Mary Carleton facts for kids

Mary Carleton (born Mary Moders; 11 August 1642 – 22 January 1673) was an Englishwoman who used false identities, such as a German princess, to marry and defraud a number of men.

Early life

Born Mary Moders in Canterbury. Her father was a fiddle player. According to later accounts she married a journeyman shoemaker named Thomas Stedman and gave birth to two children who died in infancy. She later left her husband to move to Dover where she married a surgeon by the name of Thomas Day, prompting her arrest and trial in Maidstone for bigamy.

After the trial she visited Cologne where she had a brief affair with a local nobleman. He gave her valuable presents, pressed her for marriage and began the preparations for a wedding. She, however, slipped out of Germany with all the presents and most of her landlady's money, returning to England through the Netherlands.

Incarceration and execution

..... However, in 1672, she either sneaked or conned her way aboard a ship and returned to London, again pretending to be a rich heiress and married an apothecary at Westminster. Naturally, she stole his money and left him.

In December 1672, Carleton was captured when a turnkey from Newgate Prison, while searching for stolen loot at that time, recognized her. On 16 January 1673 she was tried in the Old Bailey. Because she had returned from penal transportation without permission, she was sentenced to death. She tried to plead the belly, but a jury of matrons was brought in to examine her, and found that this was not the case.

At the place of execution at Tyburn, she told the waiting crowd that she had been a very vain woman, yet she hoped God would forgive her, as she forgave her enemies. Carleton was hanged on 22 January 1673. She was buried at the St. Martin's Churchyard.

In 1673 Francis Kirkman wrote, and issued under his own name, The Counterfeit Lady Unveiled, a fictional autobiography.