Description
Book SynopsisThis is a tale of greed, opulence, chicanery, and the Gilded Age hope and belief that a pot of gold was just around the corner.
At a time when women did not even have the vote, Cassie Chadwick managed to get millions of dollars in unsecured loans from American banks willing to lend on a rumor that she was the illegitimate child of Andrew Carnegie. It is an amazing con and shows the brilliance of the criminal mind that was Elizabeth Bigley and the desperation to have it all at a time when easy money and fabulous wealth seduced rational people into flights of fancy that would result in the ruin of a banking system, destruction of reputations and lives and the embarrassment that a woman who had changed her name no less than three times had taken the wealthiest rung of society for a ride. The con of Cassie Chadwick is a cautionary tale of easy money, avarice, and the belief there is something better over the next hill.
Table of ContentsA Note to the Reader
Prologue
Gilded Age
Chapter 1: The Trial of the Century
Chapter 2: The Chase
Chapter 3: The Immigrants
Chapter 4: A Genteel Victorian Twist
Chapter 5: The Cauldron of Greed
Chapter 6: The Tombs
Chapter 7: Mrs. Bastado
Chapter 8: The High Priestess of Fraudulent Finance
Chapter 9: Lady Liberty
Chapter 10: The Good Doctor
Chapter 11: Madame DeVere
Chapter 12: The Bank Failure
Chapter 13: The Homestead
Chapter 14: The Gold Standard
Chapter 15: The Carnegie Subpoena
Chapter 16: The Doctor and His Wife
Chapter 17: The Queen of Cleveland
Chapter 18: The Broken Man
Chapter 19: Setting the Hook
Chapter 20: The Trial of the Century Begins
Chapter 21: The Bait
Chapter 22: Survival of the Fittest
Chapter 23: The Switch
Chapter 24: The Work of a School Boy
Chapter 25: The Good Pastor
Chapter 26: Geronimo
Chapter 27: Cashing In
Chapter 28: A Jury of Farmers
Chapter 29: Amazing Times
Chapter 30: A Conspiracy to Defraud
Chapter 31: The Newton Loan
Chapter 32: Closing Arguments
Chapter 33: The Verdict
Chapter 34: The Sentence
Chapter 35: The Brilliant Con of Cassie Chadwick
