67th Issue: Cassie Chadwick
Hi everyone! Yes you get another newsletter so soon after the last one. I will leave you alone for a couple months after this though, I promise.
I’ve been watching this show called The Gilded Age and it’s not necessarily ‘good’ but I wanted to watch a historical show and it does deliver in that regard. I also just watched the new Anna Delvey show on Netflix (again, not necessarily ‘good’ but entertaining enough) and she was known for being a scammer but the show tried to frame it or at least her character tried to frame it as well men are allowed to fail upwards as a woman why can’t she, which is a pretty dumb argument.
Anyway this is just to say I happened upon the story of a Gilded Age scammer similar to Anna Delvey called Cassie L. Chadwick, who was born Elizabeth Bigley. Elizabeth was born in Ontario, Canada in 1857. She had seven brothers and sisters, and lived on a small farm. At the age of sixteen, Elizabeth, known as Betsy, ran away from home and tried to get a $350 promissory note from a farmer, but was sent home by the police. A year later, she was arrested for trying to borrow money using a stolen watch as collateral. Her father paid the money and she went back home. Next, Betsy went to Toronto and said that she was Elizabeth Cunard of the wealthy shipping family Cunards using a forged letter of introduction and a fake check. She went on a $10,000 shopping spree but was found out and had to flee Toronto.
The year after that, Betsy was arrested again for trying to get more promissory notes. She had a calling card that said she was “Miss Bigley, Heiress to $15,000”. She went to court this time, and her lawyers said she was insane due to her behavior in court. The jury found her not guilty. She went to live with her sister, Alice York, whose husband lived with her in Cleveland. Betsy didn’t stay there long, moving out to rent the lower floor a house from a woman named Mrs. Brown. She said she was a widow named Madame Lydia DeVere, and worked as a clairvoyant, buying a shop using money from a bank loan she took out on her sister and brother-in-law’s furniture.
In 1882, Lydia DeVere married Dr. Wallace S. Springsteen in Cleveland, and became Mrs. Lydia Springsteen, moving into his house. There was a picture and story about the wedding in the local newspaper though, and that’s when her sister Alice as well as other people that she had scammed went to her house to demand repayment. When Dr. Springsteen found out what happened he got upset and threw Lydia out of the house. He divorced her and settled her debts. Lydia moved on, now calling herself Madame Marie LaRose and working as a clairvoyant again. She married a farmer named John R. Scott and got him to sign a prenuptial agreement. She lived and worked on the farm for four years and then got tired of it, going to a lawyer in town and telling him she had committed adultery. She then filed for divorce through her lawyer from John Scott.
In 1889, Betsy was sentenced to nearly ten years in prison in Toledo, Ohio for forgery. In 1893 she got out on parole and went back to Cleveland. This time she called herself Cassie Hoover and opened a brothel. She met her third husband there, a wealthy doctor, Leroy Chadwick. She pretended to be a widow running a respectable boarding house and when Leroy told her actually it was a brothel she fainted. She said she would never have run a place such as that and asked Leroy to immediately take her away so she wasn’t associated with it. The dramatics!
In 1897, Cassie married the doctor, Leroy, and was highly respected. She actually had a son from a previous marriage named Emil, and he was being looked after by one of the women at the brothel, which the doctor may not have been aware of. In the 1900 census, Emil Chadwick was marked down. So who knows.
Cassie was known for her spending habits. She lived on Euclid Avenue in Cleveland which was known as Millionaire’s Row. However, she was not welcomed into the exclusive social circles of the street which included families such as the Rockefellers. She only got invited to things because of her husband, not because anyone actually wanted her to be there.
I’ve been watching this show called The Gilded Age and it’s not necessarily ‘good’ but I wanted to watch a historical show and it does deliver in that regard. I also just watched the new Anna Delvey show on Netflix (again, not necessarily ‘good’ but entertaining enough) and she was known for being a scammer but the show tried to frame it or at least her character tried to frame it as well men are allowed to fail upwards as a woman why can’t she, which is a pretty dumb argument.
Anyway this is just to say I happened upon the story of a Gilded Age scammer similar to Anna Delvey called Cassie L. Chadwick, who was born Elizabeth Bigley. Elizabeth was born in Ontario, Canada in 1857. She had seven brothers and sisters, and lived on a small farm. At the age of sixteen, Elizabeth, known as Betsy, ran away from home and tried to get a $350 promissory note from a farmer, but was sent home by the police. A year later, she was arrested for trying to borrow money using a stolen watch as collateral. Her father paid the money and she went back home. Next, Betsy went to Toronto and said that she was Elizabeth Cunard of the wealthy shipping family Cunards using a forged letter of introduction and a fake check. She went on a $10,000 shopping spree but was found out and had to flee Toronto.
The year after that, Betsy was arrested again for trying to get more promissory notes. She had a calling card that said she was “Miss Bigley, Heiress to $15,000”. She went to court this time, and her lawyers said she was insane due to her behavior in court. The jury found her not guilty. She went to live with her sister, Alice York, whose husband lived with her in Cleveland. Betsy didn’t stay there long, moving out to rent the lower floor a house from a woman named Mrs. Brown. She said she was a widow named Madame Lydia DeVere, and worked as a clairvoyant, buying a shop using money from a bank loan she took out on her sister and brother-in-law’s furniture.
In 1882, Lydia DeVere married Dr. Wallace S. Springsteen in Cleveland, and became Mrs. Lydia Springsteen, moving into his house. There was a picture and story about the wedding in the local newspaper though, and that’s when her sister Alice as well as other people that she had scammed went to her house to demand repayment. When Dr. Springsteen found out what happened he got upset and threw Lydia out of the house. He divorced her and settled her debts. Lydia moved on, now calling herself Madame Marie LaRose and working as a clairvoyant again. She married a farmer named John R. Scott and got him to sign a prenuptial agreement. She lived and worked on the farm for four years and then got tired of it, going to a lawyer in town and telling him she had committed adultery. She then filed for divorce through her lawyer from John Scott.
In 1889, Betsy was sentenced to nearly ten years in prison in Toledo, Ohio for forgery. In 1893 she got out on parole and went back to Cleveland. This time she called herself Cassie Hoover and opened a brothel. She met her third husband there, a wealthy doctor, Leroy Chadwick. She pretended to be a widow running a respectable boarding house and when Leroy told her actually it was a brothel she fainted. She said she would never have run a place such as that and asked Leroy to immediately take her away so she wasn’t associated with it. The dramatics!
In 1897, Cassie married the doctor, Leroy, and was highly respected. She actually had a son from a previous marriage named Emil, and he was being looked after by one of the women at the brothel, which the doctor may not have been aware of. In the 1900 census, Emil Chadwick was marked down. So who knows.
Cassie was known for her spending habits. She lived on Euclid Avenue in Cleveland which was known as Millionaire’s Row. However, she was not welcomed into the exclusive social circles of the street which included families such as the Rockefellers. She only got invited to things because of her husband, not because anyone actually wanted her to be there.
The biggest scam that Cassie pulled, the one that she was most famous for, happened during this time after her marriage to the doctor, while she was on Millionaire’s Row. Cassie visited New York City and met with her husband’s friend, a lawyer named Dillon, asking him to take her to Andrew Carnegie’s house. She met with the housekeeper and then came back, and dropped something in front of the lawyer, Dillon. He picked it up and saw that it was a promissory note for two million dollars with Carnegie’s signature on it. She told him to please keep her secret and that she was Carnegie’s illegitimate child. Carnegie apparently felt bad and gave her lots of money. She told Dillon she had seven million dollars of promissory notes at her home and she would inherit $400 million more when Carnegie died.
Dillon told people, because banks began to offer services to Cassie. For eight more years she used her story to get bank loans that were almost $2 million, which is over $50 million in today’s money. Nobody asked Carnegie about an illegitimate daughter for fear of embarrassing him, so she never got caught for that.
Cassie lived a lavish lifestyle with her money. She had diamond necklaces, dozens of closets of fancy clothes, a gold organ. She was called the “Queen of Ohio” and claimed to give money to the poor and the suffrage movement but I’m not sure if she actually did.
Finally in 1904 a bank in Massachusetts called in the loan of $190,000 and Cassie could not pay. The bank sued her. She had a million dollars of debt at this point. Someone finally asked Carnegie about her and he said he had no idea who she was and he’d never signed a promissory note. Cassie went to New York City and was arrested there, taken back to Cleveland. Her husband, the doctor, filed for divorce and took his adult daughter with him on a tour of Europe to avoid the scandal as much as possible. The banking community of Cleveland suffered, and the Citizen’s National Bank of Oberlin actually went into bankruptcy because they loaned her $800,000 they never got back.
Cassie was put on trial. Andrew Carnegie attended out of curiosity, and said that all of this trouble could have been avoided if somebody had just reached out to him and asked if he had a daughter. A lot of the social circle on Millionaire’s Row that had never accepted Cassie also attended. A ton of media was there, and in 1905 she was found guilty and sentenced to fourteen years in prison. Unfortunately her health went downhill once she was there, and suffered a nervous collapse in 1907 which left her blind. She instructed her son Emil to take some of her hidden money up in Canada to use for her funeral and tombstone because she knew she didn’t have much more time. Cassie died at the age of 50 in the prison in 1907.
You can read more about Cassie in this article which I thoroughly enjoyed.
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