<p>Lucy Worsley and her all-female team of detectives travel back in time to meet con artists, hoaxers and crooks from across the world. Women living extraordinary lives in a world made for men.</p><p>In this episode of Lady Swindlers, Lucy meets Princess Caraboo, a woman abducted from palace gardens in Indonesia, traded by pirates and carried away to South West England in 1817. Or so she says… </p><p>Lucy is joined in the studio by writer and broadcaster Salma El-Wardany, presenter of BBC Radio London’s Breakfast Show, to delve into this sensational story. Lucy then heads to the village where it all happened to meet Lady Swindlers in-house historian Professor Rosalind Crone.</p><p>Together, they follow Caraboo’s journey from wandering vagrant to star attraction. They ask how a woman with no money, no papers and not a word of English could walk into a rural community in Regency England and wind up living in a grand manor house as an honoured guest.
They consider her very ‘unladylike’ behaviour: climbing trees, swimming naked in the lake, shooting arrows and gutting pigeons. They reflect on the influence of nearby Bristol, a cosmopolitan city rich on profits from the transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans.</p><p>The team discuss how we judge strangers, particularly women, and whether desperation can justify deceit. Would we judge Princess Caraboo any differently today?</p><p>Producer: Sarah Goodman
Readers: Clare Corbett and Jonathan Keeble
Sound Design: Chris Maclean
Executive producer: Kirsty Hunter </p><p>A StoryHunter production for BBC Radio 4.</p><p>If you're in the UK, listen to the newest episodes of Lady Killers first on BBC Sounds: https://bbc.in/3M2pT0K</p>
