Margaret Catchpole 

Margaret Catchpole, born in Suffolk in 1762, is a fascinating character, whose story still captures the imagination. Described in a newspaper report of 1800 as “a tall and dark person” of “intelligent countenance”, by all accounts she was a headstrong and wilful woman. Even before achieving notoriety as a horse-thief and gaol-breaker, she had become famed in the local area for her horsemanship, after riding bareback from Nacton to Ipswich to fetch a doctor for her seriously ill mistress.

  Margaret worked in the service of various Suffolk families during her 30s, including the Leader family and the Cobbold’s in Ipswich. It was whilst serving the Cobbold family that she learnt to read and write, and her letters, together with contemporary newspaper reports, give us a window onto her life.

Even before she left home, Margaret had met, and fallen in love with, William Laud, a local man who soon afterwards became embroiled in the smuggling which was rife in 18th Century Suffolk. From this point onwards, Margaret’s remarkable story became entwined with that of Laud – whilst she descended into criminality, he sank deeper and deeper into the smuggling underworld.

In June 1797, about a year after leaving the service of the Cobbold family, Margaret stole a horse from their stables in order to reach Laud, whom she believed to be in London. The Ipswich Journal reported how “this female horse-stealer” rode 70 miles in 10 hours, an “extraordinary” feat for a woman. She had dressed as a “young man...the better to avoid detection”, but the unusual colour of the horse – a “strawberry roan” - and her awkwardness in riding, soon raised suspicions amongst those she passed on the road, and it was not long before she was apprehended in London.

Margaret was sentenced to death at the Bury assizes in August 1797, but this was commuted to seven years imprisonment following a powerful appeal made on her behalf by the Cobbold family – the very people she had stolen from. Margaret was thus consigned to Ipswich Gaol, where she appears to have lived an exemplary life for several years.

However, in 1800 she broke the law again – and in spectacular fashion. Hoping to meet her lover and escape with him to Holland, Margaret escaped from the gaol. This time disguising herself as a sailor, Margaret - only 5 ft 2 in tall according to the handbill published after her escape - scaled a 22ft wall topped with spikes, using a gardening frame, linen line and prop!

   But she was soon discovered, and was again sentenced to death at the Bury assizes. This time her sentence was commuted to transportation for life, and in May 1801 Margaret left Ipswich bound for Australia, along with two other female convicts. In Australia Margaret managed to make a better life for herself, working hard, receiving a pardon, and becoming a midwife and farmer, before her death in 1819.

Not surprisingly Margaret’s exploits brought her great notoriety in Suffolk, where she is still something of a legend today. She is also a well-known figure in the history of Australia: her letters home to Suffolk provide historians with a valuable and virtually unique record of the experiences, attitudes and thoughts of an early female convict and “coloniser”, as expressed in her own words.

The first main text recounting Margaret’s colourful life – 'The History of Margaret Catchpole: A Suffolk Girl' - was published in 1847 by the Reverend Richard Cobbold, son of Margaret’s former mistress. Cobbold based his work in part on Margaret’s letters from Australia, and is always at pains to assure the reader of the truth of his work, which he describes as a “romantic but perfectly true narrative”.

Certainly, a comparison of the text and letters shows a degree of accuracy and faithfulness to Margaret’s own words, however, there are also numerous inconsistencies and apparent fictions in Cobbold’s work – even such basic information as her date of birth is wrong. Cobbold says Margaret was born in 1773, whilst the newspaper reports of her escape put her at 38 years old in 1800 - perhaps Cobbold thought a younger heroine would be more attractive to his readers!

Cobbold is also guilty of more fundamental romanticising and distortion of fact. He concludes his story by having his heroine marry a former suitor from Suffolk, and becoming a loving mother of three children. But, in reality, Margaret herself expressed a desire to remain single, writing in 1811 “I am not [married] and almost 50 years old, nor do I intend”. It seems the conclusion to Cobbold’s “history” was born more from a desire to present Margaret in a particular light than from any real adherence to the truth.

    In his “history” of Margaret Catchpole, Cobbold wrote with a specific purpose: to provide an “instructive lesson” about the importance of religious instruction in preventing the human mind falling into “error”. It was common practice in this period to use the histories of criminals as an example for others, and stories from the scaffold and court room were often printed as cautionary tales.

In order to create a suitable moral fable, however, it seems Cobbold distorted Margaret’s story, casting her in the role of “fallen woman” - a familiar figure in Victorian literature – first brought down by “evil men” and later redeemed by religion, motherhood, and the love of a good man.

Throughout the book, Cobbold emphasises Margaret’s essentially good and virtuous nature, comparing her favourably to her monstrous aunt, a “weak” and unfeeling woman, almost unfit to be a mother. He portrays her as a “victim” of men, as easy “prey”, and as led astray by her “blind passion” for Laud – her “one great error”. Cobbold makes Margaret conform to his Victorian ideas about women as docile, modest, mother-figures, changing facts when necessary, for example he falsely says she worked in a female orphanage in Australia.

But knowing what we do about Margaret’s courageous and adventurous behaviour, how accurate can this representation of her as a “victim” of men really be? Portraying her in this way is unfair, depriving her of the resourcefulness and ingenuity which she obviously possessed in abundance.

    And the “repackaging” of Margaret isn’t all that convincing anyway. Cobbold tried to recast her as the “fallen woman”, but it is the spirited bits of her story – the horse-stealing and gaol-breaking, the riding bareback and disguising herself as a man – that stand out in the book. Cobbold couldn’t totally keep these aspects of her character down, just like her contemporaries couldn’t in real life.

Cobbold tries to write his Victorian ideas about femininity back into 1800, but Margaret was not docile, and it was her “unfeminine” escapades that made her so notorious in Suffolk. Indeed, it is these aspects of the story that still dominate her legend today. Cobbold was spot on when he said “this extraordinary escapade is only worthy of such an extraordinary character as Margaret Catchpole”.