Vulgar History Podcast
Cassie Chadwick, The Greatest Grifter of the Gilded Age (with Annie Reed)
December 4, 2024
Hello, and welcome to Vulgar History, a feminist women’s history comedy podcast, my name is Ann Foster. Before we get going, I just wanted to let everybody know something because we’re in a season of gift-giving, gift-receiving, gift-requesting and that’s part of why for last week and this week, and next week, we’re going to be talking about various books that I think are great gifts to give and receive. Also, there’s a new thing that I think would be a good gift for many of you, actually, and so this is what you should put on your wish lists.
So, we have a Patreon for Vulgar History, which is where you can get early, ad-free access to all the episodes. Also, there’s bonus episodes where I talk about costume dramas, there’s the So This Asshole series about shitty men, there’s also The Aftershow, where sometimes I just like kiki with some friends of the podcast. Most recently, Allison Epstein joined me on The Aftershow, where we both just lost our minds about how much we enjoyed this recent movie Conclave, the pope-based murder mystery about men in robes. Anyway, so the thing with Patreon is now you can give a gift membership. So, this is what you should be asking your loved ones for; your boyfriend, your fiancé, your husband, your mother, your adult children, your child-aged children, like put on your wish list, “I would like a gift membership to the Vulgar History Patreon.” The way that you can do that, the link is in the show notes below but I will say what it is. If you go to Patreon.com/AnnFosterWriter/Gift, it takes you to the page where you can get a gift membership. I mean, this is like, ask someone to give this to you is what I’m suggesting. And then if you want to, you know, get a gift for yourself at this point, if you’ve never been a paid Patreon member before you can get, I believe it is 30 percent off an annual membership on the Patreon. So, you can give that to yourself because there’s no love like self-love and by self-love, I mean a Patreon subscription for yourself. Anyway, I just want to let you know about these breaking news facts and to make sure that you know what to ask Santa for. Yeah, Patreon, you know, it’s what everybody wants for Christmas.
Anyway, this week, I’m so excited to be joined by author Annie Reed, her first book just came out, her first nonfiction book, which is called The Impostor Heiress: Cassie Chadwick, the Greatest Grifter of the Gilded Age. First of all, great title, a lot of alliteration in it. Second of all, gorgeous cover, the image that you’re looking at right now of this podcast is that cover; it’s pink, the font is great. It’s such a good book. It’s really fun, it’s really gossipy, it’s really sort of the book version of what this podcast is like. So again, ask your boyfriend, your child, your dog, like, whoever you’re getting presents from, be like, “What I want is a copy of The Impostor Heiress by Annie Reed,” because it’s a great book or you know what? Buy it for yourself, read it, get it from the library. It’s honestly such a good time and I was really happy to get to talk to Annie about it. So, enjoy my chat with Annie Reed about her book.
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Ann: So today we are joined by Annie Reed, who is author of The Impostor Heiress: Cassie Chadwick, the Greatest Grifter of the Gilded Age. Welcome, Annie.
Annie: Thanks so much for having me.
Ann: My first question for you is… This is your first nonfiction book project and so, I was curious, what in Cassie’s story made you decide like, “Not only am I interested in this, but I’m going to become an author for the first time and write a book about her.”
Annie: [chuckles] Well, first of all, it was, I mean, I first heard about her in this podcast six years ago, and I wanted to read more. I was looking for a book to read about her and, at that point, the only book that was out had been written in 1975so it was super outdated, it was more fiction, he just made up about half of it. So, it was really more historical fiction than actual history and I just thought, like, “Huh, maybe I can tell her story from start to finish, historically.” I was just so drawn to how bold she was. She was somebody who just took risks all the time and just doubled down on risks. Her answer when there was trouble or when she was in a tight spot was like, double down, take another risk, do something else that’s really bold and I just was so drawn to that.
Ann: Can I ask, do you remember what the podcast, what podcast it was?
Annie: It was Stuff You Missed in History Class.
Ann: Okay. I love that a podcast episode, like, so affected you to this point that— I’ve had that experience too! Where it’s just like, “Well, I want to learn more.”
Annie: Oh my gosh, all the time.
Ann: So, like, we’re going to talk about Cassie Chadwick and her story and everything, but I just want to say, like, having read your book, which is like a really fun, readable book, I want to emphasize that to the listeners. It’s not an academic, nonfiction book at all. It’s very much, like, fun, you don’t have to know anything about history to read it. But every time she, sort of like, was in a precarious situation and then she got out of it, I was like, “There, good. Now she can relax.” And it’s like, “No, no, now she’s going to do something different.” I’m like, ”Oh wow, there’s still half the book left but she just got out of that!” And then she’s like, “Yeah, and now I’m going to do something else.” Like, she never just stopped. I’m like, why didn’t she ever stop? She just was always… That’s what we can talk about a bit.
But first of all, I want to say I’m a Canadian person and I appreciate that Cassie Chadwick, born in Ontario, Canada.
Annie: Yes. Yeah! I have no idea where you’re from and how far apart you are from where she was, but it was a pretty rural area.
Ann: Yeah. Well, I think Canada, although it’s a big country, it’s so rare that someone from Canada becomes famous that the whole country is just behind them no matter where they’re from. Whereas the US, I think it’s much more like “She’s from this state.” Like, it’s much more regional.
Annie: Right, right. Absolutely.
Ann: But here, I was just like “Canada! Hell yeah.” So, can you explain, like… I don’t know, like, you listened to a podcast and then you decided to write a book about it. So, I don’t want to be like, “Oh, no spoilers,” because people need to know what she was up to, but like, in broad strokes, like, she is the greatest grifter of the Gilded Age. How did she get from small-town Ontario to New York City in this time?
Annie: Really, what she did was she developed this con when she was 21 years old and over the decades, she would kind of refine it. So, it was really the same con, she just kept doing it bigger, and kept tweaking things in it, thinking like, “Oh, if I change this, then maybe I won’t get caught this time.” So, what she does at 21— And she’s a farmer’s daughter, she’s the third of eight siblings, nothing particularly remarkable about her family, they’re pretty normal, working family. But she decides at 21 that she’s going to start telling people she is an heiress; she prints out these cards that say she’s Miss Bigley, heiress to $18,000. She starts forging people’s signatures to these promissory notes and showing them around town, getting loans based on them, using them as payment when she’s going to the store. And so, this is how she’s getting money; she’s lying about how rich she is, saying her money is coming to her later, and getting people in banks to loan her money in the now, and then paying off bills with other loans. And she really just keeps on doing that just bigger and bigger and bigger.
Ann: I love the aspect of it — and I wanted to dive into every aspect of it — but the fact that she just figured out you could print out a card being like, “I’m an heiress” [chuckles] and then just show it to people. It’s like a police officer showing their badge, she’s just like, “Oh, I’m actually an heiress, here’s my card.” The fact that printing cards was probably so rare. It’s, like, people at that time will think, “Well, why would someone lie about that? They got cards printed, it has to be true,” which is just like, I love that aspect of it. She’s just like, “Well, if I just have it on a card, people believe me.”
Annie: Yes. She knows how to give her lies legs so people believe it. Like, a little bit of something tangible and people will believe what you’re saying, was what she learned.
Ann: Yeah. Like, I really want to make sure everybody understands these promissory notes. So, she would have a piece of paper and it would say “This third party, other person is going to repay this.” Like, it was never… She’s like, “I’m getting this money, but until I do, this other person is going to pay this fourth party, other person.” Like, she’s just kind of like the middleman, sort of.
Annie: Yes. It’s basically just, like, this contract. It’s a simple contract that some other person is going to pay her a certain amount of money at a future date. And so, basically, she uses it like money in a lot of the times, or she gets a loan off of it, which is really smart.
Ann: Well, and in terms of her… I think this book is so well timed in our culture because there’s so many, like, true crime podcasts, but also Netflix documentaries. People are really interested in grifters, like, there’s a whole podcast, Scam Goddess. Like, people I think are ready to sort of cheer on a person who sees like, “The world is stacked against me, so I’m just going to find a loophole and just like do this thing.” Because she wasn’t— There’s nothing that I could find, and this is nothing against her at all, she wasn’t like, “Oh, I need this money because my family is starving. Oh, I need this money for…” It’s like, no. She’s just like, “I just want jewels, I want furs, I want to…” Like, she saw these rich people and she’s like, “I would like to be like that.” There’s never any sort of selfless reason. The stuff that she was buying was never ever charitable. It was always just kind of like, “I want to be hot and have cool outfits,” kind of.
Annie: Yeah, yeah. She wanted to live the high life, she just did.
Ann: And I just love like, again, like that small town Canada, like, that this is where she started from. But from an early age she’s, I think, correct me if I’m wrong, her first grift, she was being like, “Yeah, I’m an heiress. I am the illegitimate child of a rich person.” Like, was that always what she was claiming? Did that come later?
Annie: No, so that came in later. So, the very first one was very simple: an uncle died and left her all this money. Now, I have no idea why that was convincing since she was, you know, she had seven siblings and people knew her parents. I don’t know whether her parents were saying, “Oh yeah, uncle so-and-so died and left her all this.” I really don’t know. It doesn’t make a lot of sense, but that’s the story that she was peddling around. And then yeah, later on, she just, like, continues to try to have these pretend associations that get closer and closer and then end up being, I don’t know, an illegitimate daughter of Andrew Carnegie.
Ann: And we’ll get to that. But yeah, so I think in combination, like, she has this grift that she figured out that worked numerous times. And as you said, she kept refining it. But clearly, part of it is not just like “I printed cards, now people are going to believe me.” Like, she was clearly so charismatic and convincing. And to pretend that you are an heiress, you have to carry yourself in a certain way, like, these kind of unspoken things about class, and she figured out how to, like, her person-to-person skills… Can you talk about what you learned about that? Like, how people just fell for this? She must’ve been so captivating.
Annie: She was incredibly manipulative. She was so manipulative and she had this skill of reading people and situations very fast, like, rapid-fire, and it’s part of the reason she was such a good clairvoyant in her, you know, twenties and thirties because someone could walk into a room and she could pick up on their, like, body language and eyes and, like, what they’re saying and just all these unspoken things and spoken things, and read kind of what they want and, like, how they work and how they tick. So, she was just fantastic at that.
She also, yeah, she knew how rich people acted, how someone who would have had money for all of their lives and who never would have thought of money as a problem— I mean, that was a lot. As she kept going on and kept making her at this con bigger and bigger, when she’s spending a ton of money and when she’s throwing money around, a lot of that is strategic. People see her spending money all the time, “Okay, that’s how rich people act. That’s not how somebody who doesn’t have any money acts.” And so, she knew things like that. She knew just which people would respond to certain types of manipulations. She was just incredibly manipulative.
One of the things that she used, that I really loved about her, she used sexism as a weapon. She absolutely knew that she often— Almost always, she was going to men for money, right? Bankers, businessmen, lawyers, and she was pretending like she had no idea what was going on with her finances. So, she would walk like some— Like, they would say, “Okay, here’s a rich woman. She clearly doesn’t know what’s going on with her finances. She doesn’t know how loans should work.” She would offer these ridiculous bonuses to them for using money and they were thinking that, “Okay, this is someone I can take advantage of.”
Ann: Exactly. They thought that they were taking advantage of her because they just assumed she was this sort of helpless woman. And then can you talk about, you mentioned that she worked as a clairvoyant for a while, which we’ll get back to, but she also got married how many times?
Annie: Boy, I believe it was, that we’re aware of [laughs]… I mean, if you heard her talk, she got married, like, I think, four times. She invented a couple of marriages to make herself look like a widow, basically, a rich widow. But real marriages, there were two. There was Springsteen, who was a doctor in Cleveland, and she married him for 12 days before he found out that she had been lying about who she was and that she had all these debts that she hadn’t paid. And then she married Leroy Chadwick later. But in between then, she invented a couple of marriages as well.
Ann: Well, and the men that she married were wealthy, and that was part of her… everything. Like, that would help her get into these, the level of society— Because at this time, she’s in, she’s not in New York. Where is she? She goes to somewhere else first.
Annie: Cleveland. Cleveland is her big— Cleveland is her home base, basically. She just spends a lot of time in New York and Europe, as well.
Ann: Yeah, no, the Europe stuff. I do like the description of, like, she would just go in and spend money without thinking, because that, again, that would just make everyone think, “Oh, she’s rich.” Because she’s, although there are rich people, like Hetty Green, who was around at the same time, who was so rich but she was also extremely frugal. The average… If you think about, like, because this is like the Gilded Age, I’m like, you know, Kate Winslet in Titanic, like, a rich lady of that era, they just wouldn’t think about money, because they didn’t have to. And so, that’s what she was playacting a bit.
Talk about her clairvoyant era, where she was working as a psychic.
Annie: She did this a couple different times. She tried it out in Cleveland in, like, the early 1880s. She really dug into it when she moved to Toledo and that’s where she set herself up as this, like, clairvoyant, socialite kind of a person. She kind of catered to these richer men, which sounds odd, but it really wasn’t in that time period. A lot of people were getting interested in spiritualism and thinking about it more not as a hokey thing. It was much more, “We’ve conquered all these different areas of life. And now we’re going to see if there’s, you know, if we can figure out whether there’s another world and if there’s where people go when they die.”
Anyway, so she sets up this spiritualist business and she’s catering to all these local doctors, lawyers and, you know, more rich people. She’s hosting these lavish wine suppers to where, you know, she’s having all these people over, she’s spending a lot of money on the best food, and flowers, and decorations and stuff. So yeah, she really becomes very popular in Toledo and people know who she is.
Ann: And what name? I guess when I was thinking how many husbands did she have, part of me was thinking like, “Well, she had so many names. There must have been husbands.” No. What was her name when she was being a clairvoyant?
Annie: Really, she had three names. So, her name as a clairvoyant was Madame Lydia DeVere, and that was her name as a clairvoyant. Privately, she told people her name was Lydia Hoover, but DeVere was, like, her clairvoyant name. And then she was also posing as a Cleveland heiress at the same time in a different context. So, yes.
Ann: Well, and that’s where— Because she did go to jail, but just for a short amount of time, right? As Lydia DeVere?
Annie: Yes, yeah. She was convicted and she was sentenced to nine-and-a-half years, but she only served about three.
Ann: And I feel part of that would be she just was so charming that the people in the prison were like, “Oh, she feels bad. She’s so nice.” I’m just guessing.
Annie: Yeah, yeah. I mean, she followed the rules, she didn’t make trouble for herself, and she got out. Actually, at that point, it was Governor William McKinley, who would later become President McKinley, was the one who paroled her.
Ann: All these connections.
Annie: Yes.
Ann: Well, because I’m just remembering the part of the story where she— I keep jumping to when she’s in New York, but it’s like, no, she was in Ohio for a long time. [Annie laughs] But somebody saw her and knew her as Lydia DeVere and she was going by a different name, whereas just like, people remembered what she looked like. Like, she wasn’t changing her appearance when she went— She would just change her name and sort of her backstory, but she wasn’t, like, putting on glasses and a wig. Like, she always looked the same, right?
Annie: Yes.
Ann: But this was, like, oldy times and you didn’t have to change your appearance. Like, what are the chances she’s going to run into somebody? And then she did, is the thing.
Annie: Right. Yes. It was all in Ohio. So, like, she did it for a long time, she just stayed around Ohio and Pennsylvania and, kind of, the Great Lakes area up around there. So, it wasn’t the most unheard-of thing, but Cleveland was a huge city at that point. She was playing the odds, and I mean, it ended up working out for her in the long run, just had a couple of close calls.
Ann: Well, and I guess too, like, there’s on the cover and then I forget… Are there pictures in your book or did I just look up pictures of her?
Annie: No pictures, no pictures in the book.
Ann: I think I looked up pictures of her because you describe her, what she looks like. And I was like, “But what did she really look like?” Like, she wasn’t… I think she would have been more memorable to people— It would have been detrimental to her grift if she was extremely beautiful or something, but she was just kind of average-looking, which I think helped her.
Annie: Yeah, that was something that there was an article that I read by, actually, Alexander Hamilton’s grandson. He wrote this article about her and about whether she was insane when she committed all these crimes. One of the things he was really— He was very impressed by her, and he was very impressed that she was not beautiful because he felt like she used her brain and she wasn’t using her feminine wiles, which I thought was interesting.
Ann: Well, I mean, she clearly was using her brain, and she was using her feminine wiles, she was using all of her wiles. But I think maybe there’s something about, like, you know, a beautiful woman con artist, like, that’s what you often see in movies and things where it’s like, they just blind people with their beauty. Because she was, like, she was not a young woman when she was doing a lot of this stuff. So, I think a woman in her thirties in that time when everyone kind of looks old because it’s, like, a rough life, people would extra not suspect, kind of, an average-looking, middle-aged woman. Like, “Well, she’s never going to be a con artist. Like, she doesn’t look like the flashy criminal type. She just seems like this dotty, rich woman who kind of doesn’t know what she’s doing.” So, I think she used her looks in that way.
Annie: Yeah, absolutely. Well, I mean, just dressing herself, dressing the part. I mean, she was so ostentatious with the way that she dressed and the jewelry that she wore. And yes, she also really wasn’t leaning into, like, a sex appeal kind of a persona at all.
Ann: Which is, yeah, it’s interesting. And that’s where I’m just like— There are so many stories that I like nonfiction stories I read about real women in history where I’m like, “Oh man, this would be such a good movie.” And I’m like, “Yes.” But if this was made a movie, they’re like, “But how can Charlize Theron play this?” You know, like, it would be hard to be like, who’s going to star in this movie? It’s like, “Uhhh, Kathy Bates.” Like, it’s a fun story and it’s a fantastic story but, like, the fact that she’s not beautiful, I think is interesting.
So, in your book, you alternate— I don’t know if it’s directly chapter to chapter, but her story and then Andrew Carnegie and what he’s up to because eventually, their stories overlap. Can you explain to people who Carnegie was?
Annie: Andrew Carnegie was, at that point, he was the richest man in the world by 1902. He started out, he was a Scottish immigrant who came over and he was, I mean, him and his family were dirt poor, they just had nothing when they came over here. He settled in Pittsburgh, and I mean, he had a ton of ambition, he was very intelligent, and there was also this network of Scottish guys that he kind of used to his advantage, he was smart in that way as well. And he ended up buying a whole bunch of steel plants and really became the steel titan and was just so powerful, so rich, ended up selling out to JP Morgan, and at that point, he was the richest man in the world.
Ann: And what’s the thing with the Carnegie libraries?
Annie: Okay. So, this is later on in his career and it’s really more after he starts his process of retiring because for a long time, he’s technically still in charge of Carnegie Steel, but he’s, like, effectively not involved in day-to-day business. But he truly believed that if you became that wealthy, you have a duty to the public to pay it forward and to use your riches to enrich the public. He had kind of talked about this before he started doing it and said like, “Hey, this is what I’m going to do,” and then he did it. He was just donating all this money to cities and towns to make libraries. He did some other things as well, but libraries were the biggest endowment; he really dug into donating libraries because he felt like, “I want to do something that will help people make themselves smarter and better and pull themselves up by their own bootstraps the way that I did.” He was a big believer in teaching and helping people to learn. So, I mean, still, the country is filled with Carnegie libraries.
Ann: And I feel like the… I don’t know what it is exactly, but when I watch Masterpiece on PBS, there’s some, it comes up something with the Carnegie something. I feel like they have something to do with public television too.
Annie: Yeah. I wouldn’t be surprised.
Ann: I don’t know. It’s a name that comes up. And when I, as a person in Canada, I’m just like “Carnegie,” I’m like “PBS! Masterpiece Theater! Libraries!” like, that’s all I knew. So, I didn’t know about the steel, I didn’t know that’s how he made his wealth. But your book is, like you said, it’s before the whole library era. So, he’s just like, basically, to Cassie, Andrew Carnegie is the richest man. So, she’s going to say like, “I am an heiress.” Like, her con gets more and more audacious as it goes on until eventually, she’s claiming to be the illegitimate daughter of Andrew Carnegie, right?
Annie: Yes. Yeah, that’s her story.
Ann: Which is interesting because again— Not that anyone can fact-check her story, but it’s like, “Well, you were born in Ontario to a family of, like, numerous siblings.” And she’s like, “Yes, but Andrew Carnegie was my father and then he gave me to this other family to raise.”
Annie: Yes. Well, and like, she told a bunch of different stories about her upbringing. She wasn’t necessarily always saying “I’m from this Canadian family.” But her story was always that it was this youthful love affair that Carnegie had, he got married very late in life, so it wasn’t like he had an affair. It was, like, “He was young, my mom was young, they had sex and here I am.” And it was a very strategic pick because everyone knew that Carnegie was generous at that point, he was giving out all this money. So, there were a lot of robber barons and industrial titans that had illegitimate children so it was believable in that sense. And then it was believable that he would be showering her with money, and he would want to take care of her because he was known as such a charitable person.
Ann: This is, sort of, the… Was this her final grift or did she…? Well, we’ll get to that. But this is kind of like what she’s best known for, is pretending to be the Carnegie heiress, like the title of your book, The Impostor Heiress. She pretended to be an heiress before but then pretending to be the illegitimate child of Carnegie, that opened up a whole new echelon of how much— Because she’s writing these promissory notes and then if people think, like, she is his daughter, then they’re giving her more money, basically, because they presume… So, it’s not just, I don’t know what the amounts are, but instead of like $200, it’s like $200,000 because she’s on this higher level. So, this is where she’s married, right? At this point, she’s Mrs. Chadwick.
Annie: Yes. Married him in 1897.
Ann: So, she’s in New York, like the Gilded… Is that the TV show, The Gilded Age?
Annie: Yes. So, she’s not living in New York, she just spends a lot of time there. She goes to her fancy hotels and she’ll live there for weeks and weeks at a time.
Ann: And again, like I was letting people know at the beginning, she’s always wants to live this fancy life and that’s what she’s doing. Like, she’s living in New York, she’s wearing outfits— She’s not living in New York but she’s going there a lot. She’s wearing these outfits, she’s going to the opera, she’s just living this fabulous life that she always wanted, and that’s still not enough. She wants more, always.
Annie: Yep. She’s very ambitious and she’s always looking toward the next thing she can get for herself and the next level that she can get herself to.
Ann: Can you talk about her jewel smuggling?
Annie: Oh my goodness. [laughs] So, when she married Dr. Chadwick and became a part of this rich family, something that rich families did a lot in that time period was travel to Europe for the summer or for, like, part of the summer, they would summer in Europe. And so, that was something that Cassie would do with her family now. When she was over there, of course, she would go to Paris and Brussels and buy jewels, just so many jewels. At that point, bringing jewels back into the country, I think the duties were around 10 percent, so you’d have to pay Uncle Sam about 10 percent of the value of the jewels you were bringing back. Cassie did not want to be doing that so she would hide these jewels, or she would, like, lie about them. Like, “Oh, I brought these over and I had them reset in a necklace or a bracelet.” Or usually, she would just kind of like hide them so that people couldn’t see that they were coming in and say, “Oh no, I didn’t buy any jewels.” And so just, yeah, was smuggling a lot of jewels.
Ann: Well, in that way, like, the stuff that she was doing, it reminds me of not a thing I know a lot about, but I do know about Al Capone is he was eventually arrested for tax evasion. And so, it’s kind of like, she was doing all this grifting, but the technical charge was, like, not paying enough duties, was one of the things she was charged with where it’s like, well, she’s doing so much stuff but the strongest legal case is like, “Oh, she didn’t pay the tariffs on the jewels she bought.”
Annie: Right, right. Yeah.
Ann: So, eventually like— And this is what I find, for everybody who I hope is going to go read your book next. You’re telling, sort of like, alternate Andrew Carnegie, what he’s up to, what she’s up to and then the stories start to intersect when Andrew Carnegie finally finds out that like, “This woman is pretending to be your daughter,” and he’s like, “I’m sorry, what?” And like, there’s a trial, right?
Annie: Yes. There’s a trial and it’s a big trial. People come from all over Ohio to come see this trial.
Ann: Yeah. And so, Andrew Carnegie, who is like, he was not the sort of person who had illegitimate children. He was just like, “This is a wild claim.” But so many people who knew him believed it because she had been running this con for so long. Everyone is just kind of like, “Oh, this is true, but you know, don’t talk to Andrew Carnegie about it because, you know, it’s sort of like his secret, embarrassing thing.”
Annie: Yes. She was very smart about it because she would spread it in exactly the right places and also say like, “He really doesn’t want anyone to know because he has this public image that he’s this, like, library Santa Claus and he doesn’t want people to connect him with scandal and, you know, lying, and things like that.” And I mean, who was going to go talk to Andrew Carnegie and say, you know, “Oh yeah, I know about your biggest secret shame, and she’s running around Cleveland spending all this money”? It’s just like, no one was going to piss Andrew Carnegie off, so it was a pretty smart gamble.
Ann: Exactly. And then you talk in your book a bit about like, because she’s married, like, Mr. Chadwick, did he or did he not know what she was doing? I think it would be pretty unbelievable that he didn’t know what she was doing, but he tried to claim that he didn’t or something?
Annie: It’s laughable how much he said he didn’t know because he claimed, “I don’t know anything about her finances. I don’t know anything about borrowing money. I don’t know anything about anything. I’ve never heard the name Carnegie,” which I mean, she told his best friend that she was Carnegie’s illegitimate daughter when he was in the room. So, it’s just things like that, it’s hard to believe that she was telling people in his circle and that he wouldn’t have known. I mean, sometimes when she would go and try to get loans from these smaller banks, he would come with her, especially toward the end when she was kind of… Having a man along sometimes helped because, you know, “Oh, well if there’s a man involved in this, then it’s probably on the up and up,” kind of a thing. So, he just denied everything in ways that didn’t make any sense. I don’t think he knew the extent of the fraud, I don’t think so. I think he knew that she was passing herself as Carnegie’s daughter. I would bet that he believed it himself, but we just don’t know.
Ann: And so, her story, like, eventually she is sent to prison, is kind of how this resolves itself.
Annie: Yes. [laughs] Yeah, she was convicted. She was convicted actually at this technical banking charge. I think part of that was that a lot of people, including Andrew Carnegie, really did not want to forgery trial. Carnegie did not want to take the stand and say, “No, she’s not my illegitimate daughter. I never signed that. I never had sex with some woman, decades ago.” It just would have looked very scandalous and very… The look wasn’t good, and he just didn’t want to deal with it. So, I wondered a lot while I was writing this, why wasn’t she prosecuted for forgery? Which is, I mean, the most blatant and harmful thing that she did was—
Ann: Because she learned how to, like, forge his signature and things, you talk about.
Annie: Yes. That was the other part of her con is she was telling people she was his illegitimate daughter, and she had all these promissory notes and this trust agreement that she had forged Carnegie’s signature to, and she was showing people, she was using them as collateral for notes or for loans when she could. So, she had all these Carnegie forgeries that she had made and that really did the most harm in all of this.
Ann: So, I mean, to learn more details, read the book. But I wanted to just ask you as well, we were talking a bit about this before we started recording but, like, you listened to this podcast, and you got interested in her story. You wanted to know more and the book wasn’t out there already. But to do the research, like, you were looking at… Explain what sorts of things you had to piece together to write this. Like, you were in archives. How are you finding these old news articles and things?
Annie: So, a lot of that was online. It was awesome, a couple of the Cleveland papers back then had all their archives digitized and searchable. So, just hours and hours and hours and New York Times as well, looking at their archives as well. So, most of it is contemporary newspaper articles, a lot of it, and from different stages, you know, like, when she was in Toledo, there are articles about that mess. And then there’s an article about her trial in Canada that I read from 1879, I think it was. And then there was also, I went to the archives in Cleveland, they actually had a couple of boxes full of Cassie Chadwick stuff at, I think it was the Case Western Historical Society. And it was so cool, I got to, like, hold and look at these letters that she’d written.
Ann: That’s so cool.
Annie: It was so cool. It was awesome. And you know, lists, like, pages and pages and pages listing all of the stuff that she had bought and what their assessed amount was because, you know, at some point, you had to make an accounting of every single thing that she owned and how much it could be sold for. So, that was just really awesome.
Ann: It sounds like such a little— Not little, big. But a scavenger hunt of just going through and trying to find like, okay, where was she? What article, like, what proof is there of what she did? And you’re just trying to piece it all together.
Annie: Yes. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I have an outline that’s 250 pages, single-spaced just, like, of every single newspaper article so I could look and, like, do a keyword search, but I was writing about some event that happened in her life. And so, like, “Okay, what did they have to say about this? What did they have to say about this? What did she say about this?”
Ann: Yeah. I mean, as you and I have talked about before, I’m writing a book, but books exist about the stuff that I’m researching, I’m not having to do this, sort of like, piecing it together. But I’m glad for you that there was this trail. Like, I’m glad that she was caught as many times as she was because then there was articles about it. But that’s, sort of like, for you piecing together, like, she was arrested under this name in this city, and then it was this name in this city.
Annie: I would have to redo, like, so many searches under all of the different names that she used, because sometimes you’d use Cassie Chadwick, or Cassie Hoover, or Lydia Hoover, or Lydia DeVere, and then she’d come up under like Maisie Bigley or something, and just, you never would have figured out that she was there if you hadn’t expanded the search.
Ann: Well, and then for you writing the book, and even the title of the book, like you, I think you say at the very beginning of the book, like “I’m going to call her Cassie Chadwick because this is going to be really confusing if I don’t.” So, is that the name that she is now still best known as?
Annie: Yes. She was born Elizabeth Bigley, but yes, Cassie Chadwick was the name that she went down in history as and that’s kind of the name that I used. I think in the first draft, I was trying to kind of switch it up between different eras of like, “Okay, now she’s Elizabeth…” But it was way too confusing, there were too many names.
Ann: Yeah, choosing… I mean, we won’t get into this now but I am in the midst of writing a book as well and there’s people changing names and I’m like, “I’m going to choose one because otherwise…” Like, there’s books that I’m reading where they’re like, “Well, he was this, and then he became the Duke of this, and then someone else is the Duke of this,” and I’m like, “Is this the same person?” So, I’m like, what I will do in my book is have one name, because I don’t want people to be confused.
So, your book came out this past summer so it’s still newly out there in the world. Part of why I’m having these author interviews at this point when this episode comes out, it’s like, people are thinking of, like, books to read over the holidays, what would be a good gift to give somebody? I don’t know if you can answer this question, but who do you think would like to get this book as a gift? I’m going to say first, is someone a fan of Downton Abbey? Is someone a fan of The Gilded Age? Like, that sort of person. But also, is someone a fan of true crime? Is someone a fan of, like, Anna Delvey’s ongoing wildlife?
Annie: Absolutely. Yeah, those are all the people that I thought of. Anyone who likes anything kind of like, gossipy and stylish, you know, Gilded Age and Downton Abbey. It’s kind of like, when I pitched this book, it was “Anna Delvey in the drawing room.” You know, you mash together, like, high society, and Gilded Age, and crime, basically, and this is what you get.
Ann: Yeah. And I think it’s, I don’t know, it’s just funny how the timing of things work out but, like, your book was coming out at around the same time, Anna Delvey was on Dancing with the Stars so people were really reminded of her again. So, I’m like, “Oh, that’s a good connection.”
Annie: Yes, absolutely.
Ann: But I do think that the book, like again, it’s so readable, it’s fun. Like you said, it’s gossipy. And the way that you write it, you know, you’re sort of imagining what people are, you know, “She walked into the room and looked around…” you know, like, it’s narrative as well. So, I think it could be appealing to somebody who likes that sort of book as well. The cover is so cute, shout out to your cute cover.
Annie: Oh my gosh, the cover artist did a fantastic job. I was just over the moon when I saw it.
Ann: And I think it really… Everything that I’m saying or trying to get people to understand, it’s like, the book is fun, and the cover is fun! It’s not like, “Here’s a historical true crime.” It’s like, “Oh no, guess what this lady did?” Like it’s, it feels fun just looking at it. So, I think if you’re unwrapping a gift and you see this cover, you’re like, “Ooh, what’s this book my friend gave me? I’m excited to read it.”
Annie: Yeah, I tried to write the whole book like it might be a story because her life really was, like, a big story that started out with these little crimes and ended up with this big finale.
Ann: And then I feel like, again, I don’t know, I’m in Canada, but Andrew Carnegie is a pretty famous person in the US so that connection, I think, that’s how people can sort of, like, cling to a person in history who they know and then it’s like, here’s the story that builds up around that one sort of famous person who they think they’ve heard of.
Annie: Yeah! Yeah, absolutely. It’s a very little-known little chapter of his life that is fun to explore.
Ann: I love stories like this too, where somebody was so famous for a bit in history and then it’s like, but not so much now. But she was so famous, infamous, like, notorious.
Annie: Oh my goodness, yes. And she couldn’t go anywhere in between, like, late November 1904, and her trial in March, anywhere she went, just reporters and crowds swarming her.
Ann: It’s so interesting because yeah, I’ve encountered, often criminals also in just researching other stuff for my podcast, where it’s like, this person was so famous, like, international news is being written about them. And now, we don’t know about them anymore. But it’s like, but they were so famous! And that’s so interesting too, to know the level of… People are so excited. I guess people, I guess it’s like, because it’s a woman and that’s unusual, you know, there’s lots of con artists. Actually, you mentioned in your book, the Ponzi scheme happened, like, Mr. Ponzi, that was a couple of years later and that’s so well-known still, like, even just the name “Ponzi scheme,” but she is not.
Annie: Yeah, I mean, when Ponzi got busted, and I don’t remember how much longer it was after she got busted, maybe 15-20 years, something like that, some reporter wrote that Ponzi is a piker compared to Cassie. There was this whole article talking about how Ponzi was fooling these people who didn’t really know any better. It was all just, kind of, working-class people who he was getting to invest money in his Ponzi scheme. But Cassie was fooling these bankers and businessmen and like lawyers whose job it was to, you know, know what to do with money, and to advise people on what to do with their money, and she was just completely fooling them.
Ann: And that’s the sort of, “Emperor’s New Clothes,” thing where it’s like, the people she was fooling were so important, they would be (and you still see this sort of thing happening today) they would be so reluctant to admit that they were fooled, that she can keep going, knowing that they’re too embarrassed to reveal that they were fooled. That was another part of what was so smart about her plan.
Annie: Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean, like, even after everything started coming to light and people were, you know, trying to sue her, there were, I mean, like, lawyers, prosecutors that were prosecuting her said basically, we will never know how much money she made and how many people she defrauded because it’s so embarrassing and anyone who could just absorb the loss is absorbing the loss and just kind of, like, slinking back into the shadows.
Ann: Well, that’s where it’s so interesting, too, that she was from this, like— She just had this natural ability to figure things out where it’s, like, people nowadays, maybe you could research grifters of the past, or I don’t know, like, how people can come up with a con, but she just came up with this herself really just by realizing “Oh, there’s these promissory notes. This is a thing I can do. Oh, if I say that I’m an heiress, I can get more money on the promissory notes.” Like, she just naturally, using her skills to manipulate and to read people, just came up with this.
Annie: Yes. She saw the cracks in the system and, like, kind of how people act and how people behave and just used it.
Ann: It’s just so clever. I wanted to just mention I was looking at her Wikipedia page because I’m like, “Has she been…?” Yeah, there was a character on The Gilded Age, the TV show based on her.
Annie: Yes. I don’t want to say who it is, because it’s kind of supposed to be… [laughs]
Ann: Oh, I won’t say it then, okay.
Annie: Yeah, it’s a bit of a spoiler, but there’s a Cassie-based character on The Gilded Age at some point. [laughs]
Ann: Okay, okay. I won’t say what season or anything, but I will also say, I don’t know if you know the Canadian TV series Murdoch Mysteries. It is… [chuckles] I feel like it’s been on Canadian TV for like 25 years. It’s like, how does this man keep finding more Gilded Age Toronto murders to solve? But he does.
Annie: Okay, okay. One of those.
Ann: Anyway, there is probably the Canadian connection, Cassie Chadwick literally was on the show, and so she’s in an episode of Murdoch Mysteries.
Annie: That’s fantastic.
Ann: It’s seriously been going on for 25 years. But I feel like someone, one of the writers and the staff is like, “She’s from Ontario! Let’s do it. Let’s bring in Cassie Chadwick.”
Annie: [laughs] That’s awesome. Oh my gosh.
Ann: But yeah, so she is sort of quietly permeating culture in a way, and I love that your book is here now for people who maybe are interested in that character on The Gilded Age, or they see that in Murdoch Mysteries, or they hear a podcast and like, “I want to learn more.” I’m glad there is a book now that exists.
Annie: Yeah, absolutely.
Ann: So, just as a final question for you, I wanted to ask: Your book just came out this summer, and what was that like? This is totally a personal question, but I’m asking on the podcast. [Annie laughs] To go from working on a book by yourself so long to having people read it, what was that like?
Annie: It was so weird. It was good, and I kept having to remind myself that the book was out, because for so long, even after I got my contract and I was writing it, it was just, like, this thing in my basement, and it didn’t really leave my basement, basically. So, it was weird to see the different steps of it coming out into the public. “Oh, it’s on Goodreads now. Oh, it’s on Amazon now. This is crazy. Oh, people are out there reading this book.” It was very surreal, but like… I don’t know what the right word is… Quietly, in an everyday kind of surreal thing. Just, all of a sudden, you would check Goodreads and be like, “Oh, there’s 100 people have rated this book. That’s crazy,” stuff like that. And also, trying not to get worked up about reviews, either way, you know? But yeah, it was very surreal, I think is the word for it.
Ann: Yeah, I’m just especially imagining your research was so… It feels intense to be going through these old newspapers and stuff, and to go from that to being like, “Oh! Someone I don’t even know read my book.” Just a weird leap, yeah.
Annie: Yes, absolutely. Yeah, just very, very surreal. I just can’t explain it.
Ann: Well, thank you so much for talking about your book on my show. I think that she, Cassie Chadwick, is right up the alley of everyone who listens to the show. I love talking about women grifters and criminals, especially who are just doing it because they want to, not because it’s like, “Oh, I have to feed my starving family.” She’s like, “I just want to live life as large as possible.” And I’m like, “That’s great. I support that.” Yeah.
Annie: She was not Robin Hood, she was out for Cassie.
Ann: I know, I know. And that’s where I find that more appealing. There are other people who would be like, “Oh, she’s a criminal.” I’m like, but culturally, we love a grifter. We love a chancer, somebody who just goes for it. I think that’s why there’s so many podcasts, true crime podcasts, and documentaries. We love to see somebody who just… I think we all, especially now, really feel like the system is broken and whatever. And it’s like, this person just found a crack in it, and she went for it, and good for her. I feel like the Arrested Development meme, just like, “Good for her.” [laughs]
Annie: [laughs] I love that show. Yeah, I mean, like, with grifters, they’re so often going after rich people and powerful people. There are definitely victims down the chain and as you read my book, you’ll see who some of those victims are. But I mean, their primary targets, and Cassie’s primary targets are, like, bankers and businessmen and millionaires and it’s just hard to feel sorry for them and easy to chuckle at them.
Ann: Exactly. I guess maybe that’s part of it too, right? It’s not a victimless crime, but it kind of feels like a victimless crime because the people…
Annie: It feels that way.
Ann: I’m like, “They kind of deserve this.” [Annie laughs]
Annie Reed, thank you so much for talking to me about your book and I hope everybody listens to this podcast and goes out right away and buys a copy of it.
Annie: Thank you! Thanks so much.
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I mean, shout out to Annie Reed for writing such a fun book and for answering all of my questions. And also, shout out to Murdoch Mysteries, a show that has been on Canadian television for approximately 75 years, it feels like. They’re on season… It’s the Grey’s Anatomy of Canada. It’s a show that has been on since time immemorial and yet somehow, this turn-of-the-century detective keeps finding murders to solve and good for them.
So, this book that everybody should read, The Impostor Heiress: Cassie Chadwick, The Greatest Grifter of the Gilded Age is available wherever you get your books from. If you use the little link in my show notes to buy it from Bookshop.org, then I get a little something financially from you using that link. Also, Bookshop.org is a great organization to use to buy your books from because the money is not going to weirdo billionaires. Cassie Chadwick [laughs] wouldn’t want you to be giving money to weirdo billionaires. Well, frankly, she would want you to steal things. But basically, you should just read this book and then you can think, you know, what would she, what would Cassie do, WW Cassie do?
Anyway, this is Vulgar History, and my name is Ann Foster. If you want to keep up with this podcast, I’m on Instagram, I’m on Threads, I’m a Bluesky, all of these places, this diaspora of social media. I mean, you’ll find me in all those places, just look up Vulgar History. Actually, on Instagram, look up @VulgarHistoryPod because if you look up @VulgarHistory, that is a highly erotic account, tragically not run by me. On the other places, I’m just @VulgarHistory.
I also am on Substack where I have a little newsletter called “Vulgar History A La Carte,” where I post free essays about women from history and also yelling about just, like, bullshit patriarchy stuff, feminism. I recently posted an article there about “The Sexist History of Guilty Pleasure,” like, how things culturally, talking in a wide way, things that young girls, especially, but also women are interested in are often called guilty pleasures, whereas things that men and boys are interested in are just pleasures. And why is that? And it’s bullshit. I posted about that. I’ve got some really, really interesting comments from people on that article. And then I just posted one about “The History of Hysteria and Green Sickness,” which you might not have heard of, which were ways that women having emotions have been pathologized by doctors. Anyway, “Vulgar History A La Carte” on Substack, you go to VulgarHistory.Substack.com and you can subscribe to my newsletter there. It is entirely free but again, in terms of gift-giving options, you can get a paid membership to my Substack. Right now, through until December 25th, you can get 50 percent off your paid subscription on Substack so consider that as well.
I mentioned at the beginning, I have my Patreon, which is Patreon.com/AnnFosterWriter, which again, you can join for totally free and just follow along with the free stuff I post there, which is a lot of stuff. And then if you want to get the early, ad-free access to Vulgar History, you can pledge at least $1 a month; you get early, ad-free access to all episodes, as well as episodes of Ann Is Writing a Book, my spin-off podcast about the book that I’m writing. If you pledge $5 or more a month, you get access to the bonus episodes, Vulgarpiece Theatre, So This Asshole, The Aftershow. Again, if you want to hear me and Allison Epstein just, like, screaming with delight about the movie Conclave, that’s where you can do that.
If you’ve never been a paid member of the Patreon before, there is a deal where you can get 30 percent off your first year of annual membership. So, I guess I don’t want to say dollar amounts because I might be wrong, but I guess that would be $2.50— No. No, I’m not going to say dollar amounts. I’m not Cassie Chadwick, I can’t do the math. I’m not Cady Heron. Anyway, that’s a good deal. If you’ve never been a paid member of the Patreon before, you can get that deal, 30 percent off. Also, request from your loved ones, your enemies, your rivals, whoever you’re demanding presents from, demand a gift subscription to the Vulgar History Patreon and you can get that, the regular stuff, Patreon.com/AnnFosterWriter. The link you want to send to your loved one, Patreon.com/AnnFosterWriter/Gift. And that’s how you can get the gift subscription.
I do want to also mention anyone who’s at the $5 a month or more level, whether you got that with the 30 percent off, whether you got that as a gift, whether you paid for that with your own hard-earned money, whether you found a crack in the system and grifted your way in, everyone at that $5 or more level gets to join the Discord, which is just a giant group chat for all of us Tits Out Brigade members.
And gift-giving, our brand partner, Common Era Jewelry. This is another link to send to your loved one, your enemy, your child, your baby, whoever you’re asking for a present for. Common Era Jewelry is our brand partner, and this is a women-owned small business that makes beautiful heirloom jewelry inspired by both classical history and specifically women from classical history and from mythology. They have beautiful pieces. You can celebrate people— Cassie Chadwick, not there, but you know who is there? Agrippina, Anne Boleyn, Cleopatra, Hatshepsut, Sappho is there, Artemis, lots of women and goddesses from history and from mythology. You can get them on a necklace, you can get them on a ring, they also sell things like scrunchies. Their jewelry pieces are available in solid gold as well as in more affordable gold vermeil. Vulgar History listeners can always get 15% off whatever you buy from Common Era. So again, send this link to your loved one, to your enemy, to that person who is getting you a gift, CommonEra.com/Vulgar because then when they buy you a present, they’re saving money and so that’s win-win for all of us, frankly. So, you go to CommonEra.com/Vulgar or use code ‘VULGAR’ at checkout.
Another gift-giving option: Vulgar History merchandise; we have stickers, we have mugs, we have magnets, we have crew neck sweatshirts, we have T-shirts. Lots and lots of things with lots and lots of inside jokes. There’s a Peg Plunkett design, we’ve got Chevalier D’Éon design, we’ve got Hortense Mancini, we’ve got Frances Howard, “Titties Outies” it says. And then in terms of this season, there is a beautiful design by a friend of the podcast, Karyn Moynihan, that says, “Tits the Season” and it’s a beautiful holiday jumper sort of vibe which you could also get on a mug, on a magnet, on a T-shirt, but it looks like it’s cross-stitched and there’s little breast imagery on it. It says “Tits the Season” and frankly, I bought myself one and that’s how much I love it. So, you can get, again, send this link to your enemy, to your friend, buy it yourself. There’s, honestly, probably a sale going on right now because this time of year, there’s always sales going on these vendor websites. So, if you’re in the US, go to VulgarHistory.com/Store, that takes you to our TeePublic store. If you’re outside the US, go to VulgarHistory.Redbubble.com, or send those links to the person who you want. Make your Christmas list all things I’ve just said this episode, you know? First of all, the first thing you should ask for, Annie Reed’s book, The Impostor Heiress, and then all these other things, just make that your list. Write to Santa, ask for these things, send Santa the links.
You can also get in touch with me, if you would like to, at VulgarHistory.com. There’s a little “Contact Me” area and that’s how you can send me a little email. You can also send me a DM on Instagram where my DMs are open. Next week, we’re going to have another incredible author interview, another book that I think, I am confident it’s got tits out energy, it’s got Vulgar History energy. You’re all going to enjoy hearing about this book, and I think you’re all going to enjoy reading this book. I will say that this book was brought to my attention by Allison Epstein,so it’s got the Allison Epstein seal of approval. So, next week, another great holiday gift-giving option, or if you’re not giving gifts at all, then I give you the gift of this podcast today. And until next time, keep your pants on and your tits set.
Vulgar History is hosted, written, and researched by Ann Foster, that’s me! The editor is Cristina Lumague. Theme music is by the Severn Duo. The Vulgar History show image is by Deborah Wong. Transcripts are written by Aveline Malek. Find transcripts of recent episodes at VulgarHistory.com.
References:
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