The False Princess: Excuses & Reasons – Part 5/7 (1791-1865)
In April 1812, Mary suddenly left the Matthews family, where she had been nanny to the children. She was away for four days – then came back – then left again after an argument. Apparently, she had often told the Matthews family that she would like to live like a wild person in the woods, but in this case, she simply wanted to go abroad. She was somehow able to persuade a friend to write her parents to say she’d “left England with a traveling family”, however instead she applied to the Magdalen Hospital for Reformed Prostitutes under the false name of Ann Burgess – in fact, Burgess was her own mother’s maiden name.
While researching for his book, Mary told Gutch that she had only applied at Magdalen because she had mistaken the place for a nunnery, though this was obviously a lie, since she had told the Magdalen admissions committee an entirely different story: she claimed to have been seduced by a gentleman who’d stayed at a house in Devon where she had worked, and he had taken her to London, only to abandon her after month. She said that after this, she’d started leading a ‘loose life’ – and so the committee at Magdalen admitted her to work as a housemaid.
Only a few weeks later, for some unknown reason, Mary admitted that she had never been a prostitute and that she had given them a false name simply because she needed a place to stay. Although questioned about her family’s whereabouts, Mary continued to lie, saying that her father was dead and that any more talk of her family would cause her to hang herself. They allowed her to stay, and there are records from Magdalen Hospital that confirm Mary was well-behaved – if not rather eccentric and prone to bouts of depression and restlessness – for the duration of her time there. She left the hospital only a few months later.
According to Mary, she went back home after her time in the hospital, disguising herself as a man to avoid the dangers of traveling as a lone woman. She also claims to have been kidnapped along the way, revealed as a woman, and eventually released after begging for her life, but this part of the story may have been simply a figment of her own imagination. It wasn’t until August 1813 that Mary finally arrived home, where her mother was able to find her a job working as a tanner just a few miles from the village.
After three months, Mary left the job after complaining about having to carry the animal hides – and so, after several other failed jobs, she headed back to London, where she began working for a fishmonger. She claimed that during the spring of 1814, while working here, she had a whirlwind love affair with a man named Baker, marrying him after only two months. They apparently lived together near Hastings, but after he sailed off to Calais and promised to return and take her to France with him, she never heard from him again.
Whether this part of the story was true or not is also up for debate, however there is no doubt that Mary was pregnant when she returned to London in 1816. Somehow, Mary managed to weasel herself into a job working at a pub, where she changed her name to Hannah and gained a bit of a reputation for telling highly bizarre stories. The baby was born later that year, but since Mary had no husband to support herself and the child financially, the two of them were shipped off to St. Mary’s Workhouse.
Mary was now alone and penniless with a newborn baby…
…to be continued…
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Tomorrow: Part 6 of course!
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