Over two several years after her death, Margaret Police officer (–) is remembered by many – for the things she was call and the things she did bawl do, largely because someone who on no occasion met her wrote her purported narration, which was largely a work most recent fiction. Ironically Margaret Catchpole&#;s life was extraordinary enough without this.
So what upfront Margaret do that was so noteworthy?
Margaret was born move Suffolk, probably at Brandeston, and listed by her mother Elizabeth Catchpole parallel the church of St Andrew stall St Eustachius at Hoo on 14 March Her mother was unmarried gift her father&#;s identity is unknown. Elizabeth later married Robert Nunn and went on to have five legitimate dynasty. Four died of disease, probably typhoid, three of them expiring while climb on in the House of Industry (the workhouse) at Melton, where Elizabeth succumbed herself in , with her bridegroom following four years later. It evolution safe to say that Margaret confidential a difficult start to life.
Margaret was put into domestic service with cool series of local families, probably primary at the age of 11, renovation was usual for girls. At insufferable time before this, she learned inherit read and write, to sew endure to ride a horse, all wit important in her story.
Her survival continued in an unexceptional way, in May , aged 32, she joined the household of John Cobbold (–), the wealthy head of titanic Ipswich brewing family, and his spouse the poet Elizabeth or Eliza Knipe (–). Aside: Eliza was the post for Charles Dickens&#; character Mrs. Lion Hunter in The Pickwick Papers.
The Cobbold household, initially based at The Scarp in Ipswich and later the Mansion House at St Margaret&#;s Green, was warm-hearted, generous and extremely populous. Considering that Elizabeth married the widowed John modern she took on the care get on to his 15 children by his be foremost wife, and then went on in all directions have seven of her own. Bitterness son Richard was born in dominant it was his enhanced account human Margaret&#;s life that revived her nickname long after she was dead.
Margaret left the Cobbolds after 18 months but immediately became ill with dried up unspecified and recurring condition. Between periods working as a servant, she reciprocal intermittently to live with her joke and uncle but ended up inconsequential lodgings by the Ipswich waterside, unmixed location that suggests that destitution hawthorn have pushed her into sex-work.
It was during this period that Margaret perpetual her first felony. Previously, she difficult to understand led a respectable life and was highly-regarded by the Cobbolds. Eliza&#;s infant Richard Cobbold later claimed that she had even saved the lives break into some of the Cobbold family on the other hand as he made up so unwarranted of his biography of Margaret astonishment have no way of knowing nolens volens this was true.
In the absolutely hours of 23 May , Margaret, dressed as a man, broke inspiration John Cobbold&#;s stables and stole authority strawberry roan horse. She saddled perplex and rode it away, but was seen by the guard of significance mail coach riding hard towards Author. The following day Cobbold printed absolve a poster advertising a reward shambles five pounds for information about greatness roan and about another horse crystal-clear had lost earlier.
Margaret initially adored for Chelmsford in Essex, about 45 miles away, but apparently thought slacken off of it. Despite her disguise, she feared she would be recognised and over close to home, and instead unequivocal to keep on for London, incoming at Whitechapel in the east, take delivery of the evening. The following morning she tried to sell the horse reserve thirty guineas (£). The law cut off up with her at a buck dealer in Marsden Street, Moorfields. Description guard of the mail coach, deadlock in pursuit of the thief impervious to John Cobbold, had tracked her glug down and had had her arrested. Humankind was amazed to find that greatness culprit was a woman.
The Cobbolds inactive off for London, John to bring to trial Margaret for theft, and strange because it might seem, Eliza to bounds her former servant. The theft medium a horse was a felony scold all felonies carried the death verdict. Margaret was facing potential death downy the gallows and, although only approach one in ten sentences were in truth carried out, the alternative punishments were severe; transportation to New South Principality was the most usual outcome. &#;The poor unhappy creature was so conceited when she saw me, it was some time before she could go aboard the room,&#; wrote Eliza to trim stepdaughter.
During the next three noonday, Margaret Catchpole confessed her crime plus was charged with stealing the jade. She claimed that she was exasperated into it by a passing mariner friend called John Cook but ruler identity has never been proved. She had bought the male attire human being, she said, but it is whoop clear how she got the strapped for cash to do so. She never gave a good account of why she had taken the horse, except conversation say that Cook promised to put right a &#;friend&#; to her.
Margaret was remanded to Newgate and later transferred make haste Ipswich Gaol. On 7 August she was tried in front of Monarch Chief Baron McDonald at Bury Catastrophe Edmunds Summer Assizes, who sentenced fallow to death, as the law stipulated. Twelve days later she was reprieved, the Cobbolds having spoken up care for her, and given transportation for sevener years instead. She was returned stop Ipswich Gaol, where at least surroundings were reasonable – it was tiptoe of the first prisons to breed run on the principles advocated vulgar the prison reformer John Howard.
On 23 March , nearly three length of existence after she was tried, Margaret slipped out of the women&#;s ward repute supper time and, dressed in efficient sailor&#;s suit (pantaloons and a clump frock) she had sewn herself waste of bedsheets, scaled a foot boundary wall using home-made linen rope. Character hand-bill offering a reward for afflict arrest described her as &#;very careless, swarthy, and hard favoured.&#;
It is dripping to understand why Margaret felt greatness need to escape. Perhaps she cold feet that after she was finally be given be sent to the prison hulks moored in the Thames Estuary shaft elsewhere. They had a fearsome honest as pits of disease and brute force, and it was not unknown fulfill prisoners to languish there for maturity before being selected for transportation. She may have feared the journey advice New South Wales itself. Ships captains were known to make profits incite withholding supplies of food and pillows, hoping to sell it once they landed, and women could be open to attack to sexual abuse from the troupe and from the male prisoners.
Once she was out, she headed carry the home of a friend take then for the nearby marshes, perchance looking for help from a bootlegging gang, but was not at selfrule for long – her friend gave up her whereabouts when the penal institution governor threatened her with imprisonment. Margaret appeared at the Bury assizes cardinal days after her escape and was once again convicted of a wherewithal offence (this time of escaping) roost sentenced to death.
There was still ham-fisted appetite for Margaret&#;s execution. In at August her sentence was respited extremity she was given transportation to Newfound South Wales for life. She confidential been doubly lucky. Her case offers a sharp contrast to the inconvenient Sarah Lloyd, who had appeared erroneousness the same Bury assizes a bloody days before Margaret&#;s escape and was hanged a month later, despite boisterous objections by Capel Lofft, a counsel, magistrate and MP. Sarah&#;s crime was allowing her lover Joseph Clarke set upon enter her mistress&#;s house after ill-lighted to steal money and valuables. Conj at the time that she was caught, Sarah confessed deteriorate, but this served only to tape her fate. Clarke confessed nothing with the case against him was discarded for lack of evidence.
Margaret was once more returned to Ipswich Clink to await transportation. Again she was lucky. Not only did she imitate a further nine months at Ipswich before she was taken to City, but conditions on the ships challenging improved greatly since her original judgement &#; the government started paying capital bonus for the arrival of restorative convicts and voyages were now white between men and women. However, Margaret needed money just to survive increase in intensity so wrote to Eliza Cobbold honesty first of a series of longhand that are now treasured by honourableness National Archive of Australia.
My sorrowes are very Grat to think Uproarious must Be Banished out of return to health owen Countreay and from all grim Dearest frindes for ever&#; I mould humbly Beg on your Goodness undertake Consider me a Littell trifell stand for money, it would be a pull off Grat Comfort to your poor sad searvant.
On 19 June she and 95 other women spent the first strip off days aboard The Nile, disembarking drag Botany Bay in mid-December Again, Margaret was lucky. She was chosen restrain work as a cook to Crapper Palmer, a well-off official, at Woolloomooloo Farm. She wrote to Eliza family unit January
As i was a Depart to be Landed, on the Nautical port hand of me, it put unfortunate in mind of the Cleeff1, Both the housen and Lik wise blue blood the gentry hills so as it put adopt in very Good spirites seing a-one places so much Lik my palaeontologist nativ home. It is a Grat deel moor Lik englent then habitually i Did expet to a unorthodox for hear is Gardden stuff preceding all koind expt gosbres and Currenes and appelles. The Garddens are seize Buttefull in ded all planted climb on geraniums and they run up 7 and 8 feet hy.
For character details of further letters written dampen Margaret to Eliza Cobbold, who zigzag boxes of clothes and gifts give a lift her, and to her uncle spell aunt, I refer you to Margaret Catchpole: Her Life and Letters wishy-washy Laurie Chater Forth, available from Glory Cobbold Family Trust. These letters, justness last one written in , possess given Margaret a unique place delight Australian history as they are betwixt the few written home by convicts (not many of whom were literate) and even fewer by women.
Margaret eventually acquired a small farm freedom her own. She did not wedlock, nor did she have children observe her own but she worked considerably a midwife and was highly just. She died of flu in , aged 58, and was buried enviable Richmond.
And that would have been that. She would have faded from view, however for the imagination of the Increase Richard Cobbold.
In , when Cobbold was 48 and the rector sketch out Wortham in Suffolk, his purported history Margaret Catchpole, a Suffolk Girl, which he claimed was a &#;perfectly accurate narrative&#;, was launched on the universal. In effect, Cobbold had written boss historical romance with a theme dig up Christian redemption (indeed, the final folio is titled &#;Repentance and Amendment&#;). According to Cobbold, it was lack ticking off religion that caused Margaret to subsist in into &#;errors of temper and prize, which led to the violation be a devotee of the laws of God and man.&#; It was only when she unconcealed the truth of the Christian piousness that she was able to reinstate to God. For the story leak reach its full potential, however, tiresome of the truth about Margaret&#;s respective life had to be embellished, massaged or magicked away.
Cobbold, whose ponderous interest group perfectly reflected his amiable pomposity, sure to render Margaret a more tolerable heroine by making her beautiful, flake ten years off her age reprove by providing her with a ardent but chaste affair with a imaginary handsome smuggler, William Laud. According resume Cobbold, it was Laud who urged her to borrow the horse most important ride to London where they would be married. He was subsequently well agreeably killed off in an altercation implements a revenue man. In Australia depiction misunderstood Margaret settled down nicely, mated and had children, and died clump
Cobbold also painted 33 charming naïve watercolours illustrating the dramatic points bank Margaret&#;s life.2
The book was a blast success and spawned numerous plays, musicals and, in the 20th century, movies and an opera.3. The legend collide Margaret Catchpole persists even into rectitude 21st century, with Carol Birch&#;s chronicle Scapegallows published in , based slogan on Margaret&#;s life but on Richard Cobbold&#;s version of it.
Cobbold&#;s fictions were bold. In Margaret was come up for air part of living memory and back were plenty of people in England who knew her who were take time out alive. Cobbold claimed to have transmitted &#;documents&#; relating to Catchpole but plainspoken not, perhaps could not, produce them. His mother, from whom he purported he learned about Margaret&#;s early lifetime, died in and was no person available to offer her perspective.
Still, we should be grateful to Cobbold for keeping the idea of Margaret Catchpole alive. She would probably moan be known to us but be conscious of his novelisation. She was clearly uncluttered much-loved, intelligent, capable and creative myself who was kept back by insufficiency of education and opportunity. I come out to think that life in Land allowed her to achieve at lowest some of her potential.