April 30, 2019 • 53 mins
Have you ever dreamed about shedding your old identity, casting aside your obligations and becoming an entirely different person? Susanna Caroline Matilda, narrowly escaping death after stealing from the Queen, did just that upon arriving at the American colonies. Join Ben, Casey and returning guest Christopher Hassiotis as they unravel the strange story of the Colonial Grifter Princess.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
to the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you so much for
tuning in. Casey, can we get a little sort of
you know, generically Colonial times music in the background. Perfect,
We've got a pitch for you today, folks. Have you
ever thought about changing your identity? Have you ever felt
(00:50):
that you should break free of the bonds of your
previous life and become someone else entirely? That's a question
we're addressing today. I'm Ben, my co host Noel is
off on adventures. However, we have a very special episode
for you today with a very special guest. Are returning
(01:12):
friend of the show. Thanks for classing up the place
yet again, Christopher haci Otis. Hey, thanks for having me. Guys.
I I can't promise I can fill Noel's chair, um,
but I will do my darnist. I am incredibly excited
about this. We didn't we We've teased your return for
some time over the over the previous accretion set expectations.
(01:34):
Thank you very high. You know, we asked, we asked
people to write in immediately as soon as they heard
your voice, but we didn't tell We didn't tell everyone
that you would be coming on for this and maybe
some other episodes in the future, but we're quite excited
to have you. Thank you so much. I know you've
been traveling a lot recently, right, Yeah, We've got a
(01:56):
lot of really great new shows in the works for
the Heart Podcast Network. So listeners, if you dig ridiculous history,
keep your eyes on your screens and your ears on.
I don't know what, Ben, you're you're better at promoting
than I am. What do you say? Ears to the wind?
Keep your ears to the wind of the podcast realm.
(02:16):
There you go. Oh, keep your eyes peeled, your ears
to the ground right right, and fingertips at the mercy
of your soul. There we go. Basically, I just want
everyone listening to scroll through their iPhones or their Samsungs
or what have you, and subscribe to whatever strikes your fancy.
This is just a long, ridiculous way of saying, yes, Ben,
(02:39):
thank you for having me on. I have been up
to a lot lately. We're putting together a great slate
of new shows coming to the network, all centered around
food and travel and stories of humanity and how all
those things relate to our lives. Um, I will have
a lot more information for you and the listeners of
Ridiculous History, probably in the next month or two, about
(03:00):
some really really great shows that they can watch out
for um and hopefully subscribe to and really really dig
So in the meantime, I've just got, you know, time
to sit here in a booth with you, which makes
me super joyful. Oh thank you. Also, of course, we
are not diving into Ridiculous History alone. We are joined
(03:20):
as always with our super producer, Casey Pegram give it
up for him, folks, Casey, I don't know why I
stopped like you are also going to put it in
a plause que. But Christopher has just given us a delightful, tantalizing,
I would say, exclusive teaser, because this is the first
(03:40):
time we've talked about some of these projects on air. Yeah, yeah,
on this show. Yeah, that's right, and so we'll say
no more. Uh, you pay for the whole seat, you
only need the edge. Check back in in a month
or so and we may have we may have some
new news for you. However, Christopher, you noticed at the
very top of the show we set up the concept
(04:03):
of changing one's identity. Have you ever have you ever
thought about this? I remember when I was in college,
I was at a rock and roll club and someone
had taped on the wall of one of the restrooms,
you know, over all the terrible band stickers and the
graffiti and the cigarette burns and the scars scratched into
(04:23):
the wall, someone had taped something that said, reinvent yourself,
start a new life. And it was basically not quite
an anarchist cookbook, but directions on how to access a
manifesto on how to essentially fake your own death and
season new identity. And there was some sort of Narro
(04:43):
dou Well who is going around spreading these pamphlets around
rock and roll clubs in the late nineties and early
two thousand's. Um. So, I don't know how many how
many people out there are living under assumed identities. You know,
we can't all be Don draper Um. But if there
is anywhere that's prime for reinvention and developing a new
(05:05):
persona and and reinventing yourself, I mean, I think the
United States of America is like, that's one of the
hot beds for it, right, That's one of the things
that we do. We burst forth from the shackles of
our our past. We reinvent ourselves. We set aside our
family histories, we invent new family histories. We just present
ourselves as we hope to be. And a lot of
(05:27):
times people just kind of buy it. That's true, that's
so true. The word of the day I'll introduce here
is a pseudo side. That's the technical term for faking
one's death or attempting to do so. Uh. And today's
episode hinges on Yeah, just as you said it, Man,
hinges on a fundamentally American idea. We have a somewhat
(05:50):
romanticized or idealized concept of this, of this purposeful reinvention,
this resurrection, rebirth by design, but we don't often talk
about the real life cases, uh, you know, in which
these sorts of tropes occur. And today's story is about
(06:14):
a person who did just that, who reinvented herself. And
that's the sort of thing that normally is it's praised
right to come from humble beginnings to set yourself up
to a life that's that's grander than anything you could
have imagined or that your parents could have set out
for you. Normally, it's a good thing. Is that the
case here? Well, let's let's dig into it. How about that.
(06:38):
Let's let's let's dig into it, and then maybe at
the end you and I can make the call, and
fellow listeners please chime in and let us know what
your take is after you hear the entirety of the story,
because it's important to hear the entirety of this particular tale.
Our story today begins with a woman named Sarah Wilson.
(06:58):
She was born in a Stafford village in seventeen fifty four,
and she was relatively well off, not not super destitute,
because her father was a professional and he's a bailiff. However,
they did have money problems, and the money problems were
(07:18):
such that at the age of sixteen, Sarah is sent
away from home and she is sent to London to
look for employment. This was not terribly uncommon during this time. No,
it's not. She came from humble beginnings and you know
it's this West Midlands region of England, it's not super industrialized.
(07:39):
She's looking for more opportunity, like many people do. She
heads to the big city. There are some suggestions maybe
she wasn't just looking for money. Maybe she was off
to seek her own ideas of fortune and fame and
kind of build a name for herself, whatever that might mean.
But she does head to London and within a few
weeks she finds work. She's working as a made for
(08:00):
a woman named Caroline Vernon. And Caroline Vernon was a
lady in waiting for Queen Charlotte, now Queen Charlotte, Queen
of England, but born in Germany. Spoke German German accent
when she's speaking English. Uh. You know, this is the
sort of thing where, looking back three four or five
hundred years from especially the vantage point of the United States,
(08:23):
where royalty is a bit of a novelty, we don't
realize how little national borders and family lineage criss crossed,
and one may or may not have informed the other.
So you have German nationals who are actually the King
of England. You have people from Austria ruling Greece. You
have the mix of whatever blend of Austro Hungarian Habsburg
(08:47):
that situation ruling over bits and pieces of Europe. Um.
So it's it's it's sort of like a dual layer
in Europe. And it's I always like to think that
the movies just get it wrong because everyone's speaking with
the same accent, wether it's an accurate accent or not,
it's generally somewhat uniform, whereas um, that's maybe not the
case then. But I'm I've fallen down a rabbit hole
(09:08):
of just talking about historical specificity. I think it's a
great point, though, and you've picked the right show to
do this on because it may be difficult for many
of us in twenty nine and these our modern days.
Two understand that it was normal for the rulers of
a country to be completely foreign in most what we
(09:32):
would consider completely foreign in today's terms, uh, and being
quote unquote qualified for their position entirely due to their ancestry.
And that's that's what happens. There's a feedback loop around
this time, uh and the centuries preceding it, wherein you know,
if you are a member of a powerful family, you
(09:53):
want your children to only marry members of other powerful families,
and so things get mixed. I'm not making an in
breeding joke. I'm just saying that's how the thrones end
up being collected and consolidated and passed around. Yeah, that's
absolutely true. And I will say that that this discussion
of languages and accents does come into play a little
(10:15):
later on in Sarah Wilson's story. Yes, nice foreshadowing. Yes, okay,
So Sarah quickly ingratiates herself. She is a a people person,
a slick talker. At this point she is playing the
role of the perfect maid as far as Lady in
Waiting Caroline Vernon is concerned. Yeah, and she's working at
(10:37):
the Queen's House, which if you or I were to
go to London, or any of the listeners wanted to
go to London and go check out the Queen's House,
you can't find it because what's now there is bucking
In Palace, a little larger, a little more grand, but
that original Queen's House. But but that's the region of
London we're talking about. It's still you know, that the
seat of royal power, right, quite prestigious. Yes, And at
(11:00):
the Queen's House, whereas you said, Christopher, Buckingham Palace now stands.
Sarah frequently saw the actual Queen, the wife of King
George the Third, and she quickly, in addition to ingratiating
herself with the upper crust of this of this community,
(11:20):
she also familiarize herself intimately with the scuttle but the gossip,
the things that only the maids and the butlers and
what Downton Abbey would call the downstairs people were aware of.
And this got to her. You know what I mean,
because we know, we know how human psychology works has
(11:41):
not changed for many thousands of years. Happiness is often
defining comparative terms. So she is, she's smart, she's quick witted.
She has escaped her small town and done more than
many people in her town would have done. But then
she looks around and she sees you of this opulence
and these lives of leisure, and she says, I'm paraphrasing here,
(12:05):
Why not me Where they got that? I ain't got
That's right, Yeah, I want to get me some of that. Right.
That's that's a quote exactly. I think that was on
some plaque somewhere in some dusty tone. Um. But yeah,
that's the thing, says Sarah Wilson. Being around royalty, knowing royalty,
knowing the comings and goings of royalty. That wasn't enough
(12:27):
for her. She wanted to get a piece of the action,
have a slice for herself, carve out a little nook
in that world. Or maybe she just wanted the things
that she knew she would never ever have on her own.
And I mean, this is such a stratified culture at
the time. It still is in many ways. But when
(12:49):
you come from completely humble backgrounds and you are spending
your day around someone who is wearing let's say, a
ring or a crown, or today a pair of sneakers,
or you know, you drive a car that is essentially
worth what your family could make in a decade, and
(13:10):
this is just a trinket to this person. That wealth
imbalance creates tension, and most people in the world can
handle that. Some people can't. And Sarah Wilson was one
of those people. So there was a night when she
was by herself in the in the Queen's room, she
snuck into a closet, breaks into this cabinet, and she
takes some jewelry, some dresses, a ring, and a little
(13:32):
miniature portrait of Queen Charlotte. So it's like, you know,
we don't have an image of what it looks like,
but I imagine it's one of those little sort of
um cameo portraits and maybe a little silhouette um just
something that would be a keepsake, something that a family
member of Queen Charlotte would keep and would uh you know,
would refer to lovingly remember their relative. So she takes
(13:55):
all these things for herself. Yeah, and she thinks it's
no big deal. One's going to find out for Pete's sake.
This is the Queen of England, right, She's got countless dresses,
countless rings. But the thing is they were not countless.
They were they were counted, accounted frequently. As is the
(14:17):
case with sometimes people of immense wealth, they also are
immensely focused on the things that make them wealthy. And
so Queen Charlotte was no different. She kept fastidious inventory
of her inventory. She knew what she had, and she
knew when something was missing. So very very very soon
(14:37):
after Sarah took these items, they're noticed missing. So the
Queen says, all right, we don't know who did this.
I need someone to keep an eye on. I thought
that was quite clever too. Yeah, I mean, you don't
want to just go off and start accusing people willy nilly.
That might fly with some royals. Not Queen Charlotte. Not
(14:58):
Queen Charlotte. No, she said, up a surveillance operation and
think about how many servants must exist in a royal household,
so there's clearly going to be um several factions, and
there's also going to be some servants that she trust
completely and then some that are you know, still a
(15:20):
little green, and then some that she doesn't really interact with.
So we can only imagine that she goes to one
of the servants she legitimately trust someone, someone or some
people with whom she spent years and years, right, and
she asked these people to watch not just the room,
but this particular closet. And this is where Sarah Wilson
(15:44):
makes her first error. Yeah, I mean the criminal returning
to the scene of the crime. It's a trope in
crime fiction, but that's because it happens. That's human nature.
You know, maybe your prime criminal would go for the
big score and then never touched that room again, never
go back. But Sarah was not a professional criminal. She
(16:05):
knew she got away with something once, so she went
back to the well again, or in this case, the cabinet. Yes,
but this time you know that that law and order
style stake out whatever was going on. It worked, and
Sarah Wilson was caught in the act of trying to
rob Queen Charlotte once again. So this is very very
(16:27):
very bad news. The way the laws work at the time,
Sarah Wilson is charged with theft and violation of the
royal privacy. And that's serious. That is serious. Yeah, that
is seriously how serious, more so than more so than theft,
violation of the royal privacy carries with it the death sentences. Yes,
(16:52):
so she receives the death sentence, and her original employer,
Lady in Waiting Vernon, has not given up on her.
That's Caroline Vernon, right, Yes, that is Lady Carrot, Lady
in waiting, Caroline Vernon, and Caroline takes it upon herself
to personally plead to Queen Charlotte please spare Sarah. She's
(17:14):
made a mistake, but she maybe is a good girl.
She comes from a good background. She's I like her,
and she's so young, right, she's what how sixteen seventeen
at this age, So her please work somewhat and her punishment,
the death sentence is commuted to what they called transportation.
(17:37):
That sounds nice, it does, it does. So she was
just on subways. Yeah, so where they transport her. They
transported her transportation. We should say it was didn't mean
the same thing it means today. Transportation was forcible exile.
It's deportation. Gott be the closest analog we have today, right,
So in July of seventeen seventy one, she is placed
(18:01):
on a prison ship and sent to Baltimore, Maryland. It's
a long transportation, she's a long ride. It is long.
You wouldn't want to put the Uber bill for that. However,
things get worse because when she arrives in the what
would become the United States. So this is one who
(18:21):
were five years before everything kind of comes together still
just colonies colonies, yep. And she is not put in prison,
she has not given um some sort of state level
employment or colonial level employment. She is put up for
auction and sold as a slave. So she can't just
(18:42):
kind of do her own thing in the United States
or in what would become the United States. She's just
in Maryland, transported there against her will, although maybe willingly
because it's otherwise. The other option is to be put
to death. But then she's just in servitude. Yeah, that's that.
It's looking grim before Sarah. At this point, she is
(19:02):
sold to a fellow named w Duval. He is a
planter from Bush Creek, Frederick County. Do you know what
what she was doing for Mr Duval? I have not
seen too much detail about that. That makes sense that
because I think she she wasn't with him for long, right, right, right?
She wasn't with him for long. And at this case,
(19:24):
you know, it's it's an unpleasant thing to imagine, but
physical abuse was prevalent with people who were enslaved in
this manner slavery in general. So while we do not
have confirmed records of what happened during her time there,
we know that she did not spend very long there
(19:46):
at all. As you said, Christopher, she sought to improve
her situation almost immediately, right she escapes to Virginia lickety split,
and she doesn't just go with the clothes on her back.
This is the weirdest part of this. Yeah, I this
this is the sort of thing where our lack of
a time machine is just really a bummer, because I
(20:07):
I want to know the details of how this exactly happened.
When she escapes, she still has in her possession, which
means she brought over with her on her transportation from Britain.
She still had one of the rings she stole. She
still had some dresses, and she still had that miniature
portrait of Queen Charlotte, which how how how do you
(20:27):
have that? I don't I don't know. I mean, we
like to think that systems of power are in place
and everyone does everything perfectly, but as anyone who has
ever dealt with let's say, um, the police, or the
local county clerk or the town collector. Who. Yeah, sometimes
people who are supposed to be doing their jobs, um,
you know, they check the wrong box, they forget a comma,
(20:51):
and then when you go back to renew, they say, wait,
you're not even in our system. And you say, but
I was in your system. I had a hyphen in
my name and you took it out and they don't
know what you're talking king about. And then all of
a sudden you say, I had a thing of Queen
Charlotte and where is her? And no, I promised this
dress is mine. And I think that's probably how it happened.
And the romantic in me, you know, the fan of
fiction at least, has this this cinematic moment stuck in
(21:15):
my head, which almost certainly didn't happen. Wherein the queen says,
and take these garments with you. Take them. Hence they
are soiled. You know they've been touched by the poor
if yes, they've been touched by the boar, which should
also be a crime. So at this point, though, we
(21:37):
although we're gonna be with her for the rest of
this story, we kind of say goodbye to Sarah Wilson.
We do. We say goodbye to Sarah Wilson, and we
say hello to Princess Susannah Caroline Matilda, sister of Queen Charlotte,
forced into exile in the colonies following a very enigmatic
(21:58):
family scandal. You don't want to talk about it's it's
too hard, it's impolite. Now, it's it's royalty. It's not
the sort of thing you bring up with a polite
dinner conversation in Virginia when you are a princess, when
you are a princess. And also it would be violating
the privacy of the royal family, and who would want
(22:19):
to do that. That's a crime that terrible. So this
is this is strange. First off, the hutsball alone, you know,
congratulations to Princess Susannah Caroline Matilda. This is the kind
of con that is difficult to pull off. However, she
has several powerful things working to her advantage. First, as
(22:44):
you mentioned, Christopher, she has all this stuff. Probably the
most powerful or most impactful of the material possession she
has for her new identity will be that miniature portrait
because of the sentimental value you mentioned earlier. But also,
and equally as a important here, she has intimate knowledge
of life in the royal court. Yeah, she's on the
(23:08):
other side of an ocean, but she can still talk
to people about the goings on at the Queen's house,
who's speaking with whom, and who's falling out with whom,
and how things are going upstairs and downstairs, and you
know she's she's presenting herself as Susannah Caroline Matilda, which
I should also add of Mecklenburg Strelitz. Oh yes, yes,
(23:30):
very important. Yeah. The Mecklenburg Strelitz is a a Northern
German dynasty sort of who you know, Queen Charlotte was
part of that family and they've had um their bloodline
influencing royalty throughout Europe. But as the former Sarah Wilson
is presenting herself as as Susannah Caroline Matilda Princess. You know,
she she really harnesses, I think a bit of nostalgia
(23:53):
for what's going on back to because again, a lot
of the people living in the United States or what
would become the United States still think of themselves as
British subjects, as as you know, not as American citizens.
To them, the stories of the Queen, stories of the King,
stories of what's happening in London, those to them are
(24:14):
stories from home. And so there is that nostalgia and
that that yearning. And apparently Princess Susannah really had an
easier in with with some of the older generation in Virginia,
the ones who still thought of themselves as British, as English,
and you know, she could tell them what was going
on and kind of let them relive there and maybe
(24:37):
the it's been decades since they were back home. And
there's also this there's also this interesting mechanism that could
occur whenever you're working with nostalgia, which is she could
mention a name or a title that these people, especially
the Old Guard, would have been familiar with, and then
(24:58):
let then fill in the blame based on the scant
information she actually had. And when she does that, they
would feel that they were learning something new, but just
as importantly, they would feel that they were displaying their knowledge,
and therefore they were still people with their what do
we say, with their ear to the wind, their eyes peeled,
(25:19):
their tone nails to the grindstone something that, yes, their
their fingers and the toneails on the pulse, so they
would still feel relevant. Having this knowledge, we can also,
I think reasonably assume that even for the people who
were not the older generation, there was tremendous social cash
(25:43):
to be had in hosting not just a member of
English aristocracy, but uh, the sibling of the queen and
you know already again seventeen seventy one, seventeen seventy two,
as you said, just a few years out from the
revolutionary war as we call it in this country. And
(26:06):
this also plays into displays of loyalism. Well that's the thing. So,
you know, Princess Susannah is telling people she's been sent
to the colonies because of some falling out back home.
She can't get into the details, but she will soon
be restored to her rightful position back home, and that's
(26:27):
you know. So she's at these dinner parties, at these salons,
at these social events, mingling, whining and dining, and so
people are eager to really buy into the story because
if she's telling the truth, even if there's doubt in
their minds, if she's telling the truth, they are now
socially connected to a princess. So if she's restored to power,
(26:48):
Let's say they need a favor. Let's say they have
a son who needs a high paying position at a company.
Let's say they need some land grants. Let's say they
need to uh gosh, I don't know, he's an army
for whatever they want to do, whatever that might be.
You know, old rich people, they got things armies can do.
That is absolutely true. There is a third advantage that this, uh,
(27:13):
this part of American or colonial society sees, and that's
you know, I can pay you, princess, since we are
such very good friends. The typical let's call it an
administrative fee, not a bribe, but the typical administrative fee
that would be expected in order to have myself or
(27:34):
relation of mine, uh granted a position maybe on the court,
may be associated with it, uh somehow, with some government
oregan or body. As soon as you return, and we
know that will be soon. So they saw this as
an investment in many ways. They were they they were
actually giving This is where the con part comes in.
(27:57):
They were actually giving Prince Susannah currency. They were they
were giving her cash money, money. Yes, they speaks just
as strongly three years ago as it does today. Um,
but also gifts. Uh. You know, I imagine places to stay,
access to carriages, you know, a nice a nice bedroom
(28:19):
for a week, or wardrobe, all that stuff. Um. Here
have a horse, Yeah, why not? We've all been in
that situation. Here do you look? Take this horse, this
one for me, which not even a princess, whichever one
you want. Then you make me feel like one Christopher
taking Christopher. I learned it all from Casey Pegrob. But
you know what, the these sorts of Shenanigans are increasingly
(28:44):
difficult to pull off over time over time. And so
she went all over the colonies. This wasn't just Virginia,
this wasn't just Maryland. She was in Georgia, she was
in the Carolina. She met the governor of North Carolina.
I mean, this is like high level, high level stuff.
She has access. But people have questions, that's right, and
they want to be very careful with the manner in
(29:05):
which they pose these questions to someone like Princess Susannah
Carolina Matilda, sister to the queen family of Macklenburg. Strelits
nailed it. Not only but she had a couple other
aliases too. She also went by the Marquiones de Waldegrave.
She was also known as the Princess of Cronenberg. No
association with the director that we know of, that we
(29:27):
know of, Yes, it's very fair. Yeah. She would use
these names on different occasions, and she would, as you said,
travel widely. She was meeting tremendously influential people, and folks
were starting to ask questions because in these circles there
would be people who speak German. Yeah. And if she
(29:49):
was supposedly from Germany, raised in Germany, yeah, Um, how
come you don't speak German? Right she refused to perhaps
because of the quarrel, yeah, or she was in the
new in the new world, speaking a new language. Um.
But even then she spoke perfect English, flawless English. You
know why because she was English. Oh yeah, that's rule Kaiser.
(30:13):
So's a moment for me. But yeah, people people were saying,
last weird because I have been speaking English for decades
and decades and decades. I grew up speaking German and
I still have a little bit of an accent, you
know what I mean? So why is she flawless with it?
And then there was another question that seems very obvious
(30:34):
to us in retrospect. That's it's the one where everyone thinks,
wait a minute, does Queen Charlotte have a sister? Right?
Why haven't I heard of her? Maybe maybe she's able
to turn it around and and really play on people's insecurities.
And so maybe I wasn't important enough to know about
the Queen's sister. Yeah, Or maybe you're not. Yeah, maybe
(30:57):
you're not as plugged in as you want other people,
let this dinner party to believe. And so people probably
for some time that strategy is effective in people are
reticent to voice their concerns because they don't want to
seem to be the odd personality. Might I also suggest that, um,
maybe men act a little dumb in the presence of
(31:19):
someone who might be a princess. I think that is
an excellent suggestion, having not, to my knowledge at this
point in life, interacted with a princess. I I can't
speak from experience, but I feel like that is. I
feel like that is unfortunately a very astute observation. Men
can be dumb no way. So you're right though, that's
(31:42):
a that's a good point. That's one that a lot
of historians don't talk about. Well, it's it's not necessarily
brought up. It's not like all these people who are
giving her gifts are described as as suitors particularly, but
knowing men, knowing that sort of patriarchal society that was
in place at the time, I have to imagine that
some of these people who are wealthy landowners in the
(32:02):
colonies meeting a single young princess applying her with gifts,
might have some motives of marrying into royalty or other motives. Yeah. Absolutely,
And and men will do dumb things, yes, when they
have those motives. Absolutely. I mean, I would say people
in general. But in this situation, it's only fair to
(32:25):
note that that trend toward thickheadedness is is probably accelerated
in men. But the scam didn't hold. The scam did
not hold because speaking of men, we have to reintroduce
a character that briefly appeared earlier in the tale of Mr.
W Duval, who it turns out is not happy about
(32:48):
Sarah Wilson as he knew her, and maybe not that
dumb of a man, because eventually, after a couple of
years passed, he hears a description of this princess. He
hears talk and he probably has oh that wow, a
princess in the colonies. That's interesting. What does she look like?
And they say this is what she looks like? And
he says, I know someone who looks like that, Yes,
(33:10):
and it's Sarah Wilson. And he has been trying to
find this the one that got away. Literally, so it
is autumn of seventeen seventy three. Remember she's been on
the runs since seventeen seventy one ish, uh, And and
he's he's been looking for her, actually since seventeen seventy one.
I have I have here in front of me from
(33:30):
the Pennsylvania Gazette, published on October eleven, seventeen seventy one,
advertisement for a runaway slave. And uh, this is what
William Daval wrote in the newspaper back in seventeen seventy one.
It took out an ad run away from the subscriber
a convict servant maid named Sarah Wilson, but has changed
(33:51):
name to Lady Susannah Carolina Matilda, which has made the
public believe that she was his Majesty's sister. And here's
where we get into the realized and what she looked like.
She has a blemish in her right eye, black rolled hair,
stoops in the shoulders, makes a common practice of writing,
and marked her clothes with a crown and a bee.
Whosoever secures the said servant woman or takes her home,
(34:14):
shall receive five pistols besides all costs and charges. So
if you find Sarah Wilson, all your expenses are paid
when you get five pistols. What a deal, five pistols.
And I should say I'm going to applaud myself for
reading that, because this is an old timey advertisement from
an old timey newspaper. And it's got those medial s
(34:35):
s which are such a pain. They look like an
f they do look like that's without the crossbar um.
They go all the way back to old English um.
And I'm glad that they're gone now, you know, the
thank you, thank you, movable type. We don't need all
those weird looking says that make everything sound like an
act of Congress's Yes, Yeah, it's true. Those are are paid.
(35:00):
And I applaud your recital there, Christopher, I applaud Casey
for cutting out all of my flubs. Love. Well, that's
the thing. You use a curvy S at the end,
but not at the beginning. So if it looks like
the word flub is flawed, but the word flubs would
(35:21):
to us look like flaps. And we can only hope
that old man Willie d was going through the same
process as he was writing this advertisement. So um, I
really really hope at some point there's some sort of
merchandise out there that people can have a bumper sticker
or a little a little pin or some just gaudy
T shirt they can wear that says, you know, I
am a proud, ridiculous hiftorian. That's great, Casey, do you
(35:46):
like that one? I love that Ideatorians. Yeah, medials for everyone,
Casey on the case. We'll put it to a vote
to let us know what you think about these. What
are they called medial? A medial? Yeah, it's it's also
known as a long S because the short S is
the short, round one or curvy or you know, just
(36:07):
an S. A as we would say, I like the
I like the depths of resentment that are that are
emanating across the table. You didn't have to read this,
so I might we do have another bit of old
timing newspaper right here. I may pass it to you
and uh and put you to the teft. We've created
(36:28):
a monster, but it's monsters to know, Monthter, Monthter. That's
fun to say. Actually should get back on track. So
they're on the hunt. Yeah, the word is out. And
in addition to publicizing this advertisement and appeal in offering
(36:48):
this reward, he sends he being uh, Willie sends one
of his employees, a man named Michael Dalton, to retrieve Sarah.
Alton has uh, you know, he has a certain set
of skills Liam Neeson style. We can only assume because
he does eventually track the princess down to a plantation
(37:12):
in Charleston right after she left. So he is hot
on her wake, hot on her trail. And then he
doesn't give up. He follows the clues Carmen San Diego style,
and he finds her to neighboring plantation. He captures her.
He takes her back to that estate in Bush Creek,
(37:33):
Frederick County, and that's in Virginia, yes, Yeah, that's in Virginia.
Is that the end of the story. She just gets
captured and she goes right back into servitude. Yeah, Sometimes
things just and I'm kidding, I'm kidding. I mean, right, well,
you still have to take some time to name the
(37:55):
pony before before you ride it out, and I would
I would advise something heavy on the FS and theses.
But this is not the end of the story, is it, Christopher.
You know it's not. There's there's more scamming ahead, as
as may not be so surprising with miss Sarah Wilson.
So Sarah is on the plantation, she's working at this point.
(38:15):
It's s though, but Devall is not at home because
he has left the plantation to fight in the militia
for the American War of Independence, yes, which we now
know as the Revolutionary War. And while he is gone,
a very very strange coincidence scurs. This is the kind
(38:37):
of thing you can't write in fiction because no one
will believe you. Yeah, it seems like this seems like
a really unsatisfying end to things because it's just so improbable.
But according to the historical record, this is what happened
another either enslaved person or servant girl also by the
name of Sarah Wilson, crosses paths with Sarah Wilson. That
(39:03):
you and I and the listeners now, and this is
very vague. We want to want to let all of
our fellow listeners know, we are very well aware that
this is incredibly vague. Somehow our Sarah Wilson, the former princess,
is able to switch I guess, bodies or make make
(39:24):
people confuse the new Sarah Wilson for her. And then
during this confusion, while her owner is away, while this
creep the vall Is way, she escapes and this time
she heads north. Yeah, the southward direction did not work
out so well for her in the past when she
was a princess. So she splits. She goes north. She
(39:47):
leaves Sarah Wilson the second in place of Sarah Wilson.
The first too bad for Sarah Wilson. The second. I guess.
We think this is the end of her story, although
maybe she was already going to be on that plantation anyway.
And uh, Sarah Juan was like, oh, oh no, that's
Sarah Wilson over there. Are you looking for Sarah Wilson.
That's Sarah. Hey are you named Sarah Wilson And she says, yeah,
that's me. And then she's like, well, I'm just gonna
(40:09):
walk away as you guys go talk to her. And
you know, there's just a lot of this like convincing
people and and gift of gab. You know, you've got
to really be a smooth talker. Um. This reminds me
of the story a little bit of that that bridge. Yeah, yeah,
tab Or Bridge, right, the two French marshals who decided
(40:33):
to con their way across the Danube. Yeah. You You
and Noel had a really great episode about this and
thanks man. Yeah, you know, ridiculous historians. If you have
not listened to that episode, go dig it up. I mean,
we kind of just gave you the surprise ending. But
it's still a great story regardless. There's all sorts of
weird boasting and French chest puffery and uh, you know,
(40:54):
almost bombings and Hungarian Confusion and which, by the way,
really a band name. I think Hungarian Confusion that is
an excellent band name, my friend. I'm hang on, sorry
everybody listening, I'm going to write that down. Okayn's actually
just filing for analysis right now. Yes, revolution, but Sarah Wilson.
(41:20):
She is not confused about what she's doing. She heads
out of Virginia, goes north, and at least for the
foreseeable future, lives a somewhat normal life. Still has a
lot of her money, which she again like, where where
does the money go? Where does she keep it? Are
there secret bank accounts? Does she have secret pockets? Has
(41:43):
she literally buried boxes of coin? Maybe she has just
like a lot of hair, just like a huge head
of hair, and there's just like envelopes of money in there.
Who could be I mean, at the time, it may
have been a sound investments. Yeah, you know, some money
sewn into the lining of a coat or something like that. Anyway,
(42:05):
she's got all this money, and she ends up all
the way up in New York. She actually meets a
young military man named William Talbot or alternatively Sterling. Oh
is that right? Well, it is sometimes it differs, depends
on the source. But yeah, she meets this. She meets
a nice young man and he is a military man.
He's a officer in the light Dragoons. And the war
(42:29):
transpires spoiler alert. This part of the North American continent
becomes a country we call the United States today. Part
of it, Okay, you're familiar with its work. And the
couple decides to stay in this new country. What are
they doing. Probably they're they're avoiding arrest for Sarah to England.
(42:50):
But they also she uses her money. Maybe maybe she
did this, Maybe she kept jewelry and then sold the jewelry.
That might have happened, but she used is this money
that she has acquired to set up her husband as
a businessman, and they live, as far as we can
tell from the record, they live, uh happily. Ever after,
(43:13):
they have a lot of kids, and they set up
their residence in the Bowery in New York, which at
the time was a quiet, nice neighborhood. M kind of
a happy ending for her. It is, especially we can
consider how close she came to very very terrible things.
I don't know. It also reminds me in a way.
You remember that Disney film Pinocchio, right the stories. So
(43:37):
as a kid, I thought Pinocchio was really cool until
one of my friends later on, years and years later,
pointed out to me that Pinocchio has this horrible lesson
for children in terms of morality. Tell me about it. Well,
I'll keep it brief, but Pinocchio from his beginning is
(43:58):
told to do the following kind of things or not
do these things, so that he can ultimately become self
actualized and be a real boy. He breaks all of
those rules or those commandments or whatever, and then at
the end he gets the reward. Anyway, that's true. So
did Sarah Wilson have a moment? We we can tell.
(44:18):
One thing we can tell that differentiates her from other
con artists is that when she got to a good spot,
she stopped. There are other con artists who just can't
give up the game. Well, there was a point though,
you know. And and this is where I'd like more
detail about her life. Um, And I mean this to
me seems ripe for some Hollywood tale, and I'd love
(44:39):
to see this turned into a film and really dig
into the story. But there was a time before she
met her husband, after she escaped Virginia where she she
had this little side escapade. And there's not a lot
that I could dig up about this, but she she
teamed up with this um, with this criminal who was
known by the alias of Tom Bell. He was uh.
(45:00):
He was an irishman um also known as Patrick O'Connor,
but they kind of worked together for a while, and
he introduced himself to people as Mr Edward Augustus Montague,
a gentleman of fortune and betrothed lover of Princess Susanna
Carolina Matilda. So I maybe maybe the princess came back
(45:21):
after her her flight from Virginia and before she settled
in New York. Maybe there's this this sort of interim
of her flirting again with this world of intrigue and
a scam, and I don't know much about it. We
we don't know, like we as a species don't know
much about this part of her life, which makes it
by far one of the most intriguing and fascinating. We
(45:45):
don't know much about Patrick O'Connor nor his alias Tom Bell,
but we do know that they did for for a
brief time. She did go into a two person con act,
and who knows, maybe they really were betrothed. I don't know.
I mean, he was a fairly well known criminal at
(46:05):
the time. I mean, this could be the sort of
thing where maybe they pulled off one last heist and
she got out of the life. It's a sort of
you know, like a like a Danny Ocean kind of
situation where she teams up with this acclaimed crime guy,
she gets what she needs, and um, you know she
has her happily ever after. You also have to wonder
whether the man who ultimately became her husband knew about
(46:30):
her stint as a princess knew Did she tell him
her true, true, true story or did she say like,
maybe I'm an orphan and this is my family fortune
and I love you, I don't want to talk about
my past. Let's start a new life together in the Bowery.
And then maybe he just went head over heels Christopher.
Maybe he was just like, well, I'm in love and
(46:54):
being a dude, I'm kind of dumb and I do
need some money. And I do and I do need
eats them as you said, cash money. Oh, speaking of
cash money, Bennett is I I thought this might be
a good way to wrap up because I this is
a little off topic, but it's related to some some
royalty and some cash money. I wanted to get your
opinion and ridiculous historians. If you have any advice for me.
(47:18):
I got this email from a Nigerian prince. Okay do
you tell? And he's asking for some money. Okay, should
I help him out? Um? How much money is he
asking for more than I've got? Oh? Okay? Uh, then
without having a doctorate in finance, I would advise you
(47:38):
depending on how much. Well, first, how much time do
you have? I don't have enough time. Spoiler alert, I'm
not giving this guy any money. But that's But the
thing is, you know, we're talking about this weird scam
of someone putting themselves forth as royalty, and it it
sounds like the sort of thing like, oh, this is
just a thing that you know, those historical routes back
(47:59):
in the day fell for. It's going on still. Um.
I in preparing to come chat with you guys here,
I did a little digging and there was a report
last year from the Security Services a d T. In
two thousand eighteen alone, people in the United States fell
prey to the Nigerian scams and other sort of email
uh scams like that where people are just asking for
(48:21):
money to the tune of more than seven hundred thousand
dollars last year alone, um and it averaged out to
about two thousand, one hundred dollars per person. So, this
this scam of royalty, this desire to buy into a story,
this ability to be hoodwinked. Um. You know, I think
it's just baked into humanity. It's just who we are.
(48:44):
We want to believe, we want to help um and
if someone says there are prince or a princess, Hey,
why not? Well, and it gets our our inner fox boulder.
I want to believe what I was going to advise
you to do off record, again, not being a doctorate,
just between you, Casey, me and the millions of us listening.
(49:06):
You're not recording this case right, this is all off
the record, person perfect. I just don't want this out
in the world. That would be embarrassing. I've read accounts
of people who essentially scammed the scammers, which is on
the murky side of unethical pranking. What are you talking that?
That is fighting the fight? Well, the idea is, you know,
(49:26):
they'll say stuff like, sure, you've contacted me, I do
have this money. I will give you this information, but
first I want to know, uh first, seeing to prove
something in good faith or whatever. And I've found situations
wherein someone convinced the scammer or someone who knows the
scammer to get a tattoo or to write essays about
(49:50):
Harry Potter and things of that nature. So if you
have the time and the inclination, and you don't feel
particularly guilty about trolling people who are trying to steal
from you, then then I would advise to find I
would advise you find the funniest prank to pull. We'll
check back in. We'll check back in, and perhaps, Christopher,
(50:13):
one day you will be known to as as a
genius of the con because one of the most American
things about about the way we treat con artists here
in the US is that they are often begrudgingly admired,
you know what I mean. The idea of this this um,
(50:36):
slick talking, clever individual violating social norms and getting away
with it, it's it's imprinted into our DNA. And that's
why the Providence Rhode Island Gazette and Country Journal in
January of seventeen seventy four noted that Sarah Wilson is
quote the most surprising genius of the female sex that
(50:57):
was ever obliged to visit America. Let's just walk past
that blatant, you know, misogyny. There. They're basically saying, smart
for a woman, because they're being jerks. But what they're
also doing, and when I think is more important for
our purposes here, is they are phrasing the intelligence of
(51:19):
this person. They're saying, this is one of the smartest
people in this country. Too bad they're not a politician
or you know, a philanthropist. Can't win them all, can't
win them all. But I feel like this was a
big win for Casey Nolan, Spirit and I to have
you over on the show, and we hope that you
(51:41):
enjoyed this episode. We want to hear from you. Let
us know some of your favorite historical cons other than
the Trojan Horse, other than that one. You know, that's
that's sort of like going to karaokeme plane, don't stop
believing and and whatever we want to call this con
of you. So how being convinced to let me sit
(52:01):
in here and chat with you guys? I feel like
I've scammed everyone. Hey, yeah, that's a Hey, that's a
good question. Is your name Christopher, isn't it? I don't know, Casey.
I believe him. He's just got such a such an
amicable air about him. You know, no comment alright, just
just call me princess. Oh wow, you guys are in
on this together. Well, here's hoping that I don't get
(52:25):
scammed out of millions of dollars. But if I do,
I'm glad it was from you too. Thank you, as
always to our super producer, Casey Pegram. Thank you to
Alex Williams, who composed our track. Thank you to Gabe,
our research associate. Christopher. We often thank you on this show,
so it's a little strange that you're here now. I'm
really glad to thank you in person. Thanks for coming on, man,
(52:47):
you're welcome. Thank you for having me Bannon, and thanks
for having me ridiculous Historians. And stay tuned for our
next episode, Whearing Christopher and I will explore not a
not a come No, things are going to get a
little grimeier grammar Grammar Grimer, just a little dark, little gross,
(53:09):
so fun, still ridiculous. Stay tuned for more podcasts from
my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
to the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you so much for
tuning in. Casey, can we get a little sort of
you know, generically Colonial times music in the background. Perfect,
We've got a pitch for you today, folks. Have you
ever thought about changing your identity? Have you ever felt
(00:50):
that you should break free of the bonds of your
previous life and become someone else entirely? That's a question
we're addressing today. I'm Ben, my co host Noel is
off on adventures. However, we have a very special episode
for you today with a very special guest. Are returning
(01:12):
friend of the show. Thanks for classing up the place
yet again, Christopher haci Otis. Hey, thanks for having me. Guys.
I I can't promise I can fill Noel's chair, um,
but I will do my darnist. I am incredibly excited
about this. We didn't we We've teased your return for
some time over the over the previous accretion set expectations.
(01:34):
Thank you very high. You know, we asked, we asked
people to write in immediately as soon as they heard
your voice, but we didn't tell We didn't tell everyone
that you would be coming on for this and maybe
some other episodes in the future, but we're quite excited
to have you. Thank you so much. I know you've
been traveling a lot recently, right, Yeah, We've got a
(01:56):
lot of really great new shows in the works for
the Heart Podcast Network. So listeners, if you dig ridiculous history,
keep your eyes on your screens and your ears on.
I don't know what, Ben, you're you're better at promoting
than I am. What do you say? Ears to the wind?
Keep your ears to the wind of the podcast realm.
(02:16):
There you go. Oh, keep your eyes peeled, your ears
to the ground right right, and fingertips at the mercy
of your soul. There we go. Basically, I just want
everyone listening to scroll through their iPhones or their Samsungs
or what have you, and subscribe to whatever strikes your fancy.
This is just a long, ridiculous way of saying, yes, Ben,
(02:39):
thank you for having me on. I have been up
to a lot lately. We're putting together a great slate
of new shows coming to the network, all centered around
food and travel and stories of humanity and how all
those things relate to our lives. Um, I will have
a lot more information for you and the listeners of
Ridiculous History, probably in the next month or two, about
(03:00):
some really really great shows that they can watch out
for um and hopefully subscribe to and really really dig
So in the meantime, I've just got, you know, time
to sit here in a booth with you, which makes
me super joyful. Oh thank you. Also, of course, we
are not diving into Ridiculous History alone. We are joined
(03:20):
as always with our super producer, Casey Pegram give it
up for him, folks, Casey, I don't know why I
stopped like you are also going to put it in
a plause que. But Christopher has just given us a delightful, tantalizing,
I would say, exclusive teaser, because this is the first
(03:40):
time we've talked about some of these projects on air. Yeah, yeah,
on this show. Yeah, that's right, and so we'll say
no more. Uh, you pay for the whole seat, you
only need the edge. Check back in in a month
or so and we may have we may have some
new news for you. However, Christopher, you noticed at the
very top of the show we set up the concept
(04:03):
of changing one's identity. Have you ever have you ever
thought about this? I remember when I was in college,
I was at a rock and roll club and someone
had taped on the wall of one of the restrooms,
you know, over all the terrible band stickers and the
graffiti and the cigarette burns and the scars scratched into
(04:23):
the wall, someone had taped something that said, reinvent yourself,
start a new life. And it was basically not quite
an anarchist cookbook, but directions on how to access a
manifesto on how to essentially fake your own death and
season new identity. And there was some sort of Narro
(04:43):
dou Well who is going around spreading these pamphlets around
rock and roll clubs in the late nineties and early
two thousand's. Um. So, I don't know how many how
many people out there are living under assumed identities. You know,
we can't all be Don draper Um. But if there
is anywhere that's prime for reinvention and developing a new
(05:05):
persona and and reinventing yourself, I mean, I think the
United States of America is like, that's one of the
hot beds for it, right, That's one of the things
that we do. We burst forth from the shackles of
our our past. We reinvent ourselves. We set aside our
family histories, we invent new family histories. We just present
ourselves as we hope to be. And a lot of
(05:27):
times people just kind of buy it. That's true, that's
so true. The word of the day I'll introduce here
is a pseudo side. That's the technical term for faking
one's death or attempting to do so. Uh. And today's
episode hinges on Yeah, just as you said it, Man,
hinges on a fundamentally American idea. We have a somewhat
(05:50):
romanticized or idealized concept of this, of this purposeful reinvention,
this resurrection, rebirth by design, but we don't often talk
about the real life cases, uh, you know, in which
these sorts of tropes occur. And today's story is about
(06:14):
a person who did just that, who reinvented herself. And
that's the sort of thing that normally is it's praised
right to come from humble beginnings to set yourself up
to a life that's that's grander than anything you could
have imagined or that your parents could have set out
for you. Normally, it's a good thing. Is that the
case here? Well, let's let's dig into it. How about that.
(06:38):
Let's let's let's dig into it, and then maybe at
the end you and I can make the call, and
fellow listeners please chime in and let us know what
your take is after you hear the entirety of the story,
because it's important to hear the entirety of this particular tale.
Our story today begins with a woman named Sarah Wilson.
(06:58):
She was born in a Stafford village in seventeen fifty four,
and she was relatively well off, not not super destitute,
because her father was a professional and he's a bailiff. However,
they did have money problems, and the money problems were
(07:18):
such that at the age of sixteen, Sarah is sent
away from home and she is sent to London to
look for employment. This was not terribly uncommon during this time. No,
it's not. She came from humble beginnings and you know
it's this West Midlands region of England, it's not super industrialized.
(07:39):
She's looking for more opportunity, like many people do. She
heads to the big city. There are some suggestions maybe
she wasn't just looking for money. Maybe she was off
to seek her own ideas of fortune and fame and
kind of build a name for herself, whatever that might mean.
But she does head to London and within a few
weeks she finds work. She's working as a made for
(08:00):
a woman named Caroline Vernon. And Caroline Vernon was a
lady in waiting for Queen Charlotte, now Queen Charlotte, Queen
of England, but born in Germany. Spoke German German accent
when she's speaking English. Uh. You know, this is the
sort of thing where, looking back three four or five
hundred years from especially the vantage point of the United States,
(08:23):
where royalty is a bit of a novelty, we don't
realize how little national borders and family lineage criss crossed,
and one may or may not have informed the other.
So you have German nationals who are actually the King
of England. You have people from Austria ruling Greece. You
have the mix of whatever blend of Austro Hungarian Habsburg
(08:47):
that situation ruling over bits and pieces of Europe. Um.
So it's it's it's sort of like a dual layer
in Europe. And it's I always like to think that
the movies just get it wrong because everyone's speaking with
the same accent, wether it's an accurate accent or not,
it's generally somewhat uniform, whereas um, that's maybe not the
case then. But I'm I've fallen down a rabbit hole
(09:08):
of just talking about historical specificity. I think it's a
great point, though, and you've picked the right show to
do this on because it may be difficult for many
of us in twenty nine and these our modern days.
Two understand that it was normal for the rulers of
a country to be completely foreign in most what we
(09:32):
would consider completely foreign in today's terms, uh, and being
quote unquote qualified for their position entirely due to their ancestry.
And that's that's what happens. There's a feedback loop around
this time, uh and the centuries preceding it, wherein you know,
if you are a member of a powerful family, you
(09:53):
want your children to only marry members of other powerful families,
and so things get mixed. I'm not making an in
breeding joke. I'm just saying that's how the thrones end
up being collected and consolidated and passed around. Yeah, that's
absolutely true. And I will say that that this discussion
of languages and accents does come into play a little
(10:15):
later on in Sarah Wilson's story. Yes, nice foreshadowing. Yes, okay,
So Sarah quickly ingratiates herself. She is a a people person,
a slick talker. At this point she is playing the
role of the perfect maid as far as Lady in
Waiting Caroline Vernon is concerned. Yeah, and she's working at
(10:37):
the Queen's House, which if you or I were to
go to London, or any of the listeners wanted to
go to London and go check out the Queen's House,
you can't find it because what's now there is bucking
In Palace, a little larger, a little more grand, but
that original Queen's House. But but that's the region of
London we're talking about. It's still you know, that the
seat of royal power, right, quite prestigious. Yes, And at
(11:00):
the Queen's House, whereas you said, Christopher, Buckingham Palace now stands.
Sarah frequently saw the actual Queen, the wife of King
George the Third, and she quickly, in addition to ingratiating
herself with the upper crust of this of this community,
(11:20):
she also familiarize herself intimately with the scuttle but the gossip,
the things that only the maids and the butlers and
what Downton Abbey would call the downstairs people were aware of.
And this got to her. You know what I mean,
because we know, we know how human psychology works has
(11:41):
not changed for many thousands of years. Happiness is often
defining comparative terms. So she is, she's smart, she's quick witted.
She has escaped her small town and done more than
many people in her town would have done. But then
she looks around and she sees you of this opulence
and these lives of leisure, and she says, I'm paraphrasing here,
(12:05):
Why not me Where they got that? I ain't got
That's right, Yeah, I want to get me some of that. Right.
That's that's a quote exactly. I think that was on
some plaque somewhere in some dusty tone. Um. But yeah,
that's the thing, says Sarah Wilson. Being around royalty, knowing royalty,
knowing the comings and goings of royalty. That wasn't enough
(12:27):
for her. She wanted to get a piece of the action,
have a slice for herself, carve out a little nook
in that world. Or maybe she just wanted the things
that she knew she would never ever have on her own.
And I mean, this is such a stratified culture at
the time. It still is in many ways. But when
(12:49):
you come from completely humble backgrounds and you are spending
your day around someone who is wearing let's say, a
ring or a crown, or today a pair of sneakers,
or you know, you drive a car that is essentially
worth what your family could make in a decade, and
(13:10):
this is just a trinket to this person. That wealth
imbalance creates tension, and most people in the world can
handle that. Some people can't. And Sarah Wilson was one
of those people. So there was a night when she
was by herself in the in the Queen's room, she
snuck into a closet, breaks into this cabinet, and she
takes some jewelry, some dresses, a ring, and a little
(13:32):
miniature portrait of Queen Charlotte. So it's like, you know,
we don't have an image of what it looks like,
but I imagine it's one of those little sort of
um cameo portraits and maybe a little silhouette um just
something that would be a keepsake, something that a family
member of Queen Charlotte would keep and would uh you know,
would refer to lovingly remember their relative. So she takes
(13:55):
all these things for herself. Yeah, and she thinks it's
no big deal. One's going to find out for Pete's sake.
This is the Queen of England, right, She's got countless dresses,
countless rings. But the thing is they were not countless.
They were they were counted, accounted frequently. As is the
(14:17):
case with sometimes people of immense wealth, they also are
immensely focused on the things that make them wealthy. And
so Queen Charlotte was no different. She kept fastidious inventory
of her inventory. She knew what she had, and she
knew when something was missing. So very very very soon
(14:37):
after Sarah took these items, they're noticed missing. So the
Queen says, all right, we don't know who did this.
I need someone to keep an eye on. I thought
that was quite clever too. Yeah, I mean, you don't
want to just go off and start accusing people willy nilly.
That might fly with some royals. Not Queen Charlotte. Not
(14:58):
Queen Charlotte. No, she said, up a surveillance operation and
think about how many servants must exist in a royal household,
so there's clearly going to be um several factions, and
there's also going to be some servants that she trust
completely and then some that are you know, still a
(15:20):
little green, and then some that she doesn't really interact with.
So we can only imagine that she goes to one
of the servants she legitimately trust someone, someone or some
people with whom she spent years and years, right, and
she asked these people to watch not just the room,
but this particular closet. And this is where Sarah Wilson
(15:44):
makes her first error. Yeah, I mean the criminal returning
to the scene of the crime. It's a trope in
crime fiction, but that's because it happens. That's human nature.
You know, maybe your prime criminal would go for the
big score and then never touched that room again, never
go back. But Sarah was not a professional criminal. She
(16:05):
knew she got away with something once, so she went
back to the well again, or in this case, the cabinet. Yes,
but this time you know that that law and order
style stake out whatever was going on. It worked, and
Sarah Wilson was caught in the act of trying to
rob Queen Charlotte once again. So this is very very
(16:27):
very bad news. The way the laws work at the time,
Sarah Wilson is charged with theft and violation of the
royal privacy. And that's serious. That is serious. Yeah, that
is seriously how serious, more so than more so than theft,
violation of the royal privacy carries with it the death sentences. Yes,
(16:52):
so she receives the death sentence, and her original employer,
Lady in Waiting Vernon, has not given up on her.
That's Caroline Vernon, right, Yes, that is Lady Carrot, Lady
in waiting, Caroline Vernon, and Caroline takes it upon herself
to personally plead to Queen Charlotte please spare Sarah. She's
(17:14):
made a mistake, but she maybe is a good girl.
She comes from a good background. She's I like her,
and she's so young, right, she's what how sixteen seventeen
at this age, So her please work somewhat and her punishment,
the death sentence is commuted to what they called transportation.
(17:37):
That sounds nice, it does, it does. So she was
just on subways. Yeah, so where they transport her. They
transported her transportation. We should say it was didn't mean
the same thing it means today. Transportation was forcible exile.
It's deportation. Gott be the closest analog we have today, right,
So in July of seventeen seventy one, she is placed
(18:01):
on a prison ship and sent to Baltimore, Maryland. It's
a long transportation, she's a long ride. It is long.
You wouldn't want to put the Uber bill for that. However,
things get worse because when she arrives in the what
would become the United States. So this is one who
(18:21):
were five years before everything kind of comes together still
just colonies colonies, yep. And she is not put in prison,
she has not given um some sort of state level
employment or colonial level employment. She is put up for
auction and sold as a slave. So she can't just
(18:42):
kind of do her own thing in the United States
or in what would become the United States. She's just
in Maryland, transported there against her will, although maybe willingly
because it's otherwise. The other option is to be put
to death. But then she's just in servitude. Yeah, that's that.
It's looking grim before Sarah. At this point, she is
(19:02):
sold to a fellow named w Duval. He is a
planter from Bush Creek, Frederick County. Do you know what
what she was doing for Mr Duval? I have not
seen too much detail about that. That makes sense that
because I think she she wasn't with him for long, right, right, right?
She wasn't with him for long. And at this case,
(19:24):
you know, it's it's an unpleasant thing to imagine, but
physical abuse was prevalent with people who were enslaved in
this manner slavery in general. So while we do not
have confirmed records of what happened during her time there,
we know that she did not spend very long there
(19:46):
at all. As you said, Christopher, she sought to improve
her situation almost immediately, right she escapes to Virginia lickety split,
and she doesn't just go with the clothes on her back.
This is the weirdest part of this. Yeah, I this
this is the sort of thing where our lack of
a time machine is just really a bummer, because I
(20:07):
I want to know the details of how this exactly happened.
When she escapes, she still has in her possession, which
means she brought over with her on her transportation from Britain.
She still had one of the rings she stole. She
still had some dresses, and she still had that miniature
portrait of Queen Charlotte, which how how how do you
(20:27):
have that? I don't I don't know. I mean, we
like to think that systems of power are in place
and everyone does everything perfectly, but as anyone who has
ever dealt with let's say, um, the police, or the
local county clerk or the town collector. Who. Yeah, sometimes
people who are supposed to be doing their jobs, um,
you know, they check the wrong box, they forget a comma,
(20:51):
and then when you go back to renew, they say, wait,
you're not even in our system. And you say, but
I was in your system. I had a hyphen in
my name and you took it out and they don't
know what you're talking king about. And then all of
a sudden you say, I had a thing of Queen
Charlotte and where is her? And no, I promised this
dress is mine. And I think that's probably how it happened.
And the romantic in me, you know, the fan of
fiction at least, has this this cinematic moment stuck in
(21:15):
my head, which almost certainly didn't happen. Wherein the queen says,
and take these garments with you. Take them. Hence they
are soiled. You know they've been touched by the poor
if yes, they've been touched by the boar, which should
also be a crime. So at this point, though, we
(21:37):
although we're gonna be with her for the rest of
this story, we kind of say goodbye to Sarah Wilson.
We do. We say goodbye to Sarah Wilson, and we
say hello to Princess Susannah Caroline Matilda, sister of Queen Charlotte,
forced into exile in the colonies following a very enigmatic
(21:58):
family scandal. You don't want to talk about it's it's
too hard, it's impolite. Now, it's it's royalty. It's not
the sort of thing you bring up with a polite
dinner conversation in Virginia when you are a princess, when
you are a princess. And also it would be violating
the privacy of the royal family, and who would want
(22:19):
to do that. That's a crime that terrible. So this
is this is strange. First off, the hutsball alone, you know,
congratulations to Princess Susannah Caroline Matilda. This is the kind
of con that is difficult to pull off. However, she
has several powerful things working to her advantage. First, as
(22:44):
you mentioned, Christopher, she has all this stuff. Probably the
most powerful or most impactful of the material possession she
has for her new identity will be that miniature portrait
because of the sentimental value you mentioned earlier. But also,
and equally as a important here, she has intimate knowledge
of life in the royal court. Yeah, she's on the
(23:08):
other side of an ocean, but she can still talk
to people about the goings on at the Queen's house,
who's speaking with whom, and who's falling out with whom,
and how things are going upstairs and downstairs, and you
know she's she's presenting herself as Susannah Caroline Matilda, which
I should also add of Mecklenburg Strelitz. Oh yes, yes,
(23:30):
very important. Yeah. The Mecklenburg Strelitz is a a Northern
German dynasty sort of who you know, Queen Charlotte was
part of that family and they've had um their bloodline
influencing royalty throughout Europe. But as the former Sarah Wilson
is presenting herself as as Susannah Caroline Matilda Princess. You know,
she she really harnesses, I think a bit of nostalgia
(23:53):
for what's going on back to because again, a lot
of the people living in the United States or what
would become the United States still think of themselves as
British subjects, as as you know, not as American citizens.
To them, the stories of the Queen, stories of the King,
stories of what's happening in London, those to them are
(24:14):
stories from home. And so there is that nostalgia and
that that yearning. And apparently Princess Susannah really had an
easier in with with some of the older generation in Virginia,
the ones who still thought of themselves as British, as English,
and you know, she could tell them what was going
on and kind of let them relive there and maybe
(24:37):
the it's been decades since they were back home. And
there's also this there's also this interesting mechanism that could
occur whenever you're working with nostalgia, which is she could
mention a name or a title that these people, especially
the Old Guard, would have been familiar with, and then
(24:58):
let then fill in the blame based on the scant
information she actually had. And when she does that, they
would feel that they were learning something new, but just
as importantly, they would feel that they were displaying their knowledge,
and therefore they were still people with their what do
we say, with their ear to the wind, their eyes peeled,
(25:19):
their tone nails to the grindstone something that, yes, their
their fingers and the toneails on the pulse, so they
would still feel relevant. Having this knowledge, we can also,
I think reasonably assume that even for the people who
were not the older generation, there was tremendous social cash
(25:43):
to be had in hosting not just a member of
English aristocracy, but uh, the sibling of the queen and
you know already again seventeen seventy one, seventeen seventy two,
as you said, just a few years out from the
revolutionary war as we call it in this country. And
(26:06):
this also plays into displays of loyalism. Well that's the thing. So,
you know, Princess Susannah is telling people she's been sent
to the colonies because of some falling out back home.
She can't get into the details, but she will soon
be restored to her rightful position back home, and that's
(26:27):
you know. So she's at these dinner parties, at these salons,
at these social events, mingling, whining and dining, and so
people are eager to really buy into the story because
if she's telling the truth, even if there's doubt in
their minds, if she's telling the truth, they are now
socially connected to a princess. So if she's restored to power,
(26:48):
Let's say they need a favor. Let's say they have
a son who needs a high paying position at a company.
Let's say they need some land grants. Let's say they
need to uh gosh, I don't know, he's an army
for whatever they want to do, whatever that might be.
You know, old rich people, they got things armies can do.
That is absolutely true. There is a third advantage that this, uh,
(27:13):
this part of American or colonial society sees, and that's
you know, I can pay you, princess, since we are
such very good friends. The typical let's call it an
administrative fee, not a bribe, but the typical administrative fee
that would be expected in order to have myself or
(27:34):
relation of mine, uh granted a position maybe on the court,
may be associated with it, uh somehow, with some government
oregan or body. As soon as you return, and we
know that will be soon. So they saw this as
an investment in many ways. They were they they were
actually giving This is where the con part comes in.
(27:57):
They were actually giving Prince Susannah currency. They were they
were giving her cash money, money. Yes, they speaks just
as strongly three years ago as it does today. Um,
but also gifts. Uh. You know, I imagine places to stay,
access to carriages, you know, a nice a nice bedroom
(28:19):
for a week, or wardrobe, all that stuff. Um. Here
have a horse, Yeah, why not? We've all been in
that situation. Here do you look? Take this horse, this
one for me, which not even a princess, whichever one
you want. Then you make me feel like one Christopher
taking Christopher. I learned it all from Casey Pegrob. But
you know what, the these sorts of Shenanigans are increasingly
(28:44):
difficult to pull off over time over time. And so
she went all over the colonies. This wasn't just Virginia,
this wasn't just Maryland. She was in Georgia, she was
in the Carolina. She met the governor of North Carolina.
I mean, this is like high level, high level stuff.
She has access. But people have questions, that's right, and
they want to be very careful with the manner in
(29:05):
which they pose these questions to someone like Princess Susannah
Carolina Matilda, sister to the queen family of Macklenburg. Strelits
nailed it. Not only but she had a couple other
aliases too. She also went by the Marquiones de Waldegrave.
She was also known as the Princess of Cronenberg. No
association with the director that we know of, that we
(29:27):
know of, Yes, it's very fair. Yeah. She would use
these names on different occasions, and she would, as you said,
travel widely. She was meeting tremendously influential people, and folks
were starting to ask questions because in these circles there
would be people who speak German. Yeah. And if she
(29:49):
was supposedly from Germany, raised in Germany, yeah, Um, how
come you don't speak German? Right she refused to perhaps
because of the quarrel, yeah, or she was in the
new in the new world, speaking a new language. Um.
But even then she spoke perfect English, flawless English. You
know why because she was English. Oh yeah, that's rule Kaiser.
(30:13):
So's a moment for me. But yeah, people people were saying,
last weird because I have been speaking English for decades
and decades and decades. I grew up speaking German and
I still have a little bit of an accent, you
know what I mean? So why is she flawless with it?
And then there was another question that seems very obvious
(30:34):
to us in retrospect. That's it's the one where everyone thinks,
wait a minute, does Queen Charlotte have a sister? Right?
Why haven't I heard of her? Maybe maybe she's able
to turn it around and and really play on people's insecurities.
And so maybe I wasn't important enough to know about
the Queen's sister. Yeah, Or maybe you're not. Yeah, maybe
(30:57):
you're not as plugged in as you want other people,
let this dinner party to believe. And so people probably
for some time that strategy is effective in people are
reticent to voice their concerns because they don't want to
seem to be the odd personality. Might I also suggest that, um,
maybe men act a little dumb in the presence of
(31:19):
someone who might be a princess. I think that is
an excellent suggestion, having not, to my knowledge at this
point in life, interacted with a princess. I I can't
speak from experience, but I feel like that is. I
feel like that is unfortunately a very astute observation. Men
can be dumb no way. So you're right though, that's
(31:42):
a that's a good point. That's one that a lot
of historians don't talk about. Well, it's it's not necessarily
brought up. It's not like all these people who are
giving her gifts are described as as suitors particularly, but
knowing men, knowing that sort of patriarchal society that was
in place at the time, I have to imagine that
some of these people who are wealthy landowners in the
(32:02):
colonies meeting a single young princess applying her with gifts,
might have some motives of marrying into royalty or other motives. Yeah. Absolutely,
And and men will do dumb things, yes, when they
have those motives. Absolutely. I mean, I would say people
in general. But in this situation, it's only fair to
(32:25):
note that that trend toward thickheadedness is is probably accelerated
in men. But the scam didn't hold. The scam did
not hold because speaking of men, we have to reintroduce
a character that briefly appeared earlier in the tale of Mr.
W Duval, who it turns out is not happy about
(32:48):
Sarah Wilson as he knew her, and maybe not that
dumb of a man, because eventually, after a couple of
years passed, he hears a description of this princess. He
hears talk and he probably has oh that wow, a
princess in the colonies. That's interesting. What does she look like?
And they say this is what she looks like? And
he says, I know someone who looks like that, Yes,
(33:10):
and it's Sarah Wilson. And he has been trying to
find this the one that got away. Literally, so it
is autumn of seventeen seventy three. Remember she's been on
the runs since seventeen seventy one ish, uh, And and
he's he's been looking for her, actually since seventeen seventy one.
I have I have here in front of me from
(33:30):
the Pennsylvania Gazette, published on October eleven, seventeen seventy one,
advertisement for a runaway slave. And uh, this is what
William Daval wrote in the newspaper back in seventeen seventy one.
It took out an ad run away from the subscriber
a convict servant maid named Sarah Wilson, but has changed
(33:51):
name to Lady Susannah Carolina Matilda, which has made the
public believe that she was his Majesty's sister. And here's
where we get into the realized and what she looked like.
She has a blemish in her right eye, black rolled hair,
stoops in the shoulders, makes a common practice of writing,
and marked her clothes with a crown and a bee.
Whosoever secures the said servant woman or takes her home,
(34:14):
shall receive five pistols besides all costs and charges. So
if you find Sarah Wilson, all your expenses are paid
when you get five pistols. What a deal, five pistols.
And I should say I'm going to applaud myself for
reading that, because this is an old timey advertisement from
an old timey newspaper. And it's got those medial s
(34:35):
s which are such a pain. They look like an
f they do look like that's without the crossbar um.
They go all the way back to old English um.
And I'm glad that they're gone now, you know, the
thank you, thank you, movable type. We don't need all
those weird looking says that make everything sound like an
act of Congress's Yes, Yeah, it's true. Those are are paid.
(35:00):
And I applaud your recital there, Christopher, I applaud Casey
for cutting out all of my flubs. Love. Well, that's
the thing. You use a curvy S at the end,
but not at the beginning. So if it looks like
the word flub is flawed, but the word flubs would
(35:21):
to us look like flaps. And we can only hope
that old man Willie d was going through the same
process as he was writing this advertisement. So um, I
really really hope at some point there's some sort of
merchandise out there that people can have a bumper sticker
or a little a little pin or some just gaudy
T shirt they can wear that says, you know, I
am a proud, ridiculous hiftorian. That's great, Casey, do you
(35:46):
like that one? I love that Ideatorians. Yeah, medials for everyone,
Casey on the case. We'll put it to a vote
to let us know what you think about these. What
are they called medial? A medial? Yeah, it's it's also
known as a long S because the short S is
the short, round one or curvy or you know, just
(36:07):
an S. A as we would say, I like the
I like the depths of resentment that are that are
emanating across the table. You didn't have to read this,
so I might we do have another bit of old
timing newspaper right here. I may pass it to you
and uh and put you to the teft. We've created
(36:28):
a monster, but it's monsters to know, Monthter, Monthter. That's
fun to say. Actually should get back on track. So
they're on the hunt. Yeah, the word is out. And
in addition to publicizing this advertisement and appeal in offering
(36:48):
this reward, he sends he being uh, Willie sends one
of his employees, a man named Michael Dalton, to retrieve Sarah.
Alton has uh, you know, he has a certain set
of skills Liam Neeson style. We can only assume because
he does eventually track the princess down to a plantation
(37:12):
in Charleston right after she left. So he is hot
on her wake, hot on her trail. And then he
doesn't give up. He follows the clues Carmen San Diego style,
and he finds her to neighboring plantation. He captures her.
He takes her back to that estate in Bush Creek,
(37:33):
Frederick County, and that's in Virginia, yes, Yeah, that's in Virginia.
Is that the end of the story. She just gets
captured and she goes right back into servitude. Yeah, Sometimes
things just and I'm kidding, I'm kidding. I mean, right, well,
you still have to take some time to name the
(37:55):
pony before before you ride it out, and I would
I would advise something heavy on the FS and theses.
But this is not the end of the story, is it, Christopher.
You know it's not. There's there's more scamming ahead, as
as may not be so surprising with miss Sarah Wilson.
So Sarah is on the plantation, she's working at this point.
(38:15):
It's s though, but Devall is not at home because
he has left the plantation to fight in the militia
for the American War of Independence, yes, which we now
know as the Revolutionary War. And while he is gone,
a very very strange coincidence scurs. This is the kind
(38:37):
of thing you can't write in fiction because no one
will believe you. Yeah, it seems like this seems like
a really unsatisfying end to things because it's just so improbable.
But according to the historical record, this is what happened
another either enslaved person or servant girl also by the
name of Sarah Wilson, crosses paths with Sarah Wilson. That
(39:03):
you and I and the listeners now, and this is
very vague. We want to want to let all of
our fellow listeners know, we are very well aware that
this is incredibly vague. Somehow our Sarah Wilson, the former princess,
is able to switch I guess, bodies or make make
(39:24):
people confuse the new Sarah Wilson for her. And then
during this confusion, while her owner is away, while this
creep the vall Is way, she escapes and this time
she heads north. Yeah, the southward direction did not work
out so well for her in the past when she
was a princess. So she splits. She goes north. She
(39:47):
leaves Sarah Wilson the second in place of Sarah Wilson.
The first too bad for Sarah Wilson. The second. I guess.
We think this is the end of her story, although
maybe she was already going to be on that plantation anyway.
And uh, Sarah Juan was like, oh, oh no, that's
Sarah Wilson over there. Are you looking for Sarah Wilson.
That's Sarah. Hey are you named Sarah Wilson And she says, yeah,
that's me. And then she's like, well, I'm just gonna
(40:09):
walk away as you guys go talk to her. And
you know, there's just a lot of this like convincing
people and and gift of gab. You know, you've got
to really be a smooth talker. Um. This reminds me
of the story a little bit of that that bridge. Yeah, yeah,
tab Or Bridge, right, the two French marshals who decided
(40:33):
to con their way across the Danube. Yeah. You You
and Noel had a really great episode about this and
thanks man. Yeah, you know, ridiculous historians. If you have
not listened to that episode, go dig it up. I mean,
we kind of just gave you the surprise ending. But
it's still a great story regardless. There's all sorts of
weird boasting and French chest puffery and uh, you know,
(40:54):
almost bombings and Hungarian Confusion and which, by the way,
really a band name. I think Hungarian Confusion that is
an excellent band name, my friend. I'm hang on, sorry
everybody listening, I'm going to write that down. Okayn's actually
just filing for analysis right now. Yes, revolution, but Sarah Wilson.
(41:20):
She is not confused about what she's doing. She heads
out of Virginia, goes north, and at least for the
foreseeable future, lives a somewhat normal life. Still has a
lot of her money, which she again like, where where
does the money go? Where does she keep it? Are
there secret bank accounts? Does she have secret pockets? Has
(41:43):
she literally buried boxes of coin? Maybe she has just
like a lot of hair, just like a huge head
of hair, and there's just like envelopes of money in there.
Who could be I mean, at the time, it may
have been a sound investments. Yeah, you know, some money
sewn into the lining of a coat or something like that. Anyway,
(42:05):
she's got all this money, and she ends up all
the way up in New York. She actually meets a
young military man named William Talbot or alternatively Sterling. Oh
is that right? Well, it is sometimes it differs, depends
on the source. But yeah, she meets this. She meets
a nice young man and he is a military man.
He's a officer in the light Dragoons. And the war
(42:29):
transpires spoiler alert. This part of the North American continent
becomes a country we call the United States today. Part
of it, Okay, you're familiar with its work. And the
couple decides to stay in this new country. What are
they doing. Probably they're they're avoiding arrest for Sarah to England.
(42:50):
But they also she uses her money. Maybe maybe she
did this, Maybe she kept jewelry and then sold the jewelry.
That might have happened, but she used is this money
that she has acquired to set up her husband as
a businessman, and they live, as far as we can
tell from the record, they live, uh happily. Ever after,
(43:13):
they have a lot of kids, and they set up
their residence in the Bowery in New York, which at
the time was a quiet, nice neighborhood. M kind of
a happy ending for her. It is, especially we can
consider how close she came to very very terrible things.
I don't know. It also reminds me in a way.
You remember that Disney film Pinocchio, right the stories. So
(43:37):
as a kid, I thought Pinocchio was really cool until
one of my friends later on, years and years later,
pointed out to me that Pinocchio has this horrible lesson
for children in terms of morality. Tell me about it. Well,
I'll keep it brief, but Pinocchio from his beginning is
(43:58):
told to do the following kind of things or not
do these things, so that he can ultimately become self
actualized and be a real boy. He breaks all of
those rules or those commandments or whatever, and then at
the end he gets the reward. Anyway, that's true. So
did Sarah Wilson have a moment? We we can tell.
(44:18):
One thing we can tell that differentiates her from other
con artists is that when she got to a good spot,
she stopped. There are other con artists who just can't
give up the game. Well, there was a point though,
you know. And and this is where I'd like more
detail about her life. Um, And I mean this to
me seems ripe for some Hollywood tale, and I'd love
(44:39):
to see this turned into a film and really dig
into the story. But there was a time before she
met her husband, after she escaped Virginia where she she
had this little side escapade. And there's not a lot
that I could dig up about this, but she she
teamed up with this um, with this criminal who was
known by the alias of Tom Bell. He was uh.
(45:00):
He was an irishman um also known as Patrick O'Connor,
but they kind of worked together for a while, and
he introduced himself to people as Mr Edward Augustus Montague,
a gentleman of fortune and betrothed lover of Princess Susanna
Carolina Matilda. So I maybe maybe the princess came back
(45:21):
after her her flight from Virginia and before she settled
in New York. Maybe there's this this sort of interim
of her flirting again with this world of intrigue and
a scam, and I don't know much about it. We
we don't know, like we as a species don't know
much about this part of her life, which makes it
by far one of the most intriguing and fascinating. We
(45:45):
don't know much about Patrick O'Connor nor his alias Tom Bell,
but we do know that they did for for a
brief time. She did go into a two person con act,
and who knows, maybe they really were betrothed. I don't know.
I mean, he was a fairly well known criminal at
(46:05):
the time. I mean, this could be the sort of
thing where maybe they pulled off one last heist and
she got out of the life. It's a sort of
you know, like a like a Danny Ocean kind of
situation where she teams up with this acclaimed crime guy,
she gets what she needs, and um, you know she
has her happily ever after. You also have to wonder
whether the man who ultimately became her husband knew about
(46:30):
her stint as a princess knew Did she tell him
her true, true, true story or did she say like,
maybe I'm an orphan and this is my family fortune
and I love you, I don't want to talk about
my past. Let's start a new life together in the Bowery.
And then maybe he just went head over heels Christopher.
Maybe he was just like, well, I'm in love and
(46:54):
being a dude, I'm kind of dumb and I do
need some money. And I do and I do need
eats them as you said, cash money. Oh, speaking of
cash money, Bennett is I I thought this might be
a good way to wrap up because I this is
a little off topic, but it's related to some some
royalty and some cash money. I wanted to get your
opinion and ridiculous historians. If you have any advice for me.
(47:18):
I got this email from a Nigerian prince. Okay do
you tell? And he's asking for some money. Okay, should
I help him out? Um? How much money is he
asking for more than I've got? Oh? Okay? Uh, then
without having a doctorate in finance, I would advise you
(47:38):
depending on how much. Well, first, how much time do
you have? I don't have enough time. Spoiler alert, I'm
not giving this guy any money. But that's But the
thing is, you know, we're talking about this weird scam
of someone putting themselves forth as royalty, and it it
sounds like the sort of thing like, oh, this is
just a thing that you know, those historical routes back
(47:59):
in the day fell for. It's going on still. Um.
I in preparing to come chat with you guys here,
I did a little digging and there was a report
last year from the Security Services a d T. In
two thousand eighteen alone, people in the United States fell
prey to the Nigerian scams and other sort of email
uh scams like that where people are just asking for
(48:21):
money to the tune of more than seven hundred thousand
dollars last year alone, um and it averaged out to
about two thousand, one hundred dollars per person. So, this
this scam of royalty, this desire to buy into a story,
this ability to be hoodwinked. Um. You know, I think
it's just baked into humanity. It's just who we are.
(48:44):
We want to believe, we want to help um and
if someone says there are prince or a princess, Hey,
why not? Well, and it gets our our inner fox boulder.
I want to believe what I was going to advise
you to do off record, again, not being a doctorate,
just between you, Casey, me and the millions of us listening.
(49:06):
You're not recording this case right, this is all off
the record, person perfect. I just don't want this out
in the world. That would be embarrassing. I've read accounts
of people who essentially scammed the scammers, which is on
the murky side of unethical pranking. What are you talking that?
That is fighting the fight? Well, the idea is, you know,
(49:26):
they'll say stuff like, sure, you've contacted me, I do
have this money. I will give you this information, but
first I want to know, uh first, seeing to prove
something in good faith or whatever. And I've found situations
wherein someone convinced the scammer or someone who knows the
scammer to get a tattoo or to write essays about
(49:50):
Harry Potter and things of that nature. So if you
have the time and the inclination, and you don't feel
particularly guilty about trolling people who are trying to steal
from you, then then I would advise to find I
would advise you find the funniest prank to pull. We'll
check back in. We'll check back in, and perhaps, Christopher,
(50:13):
one day you will be known to as as a
genius of the con because one of the most American
things about about the way we treat con artists here
in the US is that they are often begrudgingly admired,
you know what I mean. The idea of this this um,
(50:36):
slick talking, clever individual violating social norms and getting away
with it, it's it's imprinted into our DNA. And that's
why the Providence Rhode Island Gazette and Country Journal in
January of seventeen seventy four noted that Sarah Wilson is
quote the most surprising genius of the female sex that
(50:57):
was ever obliged to visit America. Let's just walk past
that blatant, you know, misogyny. There. They're basically saying, smart
for a woman, because they're being jerks. But what they're
also doing, and when I think is more important for
our purposes here, is they are phrasing the intelligence of
(51:19):
this person. They're saying, this is one of the smartest
people in this country. Too bad they're not a politician
or you know, a philanthropist. Can't win them all, can't
win them all. But I feel like this was a
big win for Casey Nolan, Spirit and I to have
you over on the show, and we hope that you
(51:41):
enjoyed this episode. We want to hear from you. Let
us know some of your favorite historical cons other than
the Trojan Horse, other than that one. You know, that's
that's sort of like going to karaokeme plane, don't stop
believing and and whatever we want to call this con
of you. So how being convinced to let me sit
(52:01):
in here and chat with you guys? I feel like
I've scammed everyone. Hey, yeah, that's a Hey, that's a
good question. Is your name Christopher, isn't it? I don't know, Casey.
I believe him. He's just got such a such an
amicable air about him. You know, no comment alright, just
just call me princess. Oh wow, you guys are in
on this together. Well, here's hoping that I don't get
(52:25):
scammed out of millions of dollars. But if I do,
I'm glad it was from you too. Thank you, as
always to our super producer, Casey Pegram. Thank you to
Alex Williams, who composed our track. Thank you to Gabe,
our research associate. Christopher. We often thank you on this show,
so it's a little strange that you're here now. I'm
really glad to thank you in person. Thanks for coming on, man,
(52:47):
you're welcome. Thank you for having me Bannon, and thanks
for having me ridiculous Historians. And stay tuned for our
next episode, Whearing Christopher and I will explore not a
not a come No, things are going to get a
little grimeier grammar Grammar Grimer, just a little dark, little gross,
(53:09):
so fun, still ridiculous. Stay tuned for more podcasts from
my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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