JAVASU

Caraboo , Prince of, a name taken by Mary Will cocks (dau. of Thomas Will cocks a cobbler at Withe ridge, North Devon). b. Withe ridge 11 Nov. 1792; in service at Exeter 1810, then became a wandering mendicant; a umed male attire and was a footman in a family 1813; acquired the art of altering her features so that no one knew her; lost in the snow and buried during a night near Withe ridge; in Magdalen hospital, London, Feb.-July 1813. ( m. 1816 John Edward Francis Baker or Bakerstendt, who soon ran away from her, placed her child in the Foundling hospital, London, where it died Sep. 1816); camped with gipsies near Exeter and learnt some of their skill; pretended to be a French woman, then a Spaniard; announced herself to be Caraboo prince of Javasu, and at Bath at the Pack Horse inn held a reception when the ladies knelt before her; invented written characters for the Javasu language; went to America 1817, returned 1824; exhibited herself in New Bond st. London 1824; living under Pyle Hill, Bed minster, Bristol as a seller of leeches Dec. 1849. d. Bristol, Dec. 1864. Full particulars of the life of Caraboo, alias Mary Baker. Bristol (1817); Narrative of an imposition by Mary Will cocks alias Baker, alias Bakerstendt alias Caraboo, Prince of Javasu. Bristol (1817) with 2 portraits ; Temple Bar , June 1866 pp. 420–2; Whately’s Miscellaneous Remains (1864) 249–52; Hone’s Everyday book , ii 1631–4 (1838), 2 portraits .