Greed in the Gilded Age (The Brilliant Con of Cassie Chadwick) - William Elliott Hazelgrove

This 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.