Some time in 1747, Charke went on the road as a strolling player, travelling the West Country with Charlotte's daughter in tow. In 1750, Catherine Charke married an actor named John Harman, despite Charlotte's aversion to him. During these peripatetic years, Charlotte was once imprisoned (with males) as a vagabond actor, worked as a (male) pastry cook, and set herself up as a farmer. Earlier she had run a grocery store. All her attempts at business ended alike in failure. Between 1752 and 1753, she wrote for the "Bristol Weekly Intelligencer," and in 1754 she worked as a prompter in Bath, under her own name but in men's clothing. She found many of the players difficult and untalented compared to those she had known in her privileged youth. At the end of the year, she decided to move back to London and make her living as a writer.