Cassie L. Chadwick
Cassie L. Chadwick, born Elizabeth Bigley in southern Ontario, Canada, is known for her audacious criminal exploits in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Early on, she exhibited deceptive tendencies, claiming to be a wealthy widow through forged documents, which led to her first arrest in 1879. After relocating to Cleveland, Ohio, she transformed her life into a series of cons, including a short-lived marriage and a conviction for forgery, which resulted in a nine-and-a-half-year prison sentence. Upon her release, she married Dr. Leroy S. Chadwick and leveraged her new identity to execute an elaborate fraud scheme, falsely claiming to be the illegitimate daughter of steel magnate Andrew Carnegie.
Her fraudulent activities involved securing loans from multiple banks using a forged trust deed that promised immense wealth upon Carnegie's death. However, her deception unraveled when banks began demanding repayment, leading to her arrest in 1905. After a trial that highlighted the complexities of gender roles in crime, she was convicted and sentenced to fourteen years in prison. Chadwick's story concluded with her death in prison from a heart attack, but her case significantly impacted banking practices and public perceptions of female criminals, illustrating that deceit was not solely a male endeavor.
Subject Terms
Cassie L. Chadwick
Canadian swindler
- Born: October 10, 1857
- Birthplace: Eastwood, Ontario, Canada
- Died: October 10, 1907
- Place of death: Ohio Penitentiary Hospital, Columbus, Ohio
Major offenses: Forgery, conspiracy against the government, and conspiracy to wreck the Citizens’ National Bank of Oberlin, Ohio
Active: 1879-1905
Locale: Ohio
Sentence: Nine and a half years in prison for forgery, paroled after four years; fourteen years in prison and seventy-thousand-dollar fine for conspiracy charges
Early Life
Cassie Chadwick (KAH-see CHAHD-wihk) was born as Elizabeth Bigley in southern Ontario, Canada, to Daniel Bigley, a railroad section hand, and his wife, Alice, a homemaker. She displayed early wayward traits when she adopted the name of Mrs. E. G. Thomas and spent extravagantly in the nearby town of Woodstock, backing the bills she ran up by showing merchants a forged letter, allegedly from a London attorney, that said that she was a widow who had inherited eighteen hundred dollars. She was arrested in 1879 but was found not guilty by reason of insanity, presumably to avoid sentencing a young girl to prison; her courtroom antics, including making faces at the jurors, probably also influenced this decision. She moved to Toronto briefly and then relocated to Cleveland, Ohio, living with her married sister.
Criminal Career
Chadwick set up shop in Toledo as a fortune-teller (first as Lydia Scott and then as Madam Lydia Devere). She was married to Wallace Springsteen for just eleven days and in 1889 was convicted for forging the name of Richard Brown, a prominent Youngstown, Ohio, citizen, in order to pay for her purchases. She was sentenced to nine and a half years in the Ohio Penitentiary. She was paroled after four years and opened a brothel in Toledo in 1893. She then met and married Dr. Leroy S. Chadwick and in short order saw him off to Paris, sending him his monthly annuity to keep him abroad.
Using her standing as Chadwick’s wife to gain social legitimacy, Chadwick launched a grand plan of fraud. She enlisted the aid of a prominent Ohio lawyer to accompany her to were chosen. She left the lawyer in a carriage in front of the Fifth Avenue mansion of steel magnate Andrew Carnegie, the richest bachelor in the United States. She remained inside the house (apparently meeting with a housekeeper) for about twenty minutes. Back in the carriage, she told the lawyer that she was Carnegie’s illegitimate daughter and let him glimpse a trust deed for $2 million, allegedly from Carnegie. When Carnegie died, she declared, she stood to inherit about $400 million.
The lawyer arranged for her to deposit the trust deed in the Wade Park Bank in Cleveland. Had the bank president opened the sealed envelope, he readily would have discovered that the deed was a crude forgery. Using the deposit and the promise of more to come, Chadwick borrowed what has been variously estimated at between $2 million and $20 million from banks throughout the nation, commonly offering bank officials exorbitant interest and personal bonuses. A primary target was the Citizens’ National Bank in the college town of Oberlin, Ohio, which she ultimately plunged into bankruptcy. She also accumulated more than $100,000 of the personal funds of its president, Charles Beckwith.
Legal Action and Outcome
The Chadwick ruse came to a halt when a Brookline, Massachusetts, bank demanded payment of its loan. When Chadwick stalled, it filed criminal charges. Other banks soon joined in the quest for their money. Arrested in 1905, Chadwick underwent a two-week trial in Cleveland, during which her lawyer portrayed her as a helpless female being oppressed by wealthy male capitalists. The prosecutor countered by noting that she had deprived widows and orphans—the bank’s depositors—“of their hopes of peace and prosperity in their old age.” The jury convicted Chadwick on seven counts of conspiracy, and the judge imposed a fourteen-year prison sentence. Chadwick died in the prison hospital two years after she was incarcerated. The cause of death was a heart attack and what the prison physician described as an overindulgence in rich food.
Both Beckwith and a bank cashier, A. T. Spear, later would be charged with violation of federal banking laws for cashing Chadwick’s checks when she did not have funds on deposit to cover them. Beckwith died before he could be tried; Spear received a seven-year sentence. Carnegie, who had never had any relationship to Chadwick, later would make good the bank’s losses, besides endowing a library at Oberlin College.
Impact
The case involving Cassie Chadwick made clear to early twentieth century Americans that swindling was not exclusively a male crime. It also put bankers on notice that they had to tighten up the scrutiny of those seeking loans, rather than succumb to the charms and unsupported claims of applicants.
Bibliography
Butts, Ed. She Dared: True Stories of Heroines, Scoundrels, and Renegades. Toronto, Ont.: Tunda Books, 2005. One of the chapters summarizes the life and con career of Chadwick.
“Chadwick v. United States”. Federal Reporter 141 (November 17, 1905): 225-247. A discussion of the criminal charges against Chadwick plus the court’s review and rejection of her arguments for a reversal of the verdict.
Crosbie, John S. The Incredible Mrs. Chadwick: The Most Notorious Woman of Her Age. New York: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1975. The author is subjective with some of the facts of the Chadwick saga, using, he says, the kind of inventiveness of which Chadwick herself would be proud.
DeGrave, Kathleen. Swindler, Spy, Rebel: The Confidence Woman in the Nineteenth-Century. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1995. Chadwick is portrayed in the context of female swindlers of her time. Her ladylike appearance and genteel behavior are said to have fooled men who were accustomed to gallant behavior toward seemingly respectable women.
Wells, Joseph T. Frankensteins of Fraud: The Twentieth Century’s Top Ten White-Collar Criminals. Austin, Texas: Obsidian, 2000. The first chapter provides a sprightly discussion of Chadwick’s background, personality, and exploits.