Painted by Thomas Barker, it is thought in 1817

Auctioned in Bristol in 2003

The first appearance of the Princess occurred in 1817 when she suddenly appeared in the village of Almondsbury, just outside Bristol, dressed in a startling outfit of outlandish clothing with a turban on her head, babbling in a very strange foreign-sounding language which, at first, no one could make head or tail of, because she was making it up as she went along. But she looked so exotic that everyone who met her was intrigued. They directed her at first to the workhouse but the Overseer there simply did not know what to do with her - he looked at her hands - and found them soft and delicate - no sign she had ever done manual work and he watched her behaviour and found her ladylike and graceful so he decided to hand her over to a local magistrate who had in his employ a manservant who spoke one or two European languages - maybe he could fathom what the woman was saying and find a clue as to her identity.

At Knole Park, the home of the Worralls,  the girl was watched over carefully and by gestures and slipping the odd decipherable word into the torrent of improvised language which poured from her, she managed in a few hours to convince Mrs Worrall ( and ultimately her husband too) that she was a Princess called Caraboo, that she had been kidnapped by pirates from her native land - the island of Javasu - that she had been taught to dance and to fence, that she worshipped a god who she called Allah Tallah (the Worralls even created a temple where she could worship in a large tree in their park). They allowed her to wander about the park firing off arrows with a bow, while carrying a large gong which she beat from time to time. On Tuesdays, she always fasted for the day, during which she perched on the roof of their house. Nobody seems to have thought her behaviour odd and at no time did the Princess let her disguise slip.

Far from thinking the Worralls odd for harbouring the girl and believing the rubbish she created, the neighbours seem to have been totally captivated by the Princess and very jealous of the Worralls for having such a guest to display. But it would all end in tears when the family took her to nearby Bath where they went to show off their new acquisition in the Pump Rooms. The event was reported in the local Bath newspaper and read by a Mrs Neale of Bristol who instantly recognised  that this "Princess" was a former servant of her's called Mary Baker who had kept her children entertained on rainy days by acting out her role as Princess Caraboo for them.

Nobody likes to be taken in so the great problem was what to do next. The story had spread throughout the country so the Worralls looked pretty silly. Mrs Worrall took a face-saving decision - one which made it look as though they may have been right to believe in Princess Caraboo - they swifly packed her off to Philadelphia in the company of three ladies whose passage they also paid on condition that they arranged for her to tour the country giving demonstrations as Princess Caraboo. After a few months she seemed to disappear without trace and the gossiping tongues were quietened.

But "Mary Baker" was another identity which she created for herself - she had been known in Witheridge as Mary Willcocks but somehow she felt more at home as Mary Baker, which she later said had been the name of a man in Bristol to whom she had briefly been married and who had fathered a child which had died in the Foundling Hospital there. She also felt more at home in England so in 1824 she popped up again, this time in London where she exhibited herself as Princess Caraboo, carefully dressing to match Thomas Barker's portrait of her.

After her London season, she took her little show to Bath which was not a good idea and ended up as an importer of leeches - then an important attribute of the medical profession - a job by which she seems to have successfully supported herself  for some years.

She died in her 70s in Bedminster in the December Quarter of 1864 and is buried there. Her father always stuck to his view that rheumatic fever, which she had when she was 15, was the cause of a mental illness from which he believed she had suffered, from that time. But there is some evidence that she was far more widely read than most country girls of her day and that one of Mrs Neale's children had taught her to write properly. Where would her literacy skills and her vivid imagination have taken her in today's world?