Thank you, and I agree! This is by far my favorite find from my research days, but it's always the weird little stories about people who have been forgotten that are the most interesting. Houdini was such an amazing character whose notoriety still lives on today, and his correspondence is fascinating. He wrote back and forth with many famous people, and he kept boxes and boxes of letters, so it's easy to get lost and focus on the obvious. Anyone would have looked at that letter and thought it was just another crazy person trying to solicit him for money, which was not uncommon. There was just something about this whole episode that triggered my instincts to dig deeper, and it stayed in the back of my mind when I opened up the box with his newspaper clippings a couple days later and found the article about her willing that money.
It's funny you say that about movies and unbelievable books. When I first posted this to HistoryBuff a couple years ago, it picked up some traction on Reddit and a researcher from a series on the Travel channel contacted me to get my sources so they could do an episode on it. I don't know what ever came of it.
I've known a couple of extreme compulsive liars who would totally pull something like this off if they could, but they're much easier to out now that Google is a thing and it's much harder to change your identity or disappear. I imagine that Eleanor was a sad, deeply insecure person who was born into unfortunate circumstances, as she was poor and somehow orphaned or abandoned, and just wanted to be someone. She was basically pimped out by her adoptive family to her much older uncle, and he was an abusive jerk. I think she probably had Munchausen's by proxy and got a taste for the sympathy she got from her husband's death. I didn't write about this, but apparently her son was an abusive wife-beater too. I got the impression that she was very beautiful in her younger days, and she seemed to be pretty smart. She must have been an insanely brilliant manipulator to have pulled the wool over Houdini's eyes, because he was like, next level genius. Anyway, I've ranted for a while now, but thank you for reading and taking interest in it!
I too like digging into history especially post Civil War-turn of the 20th century history, as I am a big history nut as well, along with being a lifelong baseball historian since a young age, I just didn't realize it. The stories back then as pro baseball really took off starting in 1871, and then the two Major Leagues combined in 1901, that time was also very unbelievable as well. Just a few quick ones: Ed Delahanty, one the games best hitters up to 1903, got drunk threatened the train passengers, was forced to walk the rest of the way home, feel into the bottom of a ravine and drowned. Rube Waddell was one of the best left handed pitchers of the game, ever since the early 1900s, couldn't keep his attention well was always distracted by bell chimes, would literally chase after a fire engine if he saw one or heard it (did it a few times in the middle of the game), hurt himself the night before his first World Series start as a pitcher wrestling a teammate over a hat. He died in a flood where he was helping countless people, he was warned to quit swimming after and saving people I believe in a flood in Arkansas, and wound up drowning. Waddell was like a real life Forrest Gump, and that is only a few that I know of I can't imagine what else is out there in legend and folklore. We call a job today a "living" when it is more of a "doing." We can find them usually no problem, we don't take them that serious at all, and many people switch them wholesale. Post-reconstruction even up to the 1970's and 80's when people had a job they kept it and did not move. Turn of the century and before their jobs were quite often literal "livings," the impression I get at least. BTW that was my first thought in reading this is that it really reads like one of their stories about older haunts, or museum articles or maybe the correspondence letter to Houdini was the museum. I have seen a lot of those episodes and it really does qualify in my book as a great story to tell. It almost seems like the story that keeps on giving because it sounds like to me each time you dug a little you found more and more compelling facts, accounts of the people involved and the possible sickness that plagued these people due to past horrid abuse.
Have you ever written about these lesser-known stories? They're really interesting, and the chime one is hilarious (despite the gruesome ending)! I think more people should write mini-biographies of the people that only make it to footnotes in history books. I don't know how famous these people were because I can probably count all of the athletes I know anything about on two hands, but these are the stories that add flavor.
Yes I really have, need to get it done, that was actually the initial of being here was to leave stories like that for posterity to whoever would want to hear them. All of those players were mega stars back then in the early 1900's, all are in the Baseball Hall of Fame based on their achievements alone. Lol, Ken Burns did a pretty good job on a few of them here:
