Originally born in Tasmania, Australia, in 1859, Amy Bock was the product of a mentally unstable mother and a distant actor father. Her mother died when Bock was fifteen in Victoria, Australia’s insane asylum. Although Bock also showed signs of mental issues, she was no where near as bad a her mother. To cope with her illnesses, Bock turned to acting and role playing. She found comfort in how she could become another person, and not have to worry about her own persecuted self.
A Penchant for Crime
As a young woman, Bock was a governess in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. It didn’t take long for her conning to begin, buying items with false credit. To start her life anew, Bock moved to New Zealand with her father and step-mother. This continent to island move only lead to more petty crimes and frequent arrests.
Each crime was more outrageous then the last, with Bock inventing ways to make it more interesting with different personalities and stories. Her passion was the thrill of the chase, and once caught, Bock would leave the victim and move on to the next unsuspecting ‘mark’. Having a charismatic personality, Bock always seemed to get her way. Each time she was caught, she reinvented her scam and tried again.
Percival Redwood
When she was in between con jobs, Bock was a music teacher and governess, but it never lasted long due to her need to play act her way through a scam. Her largest scam in her life was termed the ‘Wedding Scam‘. Her first task was to become Percival Redwood, a well to do man from northern Australia, whose family where sheep farmers.
She stocked up on men’s clothing, cut her hair and began her transformation. Due to the fact that Bock had masculine features, it wasn’t hard to instantly become Redwood. For months, Bock lived as a man in a small town. She was convincing enough that the governor’s daughter, Agnes Ottaway, became smitten with her, and so Bock seeing this opportunity proposed to Ottaway.
The Unraveling of the Wedding Scam
The wedding plans were underway, and anyone that was in direct contact with Bock during this time was questioned about any oddities with her that could be seen. All mentioned that she was slightly odd acting and had a slight figure, but she proved masculine enough. Being caught up in a web of lies, Bock forged a letter from Redwood’s ‘mother’ confirming his good nature and high status, and how happy she was that he found love again after years of being alone. The Ottaway family accepted the letter as genuine, but continued the planning with a cautious eye cast upon Bock.
Because the bride was the governor’s daughter, the upcoming wedding was all over the news. So naturally, Bock kept weaving lies into lies to keep her tracks covered until it got out of hand. The Ottaway family kept questioning Bock, but she kept referring to her fictional mother. The Ottaway family followed through with the wedding without concrete evidence that Bock was a women.
Still asking for the mother to present herself with some of the wedding cost, the Ottaway family became increasingly agitated. When no mother showed up for the wedding, the family went investigating a couple of days afterward, and found Bock’s old clothes and the hair she cut off in a boarding house. Bock was arrested and once in court, all of her crimes as Bock’s previous personalities caught up with her on top of the felonies as Redwood.
Bock pled guilty to all of her misdeeds, and received two years in jail. Her marriage to Agnes Ottaway was annulled, and Agnes later married a man of good standing. Bock’s reasons for her scams in life led to her mental instabilities. Once out of jail, she married Charles Christofferson, but it lasted only several months. The reasons it ended, it was said that she was a tad masculine and cross-dressed on occasion. Several times she was arrested and spent small amounts of time in jail. At age seventy-two, she made her last court appearance, and at age eighty-four she died and was buried in a paupers field.
Sources:
- Puke Ariki, Taranaki Stories, “The Bridegroom Was a Woman,”
- Stradling, Jan. (2008). Bad Girls: The Most Powerful, Shocking, Amazing, Thrilling & Dangerous Women of all Time. New York, New York: Metro Books.
Maureen Zieber - I currently hold a Bachelor's Degree in World History, and Women's Studies, with a minor in Anthropology from the University of Delaware, ...
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