The Hypnotic Cassie Chadwick

Editor's note: This chapter is excerpted from the book, "Frankensteins of Fraud," copyright 2000 by Joseph T. Wells, CFE, CPA, the Association's founder and Chairman. 

"Shall I create another, like yourself, whose joint wickedness might desolate the world? ...Your evil passions will be renewed, and you will then have a companion to aid you in the task of destruction." 

Viktor Frankenstein 

On a cool sunny afternoon in late April 1905, U.S. Attorney John J. Sullivan paced in front of the jury box. Twelve men listened as Sullivan framed for them their duty. "There is no law in this country so well settled as the law governing conspiracies to rob national banks without the use of dynamite," Sullivan proclaimed, his spirits buoyed by the nodding heads of the jurymen. 

"You have before you today, what twelve men may in this country never have had before them in all criminal history “ a criminal of conspicuous note “ a notorious and dangerous character “ the fate of whom never was determined before by any jury in any court, this Duchess of Diamonds, the most dangerous criminal known to human society today." 

From across the courtroom she glared, enveloped in black, as if she mourned for her own wretched person. Beneath a black silk taffeta shawl she wore a black dress, also silk, its hemline obscuring the laces of her stiletto-heeled boots. Wide combs, their teeth carved in ebony wood, pulled her gray-striped hair back severely from her face, where her reedy lips frowned. Occasionally her mouth twitched as Mr. Sullivan snapped one epithet after another into the brittle air of the courtroom. Beside the woman ™s chair, a parasol leaned against a black hat, its narrow brim fashioned from Milan straw, topped by a floppy crown of layered silk. 

As if Viktor Frankenstein had granted his Creature ™s wish and used his unholy powers to animate a female body, here sat this woman. She had defied moral principles and the banking laws of the state of Ohio during a lifetime of treachery and lies. Her eyes, witnesses testified, exerted "hypnotic powers." It was rumored she could bestir the invisible magnetic forces which governed the earth, aiding her to sway men ™s souls and open their wallets. Poor men threw every dollar they could grab “ and their lives “ at this woman ™s feet. Rich men gave her millions. Over the years, she had incarnated a harem of aliases: Lydia Devere, Alice Bestado, Mazie Bagley, Madame Hoover. She was called Lady Bountiful, the Queen of Swindlers, the Duchess of Diamonds ” in sum, The Most Notorious Woman of Her Age. A tabloid biography, hastily published on the eve of the sensational trial, offered: 

The History and Story
OF THE DOINGS OF THE
Famous
Mrs. Cassie L. Chadwick
THE SO-CALLED
"Queen of Finance"
SHOWING
How She Fleeced the Bankers 

Approaching 50 years old, Cassie Chadwick might be forgiven if the spark of her sexual engine had dimmed. Her once excitatious bosom now formed an undifferentiated mass, its folds strapped uncomfortably beneath a steel-wired corset. Wrinkles had gathered her skin, causing her once pert features to take on a simian cast. Yet, Mr. Sullivan warned the men of the jury, "Some of you may be feeling the force of her hypnotic eyes even now." 

Cassie Chadwick ™s seductive charms, it would seem, extended beyond merely physical attributes. Hadn ™t she, even in her matronly years, persisted in tempting one man after another to his doom? Hadn ™t she driven poor Leroy Chadwick away from Cleveland, the city that gave him life and wealth? Hadn ™t she ushered Charles Beckwith, small-town banker and trustee for Oberlin College, to an early grave? Well, hadn ™t she? 

The Duchess of Diamonds
For six months prior to the trial, Cleveland buzzed with the name of Cassie Chadwick. She ™d been escorted from the train by federal deputies the previous December of 1904, direct from The Tombs prison in New York City. She ™d been held for a week in The Tombs and was feeling the strain. On the train ride west, she ™d begun to fret. "What do the people think of me in my home city? Are they all against me? Will there be a crowd to stare at me?" She gave a loud cry and then flooded several deputies ™ handkerchiefs. Then, in the space of two minutes, she sat upright and commented gaily about the deep snowfall thus far in a chilly winter. 

Cleveland gossips noted that Leroy Chadwick had not bothered to return from Paris, despite having several weeks ™ notice about his wife ™s predicament. When he was asked about the accusations against his wife “ that she ™d conned several millions from bankers using forged notes “ Leroy could think only of himself. "There is no truth in the report that Mrs. Chadwick settled a large sum on me," he announced, though no one had asked. "Anyone would be able to see that I am not a man who has received millions from his wife. Do I look like a man of millions?" In fact, Leroy looked like a man who never made a decision more grave than whether to have eggs or fruit for breakfast, and who spent a considerable portion of his day waxing his mustache. Cassie rendered her own defense in a public statement just after New Year ™s 1905. 

Public clamor has made me a sacrifice. Here I am, an innocent woman hounded into jail, while a score of the biggest businessmen in Cleveland would leave town tomorrow if I told all I know. Yes, I borrowed money, but what of it. I will even admit I did not borrow in a business-like way. I wish now I had followed old rules a little closer. But you can ™t accuse a poor businesswoman of being a criminal can you? 

Jail ain ™t a bad place to be, Cassie argued, if you ™re regarded as the Most Notorious Woman of the Age. "Let me make it plain why I do not seek bail," she declared.  

It is not because I cannot raise the funds. Only today I received a special delivery letter from one of the wealthiest men in the country, who has known me since I was twelve years old. In this letter he assured me that despite the penalty of publicity, he would sign my bond for any amount. I shall refuse this kind offer. 

For while I am in jail I am free from the annoyance of curious people. If I were living at home or in a hotel under bail, I could not hire men enough to protect me from the affronts of these people. I shall stay with Sheriff Barry at least until the bankruptcy case is settled. I have not wrongfully obtained money from anyone, and I will repay every dollar of my indebtedness. 

Cassie ™s situation was causing a particular stir along Euclid Avenue, the tony neighborhood that played host to most of Cleveland ™s "400," i.e., the richest and most influential members of the city, including the man responsible for Cleveland ™s growth into an industrial metropolis, John D. Rockefeller. 

Cassie had never been popular among the "400," who found her haughty in her person and tacky in her taste. She gained one of her enduring nicknames from a Euclid Avenue resident, none other than James Chadwick, her husband ™s brother. "Her hair, streaked with gray, was piled high and glistened with diamonds," James told the court ™s inquiry. "A double necklace of diamonds circled her full throat. There were diamonds on her shoulders and diamonds on the front of her dress. She struck me as a handsome woman, then, though at other times I thought her plain. The most remarkable thing about her was her eyes. They were brown, I think, though when I looked in them I was at once filled with such a feeling of strange excitement I cannot swear to the color." 

A Toronto jeweler reported that Cassie had more than a passing affection for baubles. "We sold her in all 56 rings, in addition to various other articles of jewelry. She knew how to buy jewels. She paid us $3,000 for the last ring. To get this jewel I traveled more than 12,400 miles, having to cover much of Europe before finding a ring I thought would take her fancy. This ring was a peculiar marquise setting, and contained probably the largest diamond ever brought into Canada. I bought her many other treasures in the way of rare jewelry while on the same trip." 

Little Girl Lost
Cassie Chadwick was not the madam ™s real name. She was christened Elizabeth Bigley. Born in 1867, Elizabeth was the baby girl in a family of three girls and two boys. Her father, Daniel Bigley, worked as a section hand maintaining the railroad while Alice Bigley raised the children on a small farm outside Woodstock, Ontario. Elizabeth was a sickly child, born with a lisp and a susceptibility to chills. A fever at age three left her all but deaf in her right ear. The deafness and her lisp combined made Elizabeth appear retarded to many people, but the child was craftier than most her age. She often bragged to her classmates at Woodstock ™s little schoolhouse that she was going to grow up and become the richest woman in the Dominion of Canada and answer only to Queen Victoria. Elizabeth had several brushes with the law. At age 16, she caused a stir in the nearby hamlet of Hamilton by representing herself to area dressmakers as a European debutante on holiday. She ™d acquired some of the latest fashions by passing around a card printed with a few dollars stolen from her mother ™s egg money: 

Miss Lydia Bagley
Heiress to $15,000 

A few years later, she made a similar spree through shops around Woodstock, endorsing checks in a flamboyant script, "Mrs. E. G. Thomas." She was recently widowed, Elizabeth told the storekeepers, and was spending a few dollars of her husband ™s estate to assuage her grief. She bought a necklace and some earrings “ nothing terribly expensive, just costume jewelry “ and several dresses, some $250 total. She ™d also had a reed organ, costing $150, toted into the tiny apartment she rented along Maple Street. When pressed to make the checks good, Elizabeth presented her creditors with a letter from a London attorney, one Reuben Kipp, who vouched that Mrs. E.G. Thomas had been bequeathed $1,800 in her husband ™s estate. 

The Kipp letter, local prosecutors easily determined, was a forgery. A meager bank account in the name of "E.G. Thomas" in Toronto had been cleaned out long ago. However, with the Bigley family agreeing to stand good for the debt, and seeing all the merchandise was returned intact, a judge took pity on poor half-deaf, lisping Elizabeth. After a single morning ™s questioning, Elizabeth was declared not guilty by reason of insanity, based on her utter ignorance of banking fundamentals “ like balancing a checking account “ and because she continually made faces at the jury. 

"It ™s not that I ™m crazy," she explained to her sister, named Alice like their mother. "It was just a way for the judge to let me go without having to punish me." Alice had agreed to let Elizabeth live with her and her husband in Cleveland, hoping the girl would find brighter prospects than she had in the little towns of southern Ontario. 

It wasn ™t Elizabeth ™s first time in the big city, though. In Toronto, for a year or so after her trial in Woodstock, Elizabeth had paid her rent by working as one of the ribbon girls, so called because "their attempts at finery consist chiefly of a bright red ribbon worked into the hair of one, and the blue neck ribbon of the other," in the words of one observer. Homeless, penniless, many of them clueless, these girls from the hinterlands and from far across the Atlantic avoided 16-hour shifts in a textile factory by offering themselves on the pickup circuit. 

Fed up with life as a ribbon girl, Elizabeth came to live with her sister Alice in the spring of 1880, at No. 503 Superior Street, Cleveland, Ohio. Elizabeth found employment with a group of other young women learning the milliner ™s art. They all lived in a large house at 359 Superior Street, just down from Alice ™s apartment, and very near the docks. She also told fortunes, using the name Madame La Rose. 

The Chadwick Estate, 8214 Euclid Avenue
It all sounded so unlikely, Clevelanders chirped in the spring of 1905. Almost half a million people lived in Cleveland now. A number of Cleveland streets had been paved and rival street-car companies vied for passengers ™ pennies. How could a half-deaf, lisping girl rise from the obscurity of the Canadian backwoods to walk among the celebrated "400"? Maybe the rumors were true. This woman had made a deal with the Devil, giving her sway over men. Dr. Leroy Shippen Chadwick, a widower starved for companionship, had thus been taken in by a wily old whore with hypnotic powers. 

The couple was married in February 1897. They visited Windsor, Ontario, where Cassie “ the former Mrs. C.L. Hoover “ was introduced to Leroy ™s daughter, Darla Chadwick, who was attending boarding school in Canada. On the Sunday following their return west, Leroy dropped the bomb on the Cleveland "400." As one narrator later described it, "Dr. Chadwick appeared at church and with him was his wife.... His friends could not understand it, but the subject of his marriage was never mentioned. They took their curiosity home with them and smothered it in the culture to which they had been reared." Breaking the silence years later, a Euclid Avenue denizen told how the new Mrs. Chadwick had squeezed what was left from poor old Leroy ™s broken heart. "Chadwick was our family physician," man said. "He was the closest friend of our family, until he married this woman. At the time, he was a struggling doctor, who ™d almost been ruined by poor business dealings and the settling of his wife ™s estate. He was in much trouble over tangled finances when he got married. Afterward, we saw him only occasionally. The marriage, we all in the old circle supposed, was a sort of business arrangement." 

Indeed, Leroy Chadwick sought neither companionship nor sexual favors from the woman he called Madame Hoover. Leroy was broke, he confessed to Madame, and he had no plan for what he ™d do once the news came out. Madame Hoover assured her friend “ who occasionally visited because her massages helped him with his severe back pain “ that she could solve his money problems. All Leroy had to do was marry her and give her control of the estate. She ™d mingle the few funds Leroy had left with her own considerable wealth and both of them would prosper. Leroy said sure. As long he continued receiving his monthly stipend, he didn ™t care where the money came from.  

For Christmas 1900, Leroy and Cassie ™s third Christmas together as a married couple, she insisted they leave the house early for a long evening of dinner, a musical at the Lyric Opera House, and a carriage ride afterward. Poor Leroy was all but tuckered out when he finally made it back to 8214 Euclid “ to a house he hardly recognized. "This is my Christmas present to you," she announced. As a correspondent noted, "The old furnishings of the house had been torn out and the trappings were now more elegant than they had ever been." The windows were now framed by heavy drapes of a burgundy shade with gold trim. There were six matching Watteau cabinets, piled with chinaware and knick-knacks. 

There were miniatures galore. Cassie had changed the carpets to Persian rugs. She ™d bought oil paintings and wood-carvings and statues. She had changed the fixtures in the bathroom and hung electric lights. "Merry Christmas!" Cassie said again, jolting Leroy with a jab to the ribs.  

His father had built the house on a purposefully modest plan. The Chadwicks were not the ostentatious sort. Even the polished towers of the exquisitely preserved pipe organ, an antique costing $9,000 that Cassie thought sure would get a rise out of her husband, could not relieve the shock gripping Leroy ™s befogged mind. The once plain, roomy halls of the Chadwick house were stuffed to overflowing. It had been transformed in a single evening into the most baroque of curio shops. The eye found no rest amid the clutter, each mound spilling into the next. 

Among the goods noted by Cassie ™s visitors: "a plaster cast of a Negro boy holding a card tray," "a sofa with sealskin upholstery," "a huge oil painting of pigs drinking from a trough." Madame ™s personal jewelry chest contained eight drawers, brimming with pearls and diamond oddities worth at least $100,000. 

Guests also noted her affection for clocks, as evidenced by a sampling of clocks in every form, big and small, including novelty clocks, like the fire engine that not only displayed the time but also boasted fully working bells, wheels, and a whistle. In her several Watteau cabinets, Cassie kept 5-cent figurines crowded elbow to rib with lavishly detailed porcelain miniatures. In one corner stood a glass chair, shaped like a seashell; on the opposite side of the room, a "musical chair" played a tune whenever a guest sat down. 

During Cassie ™s trial in 1905, an anonymous female writer persuaded the deputies guarding the Chadwick home to turn their backs for a couple of hours. In a breathless report to readers across the Midwest, the woman described what she found inside. "There was a mite of a monkey, a fairy in a seashell, and a pair of tiny Indian shoes. They might have cost 10 cents each. They might have cost a small fortune. Across the room, another handsome cabinet. Inside stood an array of marble statues about eight inches high. They were so nearly alike and there were so many of them they might have been bought by the hundred." 

In what was once a roomy parlor, Cassie had installed a grand piano. Just behind the instrument there glared "the largest oil painting in the house." The visitor complained, "The picture was so large and the room so small that I couldn ™t get far enough from it to make out what it represented. There were a lot of men in it. To the right of this gargantuan scene, a mite of a painting depicted the finding of baby Moses in the bulrushes. To the left, a bull fight had been carved into a plank of ivory “ there slouched the wounded bull, the frenzied horses, the cheering crowd, all in ivory. Even the drops of blood showed, all in a scene no more than two feet long by 16 inches high." 

Mr. Carnegie, Please
Two years after Leroy received his heart-attack of a Christmas gift, Cassie was experiencing some pains of her own. She ™d stretched the Chadwick credit as far as it would go. Leroy was enjoying the latest leg of a European tour he ™d begun shortly after that fateful Christmas night. He was safely tucked away in a Paris hotel, but unless Cassie kept paying the bills, they ™d all end up in the poor house. So in the spring of 1902, Cassie engaged an attorney named Virgil P. Kline to accompany her to New York City. Mr. Kline agreed to assist Mrs. Chadwick on a purely personal basis, his professional duties being taken up with his position as "the leading lawyer of Ohio and attorney for the Standard Oil Company," in the words of a regional history. Cassie told Kline she was the niece of Frederick Mason, who worked in Andrew Carnegie ™s financial organization. Uncle Frederick had died, though, and Mr. Carnegie now held Cassie ™s inheritance in a trust as instructed by Mason ™s will. That ™s where they were headed now, to Carnegie ™s home at Fifth Avenue and 91st Street, Manhattan. Knowing the great man ™s reputation for privacy, Kline agreed to wait in the carriage until Cassie had okayed their appointment. 

After some 20 minutes, Kline saw his companion return, aflush with excitement. She had been expecting about $7.5 million in the trust fund. But Mr. Carnegie had added a considerable amount of securities and had grown the stake to nearly $11 million!  

Hopping into the carriage with more than her usual sleekness of foot, Cassie nearly spilled the contents of a box onto Kline ™s lap; he saw the box contained notes on the Caledonia Railroad of Scotland and a deed of trust signed by Andrew Carnegie. The deed alone was for the amount of $10,246,000! Cassie shivered throughout the ride back to their hotel, several times taking Kline by the arm and wetting his sleeve with her tears. 

Before they parted that evening, she had shared a secret with Virgil Kline that she ™d never told anyone. "She was not the niece of Frederick Mason, but the natural daughter of Mr. Carnegie himself. This great wealth was given to her that the ˜Steel King ™ might do justice to her." Cassie inquired about what bankers in Cleveland might be trusted. Kline agreed to make her personal introduction to Mr. Iri Reynolds, president of Wade Park Bank. 

After a fairly lengthy interview, in which Cassie grilled Mr. Reynolds about his bank ™s history and lending practices, she took him into her confidence. "I can ™t speak my father ™s name, but you ™ve heard of him." She allowed him to glimpse the edge of the deed she held, signed Carnegie. She explained her shock to learn from her Uncle Fred that her parent was seated so highly. And she had been even more shocked when he bestowed on her a set of Caledonia Railroad bonds. 

It was clear to Iri Reynolds that the woman before him was no spoiled brat, slurping up daddy ™s money. She conducted herself with dignity; and she spoke intelligently of the methods of finance, asking probing questions about the bank ™s own investment portfolio. The attorney who recommended her, Virgil Kline, had praised Cassie ™s knowledge of ancient Greece, one of Kline ™s philological passions. The two of them had talked about Greek history and archaeological curiosities for hours. Cassie had exhibited "abstruse information" that Kline had seldom encountered outside the university, and had never seen in a woman. 

Against the Caledonia bonds that Mrs. Chadwick sealed inside an envelope, Iri Reynolds let her have a $30,000 line of credit for expenses. She handed him the envelope and the deposit slip which she ™d completed during their conversation. Reynolds felt his hand tremble, torn as he was between doing the proper, bankerly thing “ verifying the documents “ and doing the thing Mrs. Chadwick clearly expected him to do “ shake her hand and wish her good day. 

**** 

The men who loaned Cassie money were amply repaid. For a $25,000 loan, given three months to repay, she ™d toss in $5,000 for interest and fees. Those spiked interest rates didn ™t usually accrue at the First National. But Cassie was a special case. By one accounting, on some $750,000 she borrowed from Cleveland banks, Cassie paid $233,000 in fees and interest, as she began chasing her bad loans by getting loans at new institutions. At trial, despite her notoriety for multiple acts of fraud-by-hypnosis, Mrs. Chadwick was charged with only one crime. The one would symbolically stand in for all the others. According to the charge, Mrs. Chadwick had bankrupted the Citizens National Bank of Oberlin, a tiny operation near Oberlin College, by persuading the bank ™s president, one Charles T. Beckwith, to act as her business manager. Beckwith had paid off debts that Cassie Chadwick made at other banks during her legendary shopping expeditions, using more than $100,000 of his own funds as well as the banks ™ money.  

After hearing from Iri Reynolds that Cassie held $11 million in notes in a Cleveland bank “ and after hearing, "unofficially," who Cassie ™s father was “ Beckwith talked his clerk A.B. Spear into joining the speculation. Some bankers just can ™t keep a secret. Both men received a salary of $10,000 a year as co-managers of the Chadwick estate. The salaries were nothing, Beckwith and Spear told each other, compared to what they ™d reap once the Carnegie funds came under their full control. The Oberlin Bank capitalized at $60,000, was but a rowboat scooting them toward a yacht. 

The Sad Tale of Joe Lamb
The chorus of Cassie ™s wretched deeds told of a life spent a step ahead of her latest lie. She had fallen out with her sister Alice when she was caught, as Elizabeth Bigley, having pawned Alice ™s new furniture for $300. Of course the furniture wasn ™t worth more than $100, but Elizabeth had pawned it to three different brokers. In 1882, she was married as Lydia Springsteen to a Cleveland doctor. 

Though William Springsteen was a particularly down-and-out and drunken doctor, seeing a few patients in his back-stair walkup, he nevertheless made good pickings for Elizabeth as she learned a trade more satisfying and lucrative than prostitution, namely fraud. The marriage lasted but 12 days before Springsteen was faced with a pile of bills. "You said your rich Irish relatives sent you all those presents!" he railed. When the three pawnbrokers came round, each with a claim to Alice York ™s furniture and a charge against Elizabeth Bigley, Springsteen sent his little woman packing. 

It was said that Cassie spent most of the year 1883 in convalescence with a kindly Lutheran family in Erie, Pennsylvania. She was calling herself Mazie Bagley. To gain the couple ™s aid, she ™d performed a trick she learned in the Toronto train stations, slicing her gums with a razor and fainting, somewhere very near an obviously good Samaritan. Mazie, a "young heiress," promised to pay her hosts back with interest once she reached Cleveland. 

However, as the good folks of Erie learned, Mazie Bagley has passed peacefully away, putting her full trust in God, at 2:30 o ™clock on March 27, 1884. Poor Mazie ™s remains were taken to their native home in Canada for interment and were followed to their last resting place by a large and sorrowing concourse of friends.Elizabeth couldn ™t resist a parting shot in a less cultured voice. 

I thought you had heard. She was a splendid girl, but unfortunately weakminded. 

However, of all the tales resounding through the streets of Cleveland during her celebrated trial, the most revealing involved a poor man named Lamb and an ambitious lawyer who branded a woman for life. 

(The Cassie Chadwick story will conclude in the November/December issue of The White Paper.) 

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