This is the story of Margaret Catchpole, born into a smugglers' world in
Suffolk in the late 1700s. As the valued servant of a wealthy family and
a friend of criminals, Margaret leads a double life that inevitably
brings about her downfall, and she is sentenced to hang not once, but
twice. But she escapes the gallows and is transported with other
convicts to Australia.
A wonderful adventure story, Scapegallows takes inspiration from the
life of the real Margaret Catchpole. A woman who lived by her wits, she
was a slip-gibbet, a scapegallows.