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.