Born: 1859
Died: October 10, 1907
AKA: Constance Cassandra Chadwick, Cassie L. Hoover, Lydia D. Scott, Lydia Springsteen, Lydia de Vere
As a young woman and well into middle age, Cassie Chadwick used her elegant manner and acting ability to pull off confidence schemes that earned her thousands of dollars—and a prison term.
Chadwick was born Elizabeth Bigley, near London, Ontario, Canada. The daughter of a railway worker, she was from a poor family. Chadwick began her career as a con woman and swindler (person who cheats people out of money) when she was still in her teens. At the age of sixteen, she attempted to forge a check for $5,000. (Forgers pass off fake checks as real. Sometimes they forge, or fake, the signature of somebody else. Other times they write checks drawn on accounts that don’t exist.) Caught forging the check, Chadwick was not jailed because the court found her temporarily insane.
When she was twenty-five years old, she married W. S. Springsteen, a physician. Using his name as a reference and his property as collateral (property that is pledged to protect the lender), she borrowed money. Springsteen eventually had to sell his home in order to repay Chadwick’s debts. One year after they were married, the couple divorced. Chadwick then moved to Toledo, Ohio, where she started a business as a fortune teller named Lydia de Vere. She claimed that she could make sick men healthy—and poor men wealthy. Chadwick would hire private detectives to find out what they could about her clients. Armed with embarrassing information that her clients wanted to keep secret, she collected thousands of dollars by blackmailing her victims. (Blackmail is a form of extortion in which threats are used to gain payment.) After one of her clients threatened to take her to court, Chadwick abandoned her fortune-telling scam. But she soon landed in court anyway. Caught with $20,000 in forged bills, she was convicted of fraud (deliberate deception) and forgery. Although she was sentenced to nine years in prison, she was released in 1897, after serving only three years behind bars.
After she was released Chadwick settled in Cleveland, Ohio, where she adopted the identity of Cassie L. Hoover, a widow. She met and married Dr. Leroy Chadwick, a wealthy and well-respected older man. After they were married, Chadwick threw lavish parties in their stylish home on Euclid Avenue. She also traveled out of town on extravagant trips.
During a trip to New York City, Chadwick set in motion an elaborate scam that involved the famous millionaire Andrew Carnegie. First, Chadwick rented expensive rooms at the exclusive Holland House. There she managed to bump into James Dillon, a Cleveland lawyer who knew her slightly. As far as Dillon knew, their meeting was accidental. But Chadwick had arranged the coincidence. She knew that Dillon was scheduled to be in New York on business and arranged her trip accordingly.
Following their “accidental” meeting, Chadwick asked Dillon to join her on an errand. At Chadwick’s instruction, they rode in a coach up Fifth Avenue in a wealthy section of Manhattan. Chadwick ordered the coach to stop in front of a residence, telling the lawyer that she would only be a few minutes. Almost everyone—especially bankers and lawyers—knew that the spacious quarters belonged to the multi-millionaire Andrew Carnegie.
Chadwick knocked at Carnegie’s door and was admitted. Posing as a wealthy New Yorker, she pretended that she wanted to check the reference of a maid who claimed to have worked for Carnegie. In order to make her story more believable, she carried a fake letter of application from the make-believe job applicant. The housekeeper informed Chadwick that no such maid had ever worked for Carnegie. When Chadwick acted puzzled, the housekeeper checked her files to find out whether the woman had ever worked at any of the millionaire’s other homes. Chadwick thanked the housekeeper for her time and left.
Chadwick had no interest in hiring a maid. She simply needed a legitimate reason to gain entry into Carnegie’s home—with James Dillon as a witness. When she returned to the carriage, after about a half hour in the Carnegie residence, she “accidentally” dropped a piece of paper in front of the lawyer. Dillon picked up the slip of paper, which was a note promising to pay two million dollars. The note was signed by Andrew Carnegie.
Pretending to be embarrassed that Dillon had seen the promissory note (a note that promises to pay a sum of money), Chadwick “confessed” that she was Carnegie’s daughter. This surprised him since Carnegie had never married and had never acknowledged having any children. Chadwick explained that the note was one of many that Carnegie had written to help support his “illegitimate daughter.”
Dillon was appalled to hear that Chadwick had several promissory notes signed by Carnegie at home. He convinced her that the notes belonged in the bank, and offered to make arrangements to secure a safe deposit box at one of the banks he represented. Chadwick agreed. After she turned over the forged Carnegie notes, Dillon gave her a receipt for $7 million—without ever checking the authenticity of the notes.
Chadwick wasted no time using the $7 million receipt to her advantage. With the forged notes as collateral, she borrowed hundreds of thousands of dollars from a number of bankers who were eager to lend her money—for an outrageous fee. Chadwick enjoyed the high life, purchasing expensive gowns, jewelry, paintings, and tapestries (decorative wall hangings). She bought a mansion and carriages and hired servants to work for her.
Chadwick’s scheme worked smoothly until she encountered Henry Newton, a Cleveland millionaire. Borrowing $500,000 from Newton, she promised to pay a high interest (a fee that increases over time) on the loan. But Newton was not as trusting as the banks had been. He demanded that Chadwick pay the interest she owed. When Chadwick informed him that she had tens of thousands of dollars worth of promissory notes in the bank, he demanded to see them. The notes—which had never been examined by any of the bankers—were soon discovered to be forgeries. And Andrew Carnegie offered no support. He denied ever having fathered a child and stated “I have never heard of Mrs. Chadwick!”
On December 7, 1904, Chadwick was arrested in the Holland House in New York—where she had first set the scam in motion. She was wearing a money belt stuffed with more than $100,000. Guards escorted her on a train back to Cleveland where she stood trial in March of the following year. She protested that she was an innocent victim who was being persecuted because she was a member of the upper class. But the prosecutor informed the court that Chadwick had a long history of forgeries, frauds, and arrests.
The trial was brief. Convicted of six charges of fraud, Chadwick was sentenced to ten years in the Ohio State Penitentiary in Columbus. Dr. Chadwick had his marriage annulled (declared invalid) and moved to Florida. After two and a half years in prison, Cassie died in the penitentiary hospital at the age of forty-eight. Although she was scheduled to be buried in a pauper’s (poor person’s) grave, an unidentified man reportedly paid to have her body shipped to Canada to be buried.
Steel magnate
Andrew Carnegie (1835–1919) earned millions of dollars as a steel magnate (successful business person). Chadwick borrowed hundreds of thousands of dollars by pretending to be the millionaire bachelor’s daughter. But Carnegie had no children. What’s more, he never even met Chadwick, his supposed daughter.
Here’s a book you might like:
Claire at Sixteen, 1989, by Susan Beth Pfeffer
This third novel in the Sebastian Sisters Quintet relates the story of a young woman who undertakes a devious extortion (blackmail) scheme to obtain money for her youngest sister, who was badly injured in an automobile accident.
Take a look at this!
Set in New York in the 1980s, Six Degrees of Separation (1993) is based on the true story of a young man who claims to be the son of Sidney Poitier, a famous actor. Posing as the young Poitier, David Hampton (played by Will Smith) hustles his way into the lives of a number of wealthy Manhattan couples.
De Grave, Kathleen. Swindler, Spy, Rebel. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1995, pp. 57–73, 144–157.
Dressler, David. “Cleveland’s Queen of Society Swindlers.” Coronet (May 1950), pp. 71–74.
Nash, Jay Robert. The Encyclopedia of World Crime. Wilmette, IL: Crime Books, 1990, p. 1506.
Stein, Gordon. Encyclopedia of Hoaxes. Detroit: Gale Research, 1993, pp. 33–34.
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