The Adventures of a Victorian con Woman : The Life and Crimes of Mrs Gordon Baillie.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Davis, Mick.

Contributor:

Lassman, David.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Swindlers and swindling--Great Britain--Biography.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (370 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Other Title:

Adventures of a Victorian Con Woman

Place of Publication:

Havertown : Pen & Sword Books Limited, 2021.

Summary:

The first full-length account of the master swindler and charming con-artist Mrs Gordon Baillie who became one of the most notorious female criminals of the Victorian Age.The story of Mrs. Gordon Baillie is stranger than anything to be met with in the field of fiction.Mrs. Gordon Baillie, known throughout her life as Annie, was born in the direst poverty in the small Scottish fishing town of Peterhead in 1848. Illegitimate and illiterate, her beauty and intelligence nevertheless enabled her to overcome her circumstances and become a charming and wealthy socialite living a life of luxury while raising money for worthy causes and charitable works.Behind her supposed perfect and contented life, however, lay one of the most notorious and compulsive swindlers of the Victorian Age. Her fraudulent fundraising and larger-than-life schemes played out across four decades and three continents, and involved land owners, crofters, aristocrats, politicians, bankers, socialist revolutionaries, operatic stars, and the cultural icons of the day.She became mistress to a rich aristocrat, married a world-renowned male opera singer and later took as a lover a vicar's son with anarchist tendencies. For most of her 'career' she kept one step ahead of the law and her nemesis, Inspector Henry Marshall of Scotland Yard, but finally becoming undone through her own compulsion for petty theft, despite her amassed fortune.During her life she used more than 40 aliases, produced four children and spent her way through millions in ill-gotten wealth. But at the turn of the twentieth century, her notoriety was such that she took refuge in America and disappeared from history.

Contents:

Cover

Book Title

Copyright

Contents

Introduction

Part I 1848-1872

Chapter 1 Origins(1848-68)

Chapter 2 A Growing Reputation (1868-70)

Chapter 3 A Tale of Two Capitals (1871)

Chapter 4 A European Sojourn (Dec 1871-Sept 1872)

Chapter 5 The Prodigal Daughter (Sept-Oct 1872)

Chapter 6 A Bad Press (Oct-Nov 1872)

Chapter 7 The Trial (Dec 1872)

Part II: 1873-1884

Chapter 8 The Willing Victim (1873-75)

Chapter 9 A Scottish Retreat (1876)

Chapter 10 The Road to Matrimony (1876)

Chapter 11 America! (1877)

Chapter 12 Mrs Ogilvie-Whyte (1878-83)

Chapter 13 Theatrical Aspirations (1884)

Part III: 1884-1888

Chapter 14 The Skye Crofters &amp

the Revolt of 1884

Chapter 15 A Worthy Cause (Nov-Dec 1884)

Plate section

Chapter 16 Recollections (Nov-Dec 1884)

Chapter 17 The Crofters' Friend ( Jan 1885-Apr 1886)

Chapter 18 Percy Frost &amp

the Bebros (May 1886)

Chapter 19 New Zealand (Nov 1886-Apr 1887)

Chapter 20 Australia (May-Jul 1887)

Chapter 21 Tasmania and After ( July-Nov 1887)

Chapter 22 Familiar Territory (1888)

Part IV: Jan-Dec 1888

Chapter 23 The Net Closes (Feb-May 1888)

Chapter 24 An Inspector Calls ( Jun 1888)

Chapter 25 The Police Court ( Jul-Sept 1888)

Chapter 26 The Reckoning (Oct 1888)

Part V: 1889-1903

Chapter 27 A Glimpse of Freedom! (1891)

Chapter 28 Oh Dear! Oh Dear! (May 1894)

Chapter 29 A Sad Ending (1894-1903)

Chapter 30 Afterword

Index

Back Cover.

Notes:

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

9781526764898

152676489X

9781526764874

1526764873

OCLC:

1314615606