Johnstone and recover £4,800 he believed was owing to him, but returned empty-handed. He became obsessed with the idea that he had been found guilty solely so that Lord Ellenborough could pocket the £1,000 fine, and indeed that the noble judge had actually done so. All arguments to convince him that he was wrong were useless. When applying at Bow Street Magistrate's Court for a warrant to apprehend Lord Ellenborough, he became so violent that the magistrate threatened to commit him. Butt also accused Lord Castlereagh, leader of the House of Commons, of lying to the House in suggesting that he (Butt) had petitioned for mercy to have the sentence of the pillory removed. Butt wrote to the newspapers, which unsurprisingly refused to print his accusations, and neither could he find anyone willing to publish them in pamphlet form. He eventually had 200 posters printed and distributed. In March 1817,
The Times
commented: ‘Yesterday, Mr R. G. Butt, who has for some time past taken singular pains to be prosecuted for libel, had at last his wish gratified . . . '.
²⁰
When arrested it was found that he had prepared placards against other public figures that he was about to distribute. ‘It is apprehended that Mr Butt is somewhat deranged in his mind but not in such a state as to be irresponsible for his actions,' it was observed. ‘He is respectably connected but his relations have not thought fit to give bail for him and as he had dissipated all his property they are not inclined to issue a Commission of Lunacy against him.'
²¹
Butt was found guilty and sentenced to a total of fifteen months in prison. In 1821 he was writing almost daily letters about his case from White Cross Street debtors' prison. Like Cochrane, he maintained to the end of his life that he was innocent of any fraud. When Cochrane was eventually exonerated, Butt peppered parliament with petitions, demanding the same treatment. They were ignored. He died, aged 73, in 1849.

Charles Random de Berenger managed to put the whole affair behind him. Abandoning the idea of making his fortune in America, he married an Englishwoman and brought up a large family. He wrote a book on self-defence and invented a waterproof rifle. In 1831 he opened a sports club at Cremorne Gardens, Chelsea, where he taught shooting. He never recovered his lost inheritance, and died as he had lived, in debt, in 1845.

TWO

The Princess of Javasu

W
hen Mary Willcocks was baptised in November 1791 in the isolated farming village of Witheridge, in Devonshire, her future must have seemed predetermined. The daughter of a cobbler who had fallen on hard times, she was one of eleven children, only four of whom lived to adulthood. Destined like her mother for a life of obscurity, worn by toil and childbearing, nevertheless Mary became, albeit briefly, the toast of Britain and the talk of two continents. The imposture that brought her lasting fame was not, however, a calculated deception, but evolved from Mary's character, skills and experiences. It was as if the first twenty-five years of her life were merely preparation for the greatest part she would ever play: Caraboo, the Princess of Javasu.

Restless and unsettled, Mary always seemed to be striving for something better in life, with a spirit of determination and self-reliance, as if she had something to prove. As a child she loved climbing trees, playing cricket and fishing. An excellent swimmer, she thought nothing of diving into the river. Although small and slightly built, she was strong for her size, and active. Her dexterous physicality lent her a feral and wayward charm, which was to be important later on when she would need to persuade her dupes that she was not an Englishwoman.

Receiving only the minimum of schooling, she reached adulthood barely able to read and write. Her wild and independent ways led some observers to conclude incorrectly that she was simple-minded, but Mary was both naturally bright and gifted with an extraordinarily retentive memory and considerable talent as a mimic. The one thing she lacked was creativity. Hers was the kind of mind that fed eagerly on facts and stimuli, quickly utilising them for her own purposes – so rapidly that it seemed to others as if her ideas were fresh and startling. She was capable of becoming what others wanted her to be, reinventing herself again and again as it suited her. At a time when many people rarely went beyond the bounds of their own village, she was unafraid of travelling long distances, often alone, and dreamed of going to America.

Sent to work on local farms weeding cornfields, she preferred to drive horses or try to prove to the farm boys that she could carry loads just as heavy as theirs. At the age of 15 she suffered a severe bout of rheumatic fever, which was to recur throughout her life. Later, her father, deeply embarrassed at her notoriety, was to suggest that she had never been quite right in the head ever since this illness.

At 16 she went to work as a nursemaid for a family called Moon who farmed at nearby Bradford Barton, but two years later, after asking for and being refused a pay rise, she walked out. Her next occupation was domestic service in Exeter, but only eight weeks later she decided the work was too hard, and left. This abandonment of positions which other girls might have thought acceptable was to be a feature of her life. Her restless nature preferred the stimulus of risky change to drab but safe certainty. Wandering the streets of Exeter with her wages in her pocket, she saw a beautiful white dress for sale, something so different from the plain working clothes she had always worn that, impulsively, she spent all her money on it. When she arrived home wearing it her outraged father thrashed her with his belt. Her family and friends, all convinced that she had come by the dress through theft or prostitution, regarded her with cold hostility. Mary was distraught, but by now she had perfected her strategy for dealing with situations she found unpleasant: she ran away.

Exhausted, ill and hungry, Mary arrived in London, where she was taken to a fever hospital. There she was given a treatment known as wet cupping. The back of her head was shaved and the skin scarified with an instrument set with a series of parallel blades. Hot glasses were then applied, which filled with blood. This treatment, intended to relieve the pressure on her overheated brain, left permanent scars, which gradually became hidden as her hair regrew. Once she was well, normal practice demanded she be sent back to Witheridge, but Mary was adept at finding sympathetic male protectors, who helped her to bend the rules and found ways of excusing her eccentricities. The first in this series of mildly besotted yet virtuously platonic admirers was the hospital clergyman, Mr Pattenden, who found her a job as a nursemaid with a family called Matthews early in 1811. Mrs Matthews, a worthy and religious lady, later commended Mary as a good servant whose conduct was always correct, ‘except that she told terrible stories, yet after all they were such as did no injury to others, or good to herself. Her behaviour was always so strange and eccentric, and her ways so mysterious . . . that no–one who did not know the girl would believe them . . .'.
¹
Mrs Matthews failed to elaborate, but it is very probable that Mary told stories of travel abroad, gypsies, highwaymen and dramatic adventures. She sometimes stopped eating for several consecutive days to prove how long she could go without food. After Mary had been with the family a year, Mrs Matthews asked Mr Pattenden to speak to her about her stories and pranks. Unable to face him, Mary ran away. Despite this, she was forgiven and allowed to return. Mrs Matthews and her daughter taught Mary to read and write, finding her quick to learn, and soon she was able to send letters home, enclosing money she had saved from her wages.

Mary also began to take an interest in the customs of the orthodox Jewish family who lived next door. The Devon girl who would later become an Eastern princess was fascinated by the prayers chanted in Hebrew, the extraordinary alphabet, the romance of ritual. She became friends with the Jewish family's cook, talking to her over the garden fence as she pegged washing on the line, and may have questioned her about the Jewish diet.

In 1813 a member of the Jewish family was to be married, and Mary was invited to the wedding. It was a promise of enchantment, like being transported to a strange, wonderful and unknown country. When she asked for permission to go, however, Mrs Matthews refused. Mary, not a girl to be thwarted, got a friend to write a letter inviting her to a christening. Permission was granted, but Mary went instead to the Jewish wedding. When Mrs Matthews found out the truth there was a bitter argument, and Mary packed her things and left. Staying briefly with a lady who made plumes for hats, she persuaded a friend to write to her parents saying she had left England.

Mary had in fact obtained admission to the Magdalen Hospital in London, a home for fallen women. She later claimed that she had mistaken the establishment for a nunnery, but it is obvious from the record of her admission that she knew the nature of the place and lied to get in, saying that she was an orphan and had led a loose life. She gave the name Ann Burgess, Ann being her middle name and Burgess her mother's maiden name. She was unsettled and restless from the start, and on being asked who her friends were said she would hang herself if it was discovered who she was. By July she was begging to be allowed to leave, and was eventually permitted to go.

For the next four years her story, as she later told it, is a fantastical traveller's tale. She claimed to have spent time disguised as a boy and to have fallen in with highwaymen, only narrowly escaping with her life after they suspected her of being a police spy. Much of the time she was actually in service, or on the road, taking lifts on carts or just walking. Begging, she knew, was fraught with risks. If caught, she could have been imprisoned, transported, or forcibly returned to her own parish and placed in a workhouse. She therefore developed a subtle technique, in which she never appeared to be directly soliciting money but presented herself as a forlorn and weary creature, tearing her clothes better to play the part, and was often assisted out of sympathy. The most momentous development was the liaison which led, in February 1816, to the birth of her son, John Edward Francis Baker. She was to give several conflicting accounts of both the identity of the father and the location of the birth. Mr Pattenden helped her have the child admitted to London's Foundling Hospital, where Mary gave the father's name as John Baker and his occupation as a bricklayer of Exeter. She next went into service with a family called Starling. Mrs Starling seemed to like Mary, although she, like so many, found her odd and eccentric to the extent that she sometimes thought the girl must be out of her mind.

She was very fond of the children, ‘but told them such strange stories about gypsies and herself, that she frightened them out of their wits. She once came into the parlour, and had dressed herself up so like a gypsy, that the children did not know her.'
²