The conwo(man)

Percival Leonard Carol Redwood was a married wealthy sheepfarmer. There were only a few things wrong with that statement - he wasn’t wealthy, a sheepfarmer, married or indeed a man.
The bizarre story of Any Maud Bock is one of a confidence trickster who worked her schemes all over New Zealand and often for just a few pounds reward. It’s hard to know if the money was what she wanted or whether it was acting out her fantasy life.
Bock was born on May 18, 1859, in Hobart, Tasmania to Mary Ann Parkinson and her husband Alfred Bock.
Her childhood was spent there and in Melbourne. Her father was an artist and photographer and encouraged her to take part in amateur dramatics. Her mother, howeve,r died in a mental asylum in 1875 believing she was Lady Macbeth.
She found a job as a teacher but by1885 she got into trouble for illegally acquiring goods and her father persuaded her to move to Auckland.
She began working as a governess but within weeks had defrauded her employer and appeared in court. She made a tearful confession and was let off.
Bock often found work, as a cook, housekeeper or companion creating a fantasy life about herself, like that she was from a well off family with a noble sounding name. Her employers initially valued her until she managed to get some money, sometimes by pawning her employers possessions, before disappearing. Once found and in court she would ask for forgiveness and be sentenced.
One of her tricks was to forge letters to herself about the things she took, perfecting seven different types of handwriting to do it.
Her first official appearance was in 1886 when she was charged with buying goods on credit and she got hard labour for a month which she served at Addington gaol. The next year she was back on fraud charges.
Once she convinced a man to marry her, and they went off to Melbourne, only for Bock to disappear with all his possessions.
Quite often she had given away what she took. While working as a matron at the Otaki Maori Boys College, she would use stolen money to buy boots for her pupils.
The pattern continued for a while, until in 1908, she was living in Dunedin as Agnes Vallance when she pawned her employers furniture before hiding out when she decided on her most audacious scheme yet.
She began posing as Percival Redwood, cutting her hair short, holidaying at the Albion House on the South Otago coast and began wooing the landlady’s daughter Agnes Ottaway and they got engaged. Bock even took her and her mother on a shopping trip for the wedding - using money he had tricked out of a solicitor.
When creditors arrived demanding payment for various things Bock - or Percy - would string along another story.
Bock managed to maintain the deception even to the point of marrying the girl on April 21, 1909.
But four days later she was arrested and convicted of false pretences, forgery and making a false statement under the Marriage Act then declared a habitual criminal. The marriage was then annulled.
She was released from New Plymouth gaol in 1911 and began working for an old people’s home.
She married - legally - Charles Edward Christofferson in 1914 but the marriage only lasted a year.
Bock managed to gain a few more convictions before making her final appearance before a court in Auckland and gaining two years probation.
In all she was jailed 13 times for a total of 16 years and two months.
She died on August 29, 1943 in Auckland and buried in an unmarked grave at Pukekohe Cemetery.​