Liar, liar:

meet some of history’s most notorious conwomen.

Meet some of history’s most notorious conwomen

MARY BAKER (AKA PRINCESS CARABOO)

It was the beginning of April, 1817, when a strange woman appeared in the rural town of Almondsbury, just north of Bristol, England. She was young, pretty and dressed in tattered clothes with a turban on her head – she also seemed worn out and totally confused. The locals were just as baffled: who was this mysterious lass spouting an unknown language and toting only some toiletries wrapped in fabric? They put her up in an inn for the night, where she refused meals and performed unusual prayers – she also got inordinately excited about a painting of a pineapple, prompting staff to assume she hailed from a far-off tropical land.

As luck would have it, a sailor soon passed through town who happened to speak the woman’s language. He translated her frantic ramblings: she was no drifter after all, but Princess Caraboo from the island of Javasu in the Indian Ocean. Apparently, she’d been kidnapped by pirates – she escaped by jumping overboard in the Bristol Channel, then was washed ashore near Almondsbury. The townsfolk couldn’t believe their ears. They had royalty in their midst! They immediately began treating her like a visiting dignitary, throwing lavish parties in her honour, providing lodgings at a country palace, and following her every movement (including her nightly prayers to ‘Allah-tallah’, which often took place on the roof or up a tree).

Word soon spread beyond the town, as well, with Princess Caraboo’s arrival making the papers in nearby Bristol. It was there that the head of a local boarding house finally recognised the woman. She knew her not as kidnapped royalty but a former servant named Mary Baker who would get about in a turban while speaking a made-up language. Javasu was a figment of Mary’s imagination – in reality, she was the daughter of a cobbler in rural Devon and, on becoming estranged from her parents, wound up begging on the streets. She realised she could garner more donations from passersby by posing as a foreigner, then turned the deception up a notch with her grand plan for the people of Almondsbury.

You’d think the townsfolk would turn on the conwoman who had made a fool of them all. Instead, the press spun a sympathetic tale. They sold her as a downtrodden working-class hero who’d used guts and smarts to put one over the upper crust. In fact, the locals were so understanding that when Mary expressed a desire to go to America and start acting professionally, they raised money to help her relocate, and she soon skipped off to Philadelphia. Her career in the spotlight took a downward turn when she returned to England in 1824, though – word has it she spent the remainder of her life selling leeches to a local hospital.

SARAH RACHEL RUSSELL

If you were a dame in 1860s England with a fondness for popping on some lippy or face powder, you would have had to do it on the down-low. The queen had decided make-up was utterly unladylike, you see, suitable only for performing in a theatre or brothel. Nevertheless, society’s beauty standards forged on, with pale, blemish-free faces considered the height of loveliness. Enter the mysterious Madame Rachel, and her store ‘Beautiful For Ever’ on Bond Street in London.

Born Sarah Rachel Russell, the wily woman had a colourful past filled with odd jobs and dead husbands. Having experienced poverty for most of her life, she’d try anything to make a buck, from telling fortunes to recruiting sex workers and flogging old clothes and rabbit skins. In the Victorian-era quest for eternal youth she spotted an opportunity. She would rebrand herself as Madame Rachel – complete with long, draping robes and jewels – and peddle costly ‘exotic elixirs’ to gullible society ladies.

There was her legendary Magnetic Rock Dew Water, supposedly “brought to Morocco by swift dromedaries” and imported with a special licence from the sultan himself. The Armenian Beauty Wash and Royal Arabian Face Cream were said to revitalise any ageing façade, as was the assortment of ointments, perfumes and herbs advertised in her glossy brochure. Women flocked to her store in secret, spending big and putting full trust in the seemingly mystical products. Unfortunately, the cosmetics they eagerly slathered on their skin were pretty darn hazardous – even life-threatening.

An ingredient list would show toxic chemicals by the bucketload: prussic acid, lead carbonate and arsenic were regular offenders, used to give wrinkles and spots the old heave-ho (while simultaneously burning the skin). Madame Rachel was bestknown, though, for a unique service called ‘enamelling’, which claimed to leave her clients with a smooth, pale, porcelain-like complexion. This was achieved by stripping any hair from the face; dousing the skin with alkaline toilet wash; filling creases in with a thick, white paste; then dusting off the lot with a powder. She advertised the ‘art’ as being hers and hers alone – and anyone who skipped the procedure would be socially on the outer.

Eventually, the law caught up with Madame Rachel. Aside from the dodgy products, she was blackmailing clients who couldn’t pay upfront, by offering credit then extorting them and cashing in their treasures. A number of malpractice suits were filed against her, and she was (rightfully) accused of intimidation. Tales abound of her shop being used as a brothel, too. Unable to con her way out of the charges, she served two jail sentences, eventually passing away in Woking prison in 1880.

BIG BERTHA HEYMAN

For Bertha Heyman – aka Big Bertha, or the Confidence Queen – conning men was a grind that never stopped. The Prussian grifter (born Bertha Schlesinger in 1851) emigrated to the US in the late 1870s, and proceeded to swindle a string of unknowing fellows out of their life savings. Her target? Naïve folks who should really know better. “The moment I discover a man’s a fool, I let him drop,” she told police after one of her many arrests. “I delight in getting into the confidence and pockets of men who think they can’t be ‘skinned’.”

Described in the papers as being “built like a battleship”, what Bertha lacked in traditional femininity – at least, by the standards of the day – she more than made up for in charm. Her dazzling charisma and a deep understanding of human nature helped her pull off her favourite scam time and time again: pretending to be a wealthy woman who was unable to access her ample funds. She appealed to kind men to advance her a sum of money in return for a cut of her fortune – but of course, as soon as they passed over the cash, she’d take off. Her most famous con involved the brother of a San Francisco rabbi, who fell in love and proposed to Bertha, only to discover she’d absconded with a stash of precious jewels and a hefty chunk of dosh.

The cops were onto Bertha’s criminal ways, and she spent her days in and out of prison – not that she let it slow her down. While serving time on Blackwell’s Island, New York, she reportedly befriended a man on the outside and conned him out of $900 (these days, that would be more like $20,000 USD). She also convinced the powers that be at the jail to grant her breaks from confinement for carriage rides around Manhattan, and even the odd trip to the theatre. When she wasn’t behind bars, Bertha’s swindling let her hobnob with the upper echelons of society. She attended fancy parties in fancier threads bought with credit and dodgy cheques. And even once exposed as a crook, her wiliness and notoriety won her many fascinated admirers. Jumping at an opportunity to make some fast cash, she took to the stage, making light of her crimes in a one-woman show, flailing about in wrestling matches with any man who would face her, and even playing one of the titular roles in an unconventional performance of Her obvious lack of talent had little effect on ticket sales – in fact, folks flooded to see the muddled Shakespearean show where, due to their size difference, her love interest (played by an actor named Oofty Goofty) sat on a balcony while she remained on the ground.

THE FOX SISTERS

Something strange was happening in the Fox household in March, 1848. Every night, when sisters Maggie and Kate went upstairs to bed, the rural New York cottage would be filled with a cacophony of eerie thuds, raps and bangs. In fact, they seemed to follow the girls wherever they moved, and their parents, John and Margaret, were getting weirded out. It was like they were being chased by a mysterious, noisy spirit – so, they turned to their neighbours for help.

Curious and a little spooked themselves, people piled into the bedroom as the ‘force’ was given a series of commands: count to 15; tell us this person’s age; if you’re troubled, “manifest it by three raps”. It responded with the appropriate knocks and blew the spectators’ socks off. It seemed so real! They could see nothing untoward happening! Surely this couldn’t be a prank?

Erring on the side of caution, the Fox family moved away from the house, and Maggie and Kate were sent to live with their sister Leah in nearby Rochester – known for its alternative religious activity. Their puzzling tale came with them and soon reached the ears of radical Quakers Isaac and Amy Post. The Posts were keen to see if the spirits had followed the sisters to their new locale, so invited the family over to their place for, presumably, a very haunted dinner party. Once again, bangs and thumps rang out. The couple quickly organised an event at a local hall, where hundreds of onlookers could witness the ghostly manifestations in action. Though the crowd was initially sceptical, their attitude changed once Maggie and Kate were searched backstage with no sign of a hoax to be found.

The Fox sisters embarked on a speaking tour and began charging people to attend special séances – by 1850, ‘rapping’ had become a national fad, the paranormal had hit the mainstream and other families claimed to possess the same medium skills. Their fame exploded – alongside the spiritualism movement – and Maggie and Kate were met with a mixture of awe and distrust. Then, after 40 whole years of convincing people they could communicate with spooks, something unexpected happened.

The deceit got too much for Maggie. In 1888, she publicly admitted the sisters had been faking it the entire time. “When we went to bed, we would tie an apple to a string and move it up and down, causing the apple to bump on the floor,” she said. They then learnt how to subtly crack their knuckles and toes – when done against a wooden surface, the sound would bounce around and seemingly come from nowhere. She even demonstrated the ruse in case anyone didn’t believe her.

Maggie took back the confession a year later, but it was too late – the deed was done. The sisters were on the out in the spiritualist world and had lost the trust of the broader public.