Speaker 1: Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Zeren Elizabeth Zaren.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what girl? How are you doing? Pretty good?
Speaker 4: Are you feeling?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 5: I got like I said always, I'm upright and taking nourishment.
Speaker 5: I'm on the right side of the grass. I got
Speaker 5: nothing plain about.
Speaker 4: Above ground and getting paid. No, girl, that's right, that
Speaker 4: is right.
Speaker 6: Uh, do you know what it's ridiculous?
Speaker 5: I do tell me this one. I think you might
Speaker 5: like because that has to do with animals, and I know
Speaker 5: you like the animals. Animals, So you know Coco the Gorilla, right,
Speaker 5: not personally, well, you know, Cocoa the Gorilla could speak
Speaker 5: with sign language, yes, right, and they like they would
Speaker 5: ask and then Coco Guerrilla to respond and they go
Speaker 5: back and forth and have conversations in sign language. Well,
Speaker 5: Coco the Gorilla wasn't the only ape that we've taught
Speaker 5: sign language in fact, since like nineteen sixties, so you're
Speaker 5: talking decades, like six six decades of teaching sign language
Speaker 5: to apes. There's one thing that they have never ever
Speaker 5: done in sign language.
Speaker 3: You know what that is? Ask a question.
Speaker 4: Apes have never asked us a question.
Speaker 5: We ask them questions, they answer them, They express themselves.
Speaker 5: They talk about their emotions, they talk about their inner reality,
Speaker 5: they talk about their desires, their hopes, like Cocoa wants
Speaker 5: a kitten. I mean they say all this stuff, Coco sad.
Speaker 4: But wait, so they don't give a tinker's damn about us.
Speaker 3: And it's not even that where you take it, But
Speaker 3: it's the idea that they don't formulate in terms of
Speaker 3: questioning reality. They accept reality as it is and comment
Speaker 3: on it. So this may suggest an animal form of
Speaker 3: consciousness that it just is and you can interact with reality,
Speaker 3: but they don't question it. And this may be the
Speaker 3: not that animals don't think, but they don't think the
Speaker 3: way we think. And this is actually what separates us
Speaker 3: from the animals. Is not just our opposable thumbs, but
Speaker 3: the fact that we ask questions. Isn't that wild? That
Speaker 3: is wild? And I just think that's kind of ridiculous
Speaker 3: in a light scientific.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but that's really interesting here. I'm like, you don't
Speaker 4: care about me, Coco. I feel like this is kind
Speaker 4: of a one sided relationship, except.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I got you another Coco, you love me?
Speaker 6: Now?
Speaker 4: Do you want to know what else is ridiculous? I
Speaker 4: do a gentleman's tiger.
Speaker 3: Is that a euphemism?
Speaker 4: You mean me? This is Ridiculous Crime, A podcast about
Speaker 4: absurd and outrageous capers, heists and cons. It's always ninety
Speaker 4: nine percent murder free and one hundred percent ridiculous.
Speaker 3: Oh you damn right.
Speaker 4: The Scots and the Brits, they sure know how to
Speaker 4: name something that's true.
Speaker 3: Oh my goodness, I'll give it to them like that,
Speaker 3: even if it's silly.
Speaker 2: It's so.
Speaker 4: Scotland has a tradition of giving amazing names to the
Speaker 4: gritter trucks that they used to clear the roads of ice,
Speaker 4: and so it all started. They were letting school kids
Speaker 4: name them, and then during COVID they moved the naming
Speaker 4: pole online. Here are some of the best ones thus far. Sleetwood,
Speaker 4: Mac Good Spready van Halen, Nice, sweet child, O'Brien, You're
Speaker 4: a blizzard Harry Carrie, Bradthaw Okay, Brinstone, plowboy like that,
Speaker 4: buzz Ice clear and clever, Betty white out Yes, Sir,
Speaker 4: David Atton Burr, Gritney Spears and picture snowing me, snowing you.
Speaker 3: I like the Britney spears I imagined her and Gritty
Speaker 3: the had a child and named.
Speaker 4: It and it's a truck exactly. So this is like
Speaker 4: the Scouts are an incredibly language savvy popular.
Speaker 3: Oh yes, and their insults are always beautiful.
Speaker 4: And then there was that auto sub used by the
Speaker 4: UK National Oceanography Center that in twenty sixteen was allowed
Speaker 4: to be named by the public and the poll's clear
Speaker 4: winner was body mcboat face.
Speaker 3: That's what I was thinking of.
Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, so that's a classic. It's been often mimicked.
Speaker 4: The proprietor of some of the best social media accounts,
Speaker 4: the Orkney Library.
Speaker 2: I don't know if you.
Speaker 3: Followed I'm familiar, made me familiar.
Speaker 2: They named a.
Speaker 4: Boat that they used to take books out to remote
Speaker 4: islands bookie mcbook face good and so you know it's
Speaker 4: the repetition that hooks yet.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so let's go back.
Speaker 4: In history a little bit.
Speaker 3: I loved doing it, or a lot bit y oh,
Speaker 3: I really loved that.
Speaker 4: I remember a while back I told you about Gregor
Speaker 4: McGregor cod I got a mcgridg got I forget the
Speaker 4: repetition of it. So he was a Scottish adventurer, con artist.
Speaker 4: He tried to get investors in England. Scotland France to
Speaker 4: get on board of the fake country that he said
Speaker 4: he was establishing, and that was in the early eighteen
Speaker 4: hundreds mix South of Marya. Yeah, yeah, that guy Mosquito Coast.
Speaker 3: And he breaks the Scottish bank.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, pretty much like he just it was. It's horrible.
Speaker 4: So about fifty or so years after Gregor MacGregor was
Speaker 4: on the scene, another repetitive name con man emerged in Scotland.
Speaker 4: This one called himself Lord Gordon Gordon.
Speaker 3: Not Goon, Lord Gordon Gordon Botros Gordon from him is
Speaker 3: Bold Bold flavors with that name.
Speaker 4: So that's the guy I want to tell you about
Speaker 4: today and is with many of our con artists. His
Speaker 4: origin story is murky, so like some say that he
Speaker 4: was the illegitimate child of the son of a preacher
Speaker 4: man and his family's made. There's also the narrative that
Speaker 4: he grew up in an upper middle class family, but
Speaker 4: from childhood always talked about how he wished he was
Speaker 4: super wealthy and a member of nobility. We hear that
Speaker 4: in background information on some of these con artists that
Speaker 4: they like always wanted to be royalty or famous or
Speaker 4: something like I can't and you did that but did
Speaker 4: you know anyone who did that? My sister, Oh, really,
Speaker 4: she wanted to be royalty.
Speaker 5: She wanted she still has. He's still like a royal watcher.
Speaker 5: And she's like into like the British royalty and all that. Yeah,
Speaker 5: also not just the Brits, like if you are a
Speaker 5: royal of any world or any land or well, I
Speaker 5: guess she's like a fan. She just loves the idea
Speaker 5: of royalty shoes. She would be like princess whatever in
Speaker 5: her made up name.
Speaker 4: She should have been born to it.
Speaker 5: She really should be like I was over there, just
Speaker 5: a man of the people. From the get really frustrated
Speaker 5: her that.
Speaker 4: You know, I just I never knew anyone who did
Speaker 4: come across these things.
Speaker 3: That's actually far more common.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I met people in college. I tell them my sister,
Speaker 3: they're like my brother.
Speaker 4: I would have had to have friends find out about
Speaker 4: those things. So the sort of consensus is that he
Speaker 4: came from a very cultured family, and his speech, his accent,
Speaker 4: knowledge of social customs that suggested that he'd gone to
Speaker 4: like boarding school.
Speaker 3: Or had to pull off that world.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and he it must have.
Speaker 4: Been somewhat familiar with British upper class life. He was
Speaker 4: fluent in French, like maybe a couple other languages. He
Speaker 4: had this cultivated understanding of aristocratic genealogy, which is very convoluted,
Speaker 4: the clan histories and estate management. So these really niche
Speaker 4: things about Scottish nobility and it doesn't reveal his origins,
Speaker 4: but it reflects the type of environment in which he
Speaker 4: was educated or trained. The people who interacted with him
Speaker 4: described his speech as quote, refined English with a slight
Speaker 4: Scottish intonation, gentlemanly but indistinctly local.
Speaker 5: Now did the I don't know this did Did the
Speaker 5: upper class Scots, after their interaction and melding with the English,
Speaker 5: tried to have English accents with a slight Scottish lilt?
Speaker 5: Or is it rare for someone like him to have
Speaker 5: a English accent?
Speaker 4: I need to know when you get into because so
Speaker 4: many English who come in and taken the higher that
Speaker 4: like the hierarchy of being landed in. The Edinburgh accent
Speaker 4: is much softer and more English than like the you know,
Speaker 4: the Luigi to speak, or further up into the Highlands
Speaker 4: and then closer you get to like the Orkney's like
Speaker 4: forget it anyway, So yeah, there is that influence though,
Speaker 4: and I think it has a lot to do with
Speaker 4: who's owning that land and from whence they came. So
Speaker 4: there he is. There's those that believe he was born
Speaker 4: Hubert Campbell Smith. Sometime between eighteen thirty five and eighteen
Speaker 4: forty he floated the idea to some that he had
Speaker 4: served as a lieutenant or lieutenant in a Scottish regiment
Speaker 4: in India ins and he may have also gotten a
Speaker 4: job at a commercial house as a young man, but
Speaker 4: he was unhappy with the salary so he quit. Like
Speaker 4: who's to say, only Lord Gordon Gordon. These are the
Speaker 4: other aliases that are associated with him, Herbert or Hubert Hamilton,
Speaker 4: Lord Glen Cairn, George Gordon, George Herbert Gordon, John Herbert,
Speaker 4: Charles Gordon. It's like he's got four options, yet he
Speaker 4: just slips them all back and forth.
Speaker 3: Just think it's like a Rubik's cube of names.
Speaker 4: Well, I'm just thinking, like the refrigerator poetry, but he's
Speaker 4: only got four pieces. She's just gonna slide around. So
Speaker 4: summer of eighteen sixty eight, dude rolls up to Edinburgh.
Speaker 4: He's like, hey, guys, the name's Hamilton, and I'm a normal,
Speaker 4: boring guy. According to the Manitoba Historical Society quote, no
Speaker 4: one knew anything of him, and there was much surmising
Speaker 4: as to who he was. But as he paid his bills, punctually,
Speaker 4: lived quietly, and had the manners of a gentleman, no
Speaker 4: one could find anything against his character or conduct. Normal guy,
Speaker 4: boring dude. So off he went when the summer ended by,
Speaker 4: and then he showed up again the next summer, summer
Speaker 4: of sixty nine in Edinburgh, and only this time he
Speaker 4: was calling himself Lord glen Cairn, a pile of rocks,
Speaker 4: pyle of rocks. So he had a story that would
Speaker 4: like kind of make sense though. So he was the
Speaker 4: same guy, but a lot had happened to him. It's
Speaker 4: a crazy year, you guys, so he told He told
Speaker 4: people that his grandpa had left money to him, tons
Speaker 4: of money, but he could only access said money if
Speaker 4: he accepted the title of glen Cairn when he reached
Speaker 4: the age of twenty seven and the old curse of
Speaker 4: twenty seven. Do you know how many musicians are in
Speaker 4: the twenty seven club?
Speaker 3: It's not a few, it's all yeah.
Speaker 4: Robert Johnson, the og Yeah, one of the first Ryan Jones,
Speaker 4: Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, pig Pen from The
Speaker 4: Grateful Dead, Kurt Cobain, Amy Winehouse, Christin Faff the bass
Speaker 4: player for M some other kind of lesser known musicians anyway, how.
Speaker 5: Else other stars as well, not just musicians, just not
Speaker 5: just limited. But it's most of the musicians you made
Speaker 5: it famous, Yeah, Keith Ledger missed it by like a
Speaker 5: few months.
Speaker 3: And then at twenty eight.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, so twenty seven is big for old glen
Speaker 4: Cairn here, but not hopefully he makes it he spoiler alert,
Speaker 4: he does so. Our boy Gordon Squared aka the Glencarn
Speaker 4: he was just about to turn twenty seven. He's like,
Speaker 4: I hope I make it, you guys. According to him,
Speaker 4: his agents in London were just finishing up the paperwork
Speaker 4: on the whole inheritance thing. In just a few months
Speaker 4: time he would officially be named heir to his grandfather
Speaker 4: and the Earldom of glen Cairn. And he didn't elaborate
Speaker 4: about this or tell people what land holdings this might involve.
Speaker 4: He got really vague about that.
Speaker 3: If it's an earldom former Viking lands, Elizabeth.
Speaker 4: I think so, as Skull because of the Yeah, so
Speaker 4: he didn't talk hard numbers about his inheritance, just that
Speaker 4: the amount was like positively eyewatering.
Speaker 3: There's a castle or two.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's just I couldn't even begin so constructed credibility
Speaker 4: by dressing impeccably in the style of a young landed gentleman.
Speaker 3: They say, dressed like that all you want to be.
Speaker 4: That's so true. Every single time he had this exaggerated
Speaker 4: but really informed knowledge of clan histories. Like I said,
Speaker 4: he spoke with authority when it came to a state's
Speaker 4: rents tenants. He was a huge tipper and he'd make
Speaker 4: all these like small charitable gestures far yeah, and always
Speaker 4: with cash. So it makes it seem like there's a
Speaker 4: lot more where that came from. And I just spend
Speaker 4: this jump change. And he had someone with him at
Speaker 4: the time. He employed a young valet or valet as
Speaker 4: they would have said. There are a handful of articles
Speaker 4: about Gordo that say this type of valet was referred
Speaker 4: to as a quote gentleman's tiger at the time. Oh
Speaker 4: and when I researched the term, the only place I
Speaker 4: found it come up in reference to a valet is
Speaker 4: in those same articles, I think, so it's nowhere else.
Speaker 4: So like, who's started this notion? I feel like one
Speaker 4: of these sources.
Speaker 2: Made it up and the rest ran with it because
Speaker 2: by the tail.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's nowhere else do I see anything about a
Speaker 4: valet being called a gentleman's Like you go to search
Speaker 4: it in Gentleman's Tiger and it comes up with like
Speaker 4: signet rings with a tiger eye, and so you'd start
Speaker 4: eliminating you know, ring and jewelry and stone and then
Speaker 4: add in valet and it's like, no, only these articles
Speaker 4: makes no sense. I mean, it's badass, don't get me wrong,
Speaker 4: I'm with it, but it just makes it makes no
Speaker 4: sense a gentleman's tiger.
Speaker 3: Like, how could a gentleman so?
Speaker 4: According to historian W. A. Crawfet Gordon, Gordon kept this
Speaker 4: boy quote dressed in buckskin breeches, long boots, blue coat
Speaker 4: with gilt buttons, and an immense cockade upon his hat,
Speaker 4: which in Great Britain denotes that his master holds a
Speaker 4: commission under the sovereign. That's an outfit.
Speaker 3: He's close to the king with his hat, and he's
Speaker 3: close to the colonies with his pants.
Speaker 4: That's that's when people knew how to dress Sarah, I'm
Speaker 4: telling you, or how to dress their tigers. A cockade,
Speaker 4: by the way, is a knot of ribbons. I imagined
Speaker 4: it to be like a huge plume of feathers.
Speaker 3: That's what kind of going with a pile.
Speaker 4: It's like a round, pleated circle of ribbon. Still an
Speaker 4: amazing outfit. It's very Andre three thousand. I could see
Speaker 4: the outfit anyway. So there's Lord glen Cairn just lording
Speaker 4: it up in Edinburgh. He's swanning around with his gentleman's tiger,
Speaker 4: is cozied up to a well to do Scottish clergyman
Speaker 4: named mister Simpsons.
Speaker 3: Clergyman.
Speaker 4: Yes, mister Simpson, mister Bartholomew Simpson. No, it's not his
Speaker 4: first name. We don't know what it is, just Simpson. No,
Speaker 4: no for his name. So this was the move though,
Speaker 4: Like you get a member of the clergy with some
Speaker 4: means and you get close to him and he's your
Speaker 4: opening into society. Like you can get you in anywhere
Speaker 4: and people trust you because they trust him.
Speaker 3: Smart move somebody to go.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's like you paler around with Father Brown.
Speaker 6: You're good.
Speaker 3: The Lord and the King that's right, gotcha, And so The.
Speaker 4: New York Times described this as such quote In England,
Speaker 4: persons who are termed confident swingers, which like again a
Speaker 4: gentleman's tiger and a confidence swinger, like what I feel
Speaker 4: like this is something a little.
Speaker 3: Off English private school, right boys school.
Speaker 4: Jeez, so very quote very often worm their way into
Speaker 4: the books of the tradesmen through the agency of clergymen.
Speaker 4: Gordon made very liberal use of this plan. There's this website,
Speaker 4: hoaxes dot org, which I'm like, did you start the
Speaker 4: whole gentleman's tiger thing? They said, quote I tried to
Speaker 4: find like who who at hoaxes dot org wrote this
Speaker 4: show yourself powards no no bylines quote. His basic method
Speaker 4: of operation was the foot in the door technique. He
Speaker 4: would make small requests of people to gain their trust,
Speaker 4: and then he gradually increased the size of his requests,
Speaker 4: and having gained the trust of a person, he would
Speaker 4: use them as a reference to gain the trust of
Speaker 4: other possible victims.
Speaker 5: Con Men have taught us that if you want to
Speaker 5: earn someone's trust, ask them to do you a favor,
Speaker 5: and then they feel like somehow tied to.
Speaker 4: Exactly so now Glenn Kern, and he's pals with He's
Speaker 4: got this network of fat cats that he's hanging out
Speaker 4: and through them and Simpson, he's able to establish credit
Speaker 4: with jewelers both in Edinburgh and London.
Speaker 3: Okay, score.
Speaker 4: So he was introduced as Lord Glen Cairn to the
Speaker 4: Edinburgh jewelers Marshall and Company. And this was the place
Speaker 4: at the time for metals and gems. It was like
Speaker 4: the height of fashion.
Speaker 5: I was wondering if that' say this sound familiar. I
Speaker 5: was wondering, what do they make like the Queen's necklaces.
Speaker 4: That now they have stores all over now called Marshals.
Speaker 4: It's a discount clothing store in the next of course,
Speaker 4: I'm not when am I serious? So he told these
Speaker 4: jewelers all about his estates in England and Scotland and Ireland,
Speaker 4: about his solicitors, lawyer mister Patterson, he handled all his
Speaker 4: business for him. Oh and and he had so much
Speaker 4: money he just didn't know what to do with it.
Speaker 4: Maybe buy some jewelry. Oh maybe he should just go
Speaker 4: ahead and start a tab at the jewelers, like it
Speaker 4: only made sense, right guys, And they're like, yeah, sure,
Speaker 4: right on. So he starts to peruse the goods and
Speaker 4: he has this like super keen eye for the best stuff, like, oh,
Speaker 4: excellent taste.
Speaker 3: Soon.
Speaker 4: One item he really loved was a small silver casket
Speaker 4: made in Venice, Italy.
Speaker 3: Casket for a body.
Speaker 2: Well, that's the thing.
Speaker 4: Okay. So I saw a casket. I'm like, I need
Speaker 4: to do a little investigation here.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So it's Venice, Italy, not Venice, California. And it's not
Speaker 4: a casket like rip, let's get you six feet under.
Speaker 4: It's a casket in the sense of a small decorative box,
Speaker 4: so not as big as a chest, but maybe slightly
Speaker 4: bigger than a jewelry box.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 4: And so glen Cairn sees this silver one loves it,
Speaker 4: has to have it as the jeweler. To have it
Speaker 4: delivered to his hotel is like a very posh place
Speaker 4: in town. And then he came by with Simpson a
Speaker 4: few days later to rave about what an incredible shop
Speaker 4: this was and the stuff. They're convinced he's the real deal.
Speaker 4: As far as they're moving to a clergy, he's like, you,
Speaker 4: I'll tell you, you tell the Lord. So from there
Speaker 4: he's like, okay, bye, I got to go to London.
Speaker 4: Off he goes, and there he starts talking to a
Speaker 4: diamond dealer and he tells that guy, you know, Marshall
Speaker 4: and Company up in Scotland, they can vouch for me.
Speaker 3: He's like, hey, Jared, I got a friend in the diamond.
Speaker 4: Business for you, yes exactly, and then he says, well,
Speaker 4: you know what, In fact, they'll vouch for me. I've
Speaker 4: worked with them for several years. So the diamond dealer
Speaker 4: writes a note to Marshall and Company and says, you
Speaker 4: know this man that you've known for several years, is
Speaker 4: he on the up and up the whole several years?
Speaker 4: Thing through Marshall and Company for a loop? And like
Speaker 4: they just the guy, like why is he saying this?
Speaker 4: So they sent one of their employees, this guy, mister Smith,
Speaker 4: to London to look into the matter.
Speaker 3: Mister Smith goes to London precisely.
Speaker 4: So Smith goes to London heads to the lawyer Patterson.
Speaker 4: Patterson was appalled that anyone would be asking anything about
Speaker 4: the credibility of Lord glen Cairn, and he told Smith
Speaker 4: to like shut his pretty mouth about it. That's a
Speaker 4: direct quote. I was there, Like, don't you dare say
Speaker 4: anything against that man, he's one of my best clients.
Speaker 4: So Smith, he's not buying it. Patterson said that he'd
Speaker 4: have Lord glen Cairn return the jewelry that had been
Speaker 4: fronted to him, and then he'd cut a check for
Speaker 4: the amount of anything that he had already been given away.
Speaker 2: All right, Like what good is a check?
Speaker 4: Smith says, well, if he doesn't pay it by March
Speaker 4: twenty fifth, eighteen seventy, I'll cover the debt. I believe
Speaker 4: in him that much. So what Smith wasn't aware of
Speaker 4: is that glen Cairn had gifted a lot of that
Speaker 4: jewelry to Patterson and his family, and Patterson had advanced
Speaker 4: Glen Caaren like forty five thousand dollars basically the equivalent
Speaker 4: of a million dollars today.
Speaker 3: Hot.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So Patterson had given Glen Karen the last four
Speaker 4: thousand of that chunk of cash, and then suddenly started
Speaker 4: to wonder, like, wait, was that about idea? Is this
Speaker 4: a little hanky? So Glen Karen Gordon whatever his name is,
Speaker 4: tells Patterson, thank you so much. I'm heading back up
Speaker 4: to Scotland. I'm going to close out this account at
Speaker 4: Marshall and Company. Off I go Patterson thought about it
Speaker 4: for a bit and was like, I'm going to send
Speaker 4: someone up to Edinburgh and I have them ask around
Speaker 4: and see what's really going down. So they're constantly sending people.
Speaker 4: It should come as no surprise that Glen Karen Gordo
Speaker 4: big G wasn't in Edinburgh, he wasn't in Scotland, he
Speaker 4: wasn't in the UK at all. Frankly, no one knew
Speaker 4: where he was. At this point, the victims of his
Speaker 4: swindles start coming forward. People in London, people in Edinburgh
Speaker 4: had to cop to the fact that they fell for
Speaker 4: the old I'm about to come into money thing. One
Speaker 4: jeweler believed him when he said he was a close
Speaker 4: power of the Duke of Hamilton and the Marquis of Hastings.
Speaker 3: The Duke of Earl.
Speaker 4: Yes, and so much so that the guy's like, oh,
Speaker 4: you know them, here's fifty thousand dollars credit line. And
Speaker 4: then someone asked the nobleman in question, like, hey, do
Speaker 4: you know this guy? They're like, I don't know who
Speaker 4: you're talking about. Get out of my face. And then
Speaker 4: that was it. So let's take a break. When we
Speaker 4: come back, we're going to track down that pesky Gordon.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Zaren Zaren.
Speaker 4: When we last saw Lord Glen Cairn, he was conning
Speaker 4: people in Scotland. Then he vanished.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm picturing a young Ewan McGregor playing this part.
Speaker 3: It's working for me.
Speaker 4: Oh it's good. Let's run with it because take it.
Speaker 4: He surfaced fifteen months later in Minnesota. I did not
Speaker 4: expect that, I know, right, And he was no longer
Speaker 4: Lord glen Cairn. Now he was Lord Gordon.
Speaker 3: Gordon. Okay, yeah, I'm still waiting for you to go.
Speaker 2: No, not really, that one for real.
Speaker 4: So his earliest documented Minnesota residence was in Saint Paul.
Speaker 4: He stayed at this prominent hotel there, and then he
Speaker 4: moved into private accommodations. He quickly became a familiar figure
Speaker 4: in Saint Paul and Minneapolis society. He went to these receptions, dinners,
Speaker 4: legislative gatherings. He's just a man about town. He was
Speaker 4: just as elegant and reserved as before, and like maybe
Speaker 4: a little more reserved because this time he didn't come
Speaker 4: out and say that he had a title and money. Instead,
Speaker 4: he was discreet, so he would let it slip. He'd
Speaker 4: like casually mentioned that he was the of the Great
Speaker 4: Earls of Gordon, cousin of the Campbell's collateral relative of
Speaker 4: Lord Byron, oh descendant of the bold locking Ver and
Speaker 4: the ancient kings of the Highlands. Ah, you know those
Speaker 4: kind of oops. I can't believe I just said that.
Speaker 4: I've said too much.
Speaker 3: You might people.
Speaker 4: And he he had an income also he let slip
Speaker 4: of over a million dollars a year.
Speaker 3: That just slipped out.
Speaker 4: Yeah, oopsie, Oh did you see that? Did you see
Speaker 4: my bank book open? For all my fellow inflation calculator
Speaker 4: officionados out there, that's twenty six and a half million
Speaker 4: dollars today.
Speaker 3: A year a year income.
Speaker 4: I would very much like for that to be my
Speaker 4: annual salary.
Speaker 3: What would you do with that?
Speaker 4: I would live the basically the same life why you
Speaker 4: needed that, But I wouldn't work, and I would just
Speaker 4: like I would outfit like my kitchen super nice, okay,
Speaker 4: and I would I don't know.
Speaker 3: Like finally spread the slots.
Speaker 4: Little upgrades for stuff here and there. Oh, little upgrades, okay,
Speaker 4: But that's basically it.
Speaker 3: I think you would actually run like a Brewster's million
Speaker 3: style charity where you're just giving out a million dollars.
Speaker 4: Would I probably would. I would be I would hand
Speaker 4: it out so fast that's okay, But I'd still like night,
Speaker 4: I'd still get a new kitchen anyway. So he's super
Speaker 4: casual about this though, right, and so casual. He goes
Speaker 4: to a bank in Minneapolis. He's like, I'd like to
Speaker 4: deposit forty thousand dollars please, And that's the cash that
Speaker 4: he got from Patterson.
Speaker 3: Yes, and remember that's like.
Speaker 2: A million dollars today.
Speaker 4: So cruise down to the bank, Navy, Federal, Zaren, go
Speaker 4: in there.
Speaker 3: Okay, here's a.
Speaker 4: People talk, Zaren.
Speaker 7: I know that people talk.
Speaker 4: Word got around about this Scott lord who was just
Speaker 4: flushed with cash. According to the Manitoba.
Speaker 3: Trying to beat criminals is what he's like. No drafting,
Speaker 3: you know, he's just gotta.
Speaker 4: He's gotta scent.
Speaker 1: The Air.
Speaker 4: Manitoba Historical Society, they said, quote a lord in Minneapolis
Speaker 4: in eighteen seventy one with great resources, was obviously a
Speaker 4: social lion, and was made a house guest of one
Speaker 4: citizen and take it to Minnetonka on an elaborate picnic
Speaker 4: by another. Among much entertaining, the husbands were interested in
Speaker 4: business deals for their mutual advantage. He was courted and
Speaker 4: banqueted and entertained in the best of style at private
Speaker 4: and civic functions, and lavishly. It's reported that he spent
Speaker 4: rather freely.
Speaker 5: It's odd how when you have money people give you more. Yeah, right, No,
Speaker 5: one like like, oh, we got these impoverished people.
Speaker 3: Let's like lavish that. They're like, no, we found the
Speaker 3: richest guy we've ever met.
Speaker 8: We've given him all this stuff we had drobe and
Speaker 8: everything else was Oh my goodness, Gordon, whatever brought you
Speaker 8: to the Land of ten thousand Lakes?
Speaker 2: That is a good question, a very good question.
Speaker 4: I'm so glad that someone asked it. I don't want
Speaker 4: to disclose. I'm just here to report. He told folks
Speaker 4: that he arrived from Scotland to do land deals. He
Speaker 4: planned to invest a million dollars or more in the
Speaker 4: wild railroad lands o Lumber.
Speaker 8: No.
Speaker 4: So here's how folks who met him described him, so
Speaker 4: you can get a mental picture. Is he going to
Speaker 4: remain you in McGregor we shall I don't know.
Speaker 3: I'm curious.
Speaker 4: I think he will quote slender of build about five
Speaker 4: feet ten inches in height. So far as they're good
Speaker 4: and dressed with the greatest care, usually wearing gloves, patent leathers,
Speaker 4: and a silk hat. His hands were frequently manicured, and
Speaker 4: his hair was brushed as smooth as curly hair could be.
Speaker 4: He was clean shaven, except for two tufts of side
Speaker 4: whiskers along glaise. He was exceedingly self poised, calm and
Speaker 4: deliberate of speech, articulated with much precision, and posed with
Speaker 4: an amount of ceremony seldom seen on the American continent. Additionally,
Speaker 4: he was calm and demeanor, poised, ceremonious, and spoke excellent
Speaker 4: English with careful articulation. He was apparently a successful after
Speaker 4: dinner speaker. Successful who who wants to hear me?
Speaker 6: Go?
Speaker 4: I'll just stand rock back and forth. He was fancy,
Speaker 4: y'all wine glass. Everyone wanted to be around him. They
Speaker 4: wanted to hear what he had to say after dinner
Speaker 4: speaking voice. That's me and the dogs man, I'm like, okay,
Speaker 4: ding ding ding ding, They run they run far away.
Speaker 4: Everyone wanted to ask him questions, but he was cagy,
Speaker 4: so if someone was like, hey, are you really a
Speaker 4: large he said, it made little difference if he was
Speaker 4: or he wasn't. A lord and in any case, he
Speaker 4: didn't want to talk about it, and like, that's how
Speaker 4: you get people to think you're a lord. In the
Speaker 4: course of his Minnesota days, he met Colonel John S. Loomis,
Speaker 4: and Loomis was a lumber tycoon from Chicago. He was
Speaker 4: also the land commissioner for the Northern Pacific Railroad. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 4: he has nothing to do with Loomis Fargo.
Speaker 3: I was figuring different. Yes, it's different.
Speaker 4: So Gordon told Loomis that he eventually wanted to buy
Speaker 4: hundreds of thousands of acres of railroad land in Minnesota.
Speaker 4: He said he was going to ship in a bunch
Speaker 4: of tenants from his quote overcrowded Scottish estates onto that land.
Speaker 4: That's always some thing keep the feudalism going, you know.
Speaker 4: So right then he said he was interested in getting
Speaker 4: his hands on somewhere between like fifty to sixty thousand acres.
Speaker 4: Here's the thing. The Northern Pacific Railroad wanted to expand
Speaker 4: they wanted to go west. West Coast is the best
Speaker 4: coast and all that they said it not me. West
Speaker 4: Coast is the best coast. That was painted on the
Speaker 4: side of all the trains they wanted to connect up
Speaker 4: and eventually get that golden spike Son, which they did.
Speaker 3: Oh that's what the continents I figured it was. Once again,
Speaker 3: I'm still going with logging.
Speaker 5: I'm like, they want to connect to Seattle to get
Speaker 5: that stuff out of the body.
Speaker 4: But they wanted to hold hands and West Coast is
Speaker 4: the best coast and spike yeah baby. So in order
Speaker 4: to stretch out, the railroad had to raise some money,
Speaker 4: and they'd just begun construction at this point. The government
Speaker 4: had granted them forty million acres and they'd been selling
Speaker 4: that off to raise money already. If they could get
Speaker 4: some goofy rich Scott to buy up a bunch more land,
Speaker 4: it would more than fund the projects. So Loomis told
Speaker 4: the railroad big wigs about Gordon's plans, and they're like
Speaker 4: drooling all over themselves, I mean, just puddles.
Speaker 2: So they spared no.
Speaker 4: Expense when whining and dining Gordon in order to get
Speaker 4: their hands on what could be like millions and millions
Speaker 4: of dollars for them.
Speaker 3: This was the railroads were the AI of their day.
Speaker 4: Yes, first the NFTs, then the AI. It takes money
Speaker 4: to make money's errand I've heard this, so they put
Speaker 4: Loomis in charge of rolling out the red carpet for
Speaker 4: our guy here. He set up an all expense paid
Speaker 4: tour of the railroad lands in Minnesota and the Dakotas
Speaker 4: for Gordon. Keep in mind these railroads weren't really built then.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so building the horseback what they're doing.
Speaker 4: But they weren't rustic trips. The trips were posh. So
Speaker 4: dinner service every night was attended by waiters in white
Speaker 4: aprons and white silk gloves, with silver platters and fine china.
Speaker 3: Like when they pull the wagon over.
Speaker 4: They served all the finest, most gourmet items available, everything
Speaker 4: fresh and exotic. As the New York Times put it,
Speaker 4: quote from Woodcock to Buffalo.
Speaker 3: That's just about to say, I bet you liked Woodcock.
Speaker 4: Tropical fruits, an apple figure, it's the two thousand snacks.
Speaker 4: They also apparently had champagne three times a day. Okay,
Speaker 4: so you're just sitting on a horse glugging.
Speaker 3: It, just like drink to night. I like to start
Speaker 3: with the brandy, Lord Gordon.
Speaker 4: Gordon wasn't solo on this. He had his valet, the
Speaker 4: Gentleman's Tiger, reporting for duty. Sir. Okay, so this guy
Speaker 4: he would shave each morning, not himself, he was Gordon,
Speaker 4: and get him Gordon dressed.
Speaker 3: You got to get the test to be sharp, exactly clean.
Speaker 4: People were marveling at the fact that Gordon traveled with
Speaker 4: fourteen different outfits, four fourteen for this like I'm going
Speaker 4: to go into the back country. Yeahfferent color, so that
Speaker 4: the valet would take dictation of the lord's correspondence, like
Speaker 4: penning them out, sealing them with the official seal of
Speaker 4: Gordon whatever that was in that situation, and he always
Speaker 4: referred to Gordon is my lord. So there they are
Speaker 4: tripping about in luxury. Gordon would stop every so often
Speaker 4: at like potential sites to see if he should or
Speaker 4: they would be good places for towns or schools or
Speaker 4: what have you for this incoming Scottish band of indentured servants.
Speaker 4: And he dramatically like think up and then select names
Speaker 4: at each place.
Speaker 2: Really yeah.
Speaker 4: A historian that W. A. Crawford wrote, quote, his lordship
Speaker 4: saw the state thoroughly and inspected and selected vast areas
Speaker 4: of arable land that would rejoice the soul of a highlander.
Speaker 4: He also incidentally located and named several cities explaining that
Speaker 4: it would be necessary to have churches and schools well
Speaker 4: organized before his colonists would flock thither in large numbers.
Speaker 4: Sites for cities were selected, and the historic banner of
Speaker 4: the Gordons of Scotland and the stars and stripes fluttered
Speaker 4: side by side.
Speaker 3: Oh so they that with flags and like this one
Speaker 3: day will be Gordon Landia.
Speaker 2: Whatever Gordon mcgordon face.
Speaker 4: And so this went on for three months, wow, three months,
Speaker 4: and it took a crew of twenty men to run
Speaker 4: this adventure. Yeah, thirty to forty horses. I say all
Speaker 4: the waiters, this is no joke, this is absolutely no joke.
Speaker 4: So all told, the railroad spent about forty five thousand
Speaker 4: dollars on the trip. If you'll remember, that's a million.
Speaker 3: That's why my eyes did that.
Speaker 4: And they came out and then I was like, what
Speaker 4: catch them quick?
Speaker 3: Quick?
Speaker 4: Put them back in. The railroad figured though they were
Speaker 4: going to see at least five million from Gordon.
Speaker 3: This is like chump change, five million in their money.
Speaker 4: In their money, which is like nine hundred trillions today.
Speaker 4: So January eighteen seventy two, Gordon bid them farewell. He's
Speaker 4: like waving holding a handkerchief. He told the railroad that
Speaker 4: he had to head back east to get the money
Speaker 4: transfers going. He was eager to get the rail road
Speaker 4: paid so he can enact his dream. And like all
Speaker 4: the irritated Scott's and dump them in Minnesota. And the
Speaker 4: railroad guys, they're stoked. They want to help in any
Speaker 4: way they can, and they just want to get their
Speaker 4: grubby fingers. So they gave him letters of introduction to
Speaker 4: the cream of the crop of New York society.
Speaker 3: How did they know the cream of the crop of
Speaker 3: New York society.
Speaker 4: You know, like a lumber tycoon. So and he's like,
Speaker 4: my name is Louis, I'm fencing. You'll fence it to
Speaker 4: this guy's fancy. Let's be fency to get us. And
Speaker 4: so now they just got to wait. It's just a
Speaker 4: waiting game. And they wait and they wait. And I
Speaker 4: know this is really hard to believe, but Lord Gordon
Speaker 4: Gordon never went back to Minnesota. He was not feeling Minnesota.
Speaker 4: Plucked around there for a while. He he did tell
Speaker 4: the truth a little bit.
Speaker 2: He did go to New York.
Speaker 4: He arrived in New York in early eighteen seventy two,
Speaker 4: and you know what was happening.
Speaker 3: Then eighteen seventy two an election.
Speaker 4: Something called the Eerie War.
Speaker 3: Oh the Canal.
Speaker 4: Yeah, let me lay this out on you. So the
Speaker 4: Erie War was a violent, highly publicized corporate and political
Speaker 4: battle that went on from eighteen sixty eight to eighteen
Speaker 4: seventy two. And it was all about control of the
Speaker 4: Erie Railway that was one of the most important rail
Speaker 4: lines in the United States post Civil War.
Speaker 3: Okay, so it.
Speaker 4: Involved some of the era's most powerful financiers and politicians,
Speaker 4: Jay Gould, James Fisk Junior, Daniel Drew and then indirectly
Speaker 4: Cornelius Vanderbilt.
Speaker 3: And if I'm not mistaken, grant us grant.
Speaker 4: Yes he avoids mention here. Yes, yes, So it was
Speaker 4: one of the most infamous episodes of Gilded Age financial corruption.
Speaker 2: Oh, totally manipulation.
Speaker 4: Bribery, forged securities, courtroom warfare, literal armed standoffs.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like so much crime on paper or paper work
Speaker 3: based crime he could manage.
Speaker 4: So the Eerie Railway connected New York City to the
Speaker 4: Great Lakes and this was a major freight shipping like
Speaker 4: Western expansion control of the Eastern transportation.
Speaker 3: Yes, so much shipping back and forth.
Speaker 4: Yeah, whoever controlled this railroad would make huge amounts of
Speaker 4: money and have incredible political power and influence because.
Speaker 5: I think like two thirds of the income in the
Speaker 5: United States went through the Port of New York, and
Speaker 5: this was a huge artery for.
Speaker 4: The Port of exactly exactly, So people were obviously fighting
Speaker 4: over this. And you know who was at the time
Speaker 4: the director of the railroad who boss tweet of Tammany
Speaker 4: Hall Fame.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah. So when I say people fighting, I mean Cornelius Vanderbilt,
Speaker 4: the commodore. He already controlled New York Central Railroad. He
Speaker 4: wanted to absorb the Eerie and build a transportation monopoly.
Speaker 4: Then there was Daniel Drew. He was a longtime Wall
Speaker 4: Street operator. He was treasurer of the Erie Railway, and
Speaker 4: he was also a master of stock watering, which is
Speaker 4: issuing new shares to manipulate prices.
Speaker 3: Okay, so it's like what Zuckerberg did to his co founders,
Speaker 3: right r.
Speaker 2: Value.
Speaker 4: Yeah. One of his initial allies was Jay Gould, and
Speaker 4: he was a rising financier and a brilliant strategist. He
Speaker 4: wound up partnering with James Fisk Junior aka Diamond Jim
Speaker 4: Oh Fisk was a showman political operator, and he handed
Speaker 4: out bribes like Candy Nice and then so together Goldfisk
Speaker 4: and Drew became known as the Eerie Ring. In early
Speaker 4: eighteen sixty eight, Vanderbilt began buying large quantities of Eerie
Speaker 4: stock to gain the majority control. So Drew, Fisk, and
Speaker 4: Gould came up with their counter attack, stockwall watering. They
Speaker 4: issued floods of new stock without authorization. Then they sold
Speaker 4: that stock to Vanderbilt at inflated prices, and that became
Speaker 4: their bribe in money. So Vanderbilt spent millions buying stock
Speaker 4: that was like rapidly diluted out from under him. The
Speaker 4: courts issued injunctions against gold, Fisk and Drew. In response,
Speaker 4: they fled to New Jersey with the corporate books.
Speaker 3: Back then cross Lines kept Chaser, and then they.
Speaker 4: Physically barricaded themselves in the Jersey City Erie offices. Vanderbilt's
Speaker 4: men tried to seize control in New York with armed
Speaker 4: guards posted on both sides. This was the centerpiece of
Speaker 4: what newspapers at the time called the Erie War. So
Speaker 4: the Erie Ring they needed to strengthen their position, so
Speaker 4: they bribed members of the New York State legislature, and
Speaker 4: they also sponsored a bill to legalize their previously illegal
Speaker 4: stock issuances, and they paid off influential political powerworkers. Will
Speaker 4: not be surprised that the bill passed no, so the
Speaker 4: fraudulent stock was retroactively legalized, stripping Vanderbilt of potential legal victory.
Speaker 3: So we've always been like this.
Speaker 4: Basically, I read that it's exactly what I thought, like,
Speaker 4: there's nothing new under the sun. Vanderbilt ultimately like accepted.
Speaker 4: Here's another one, a financial settlement, a classic Gilded Age quote,
Speaker 4: buy out of peace.
Speaker 3: Okay, sounds familiar totally.
Speaker 4: So after the victory against Vanderbilt, though, the eerie ring,
Speaker 4: they start to fall apart.
Speaker 3: They gotta be fighting each other.
Speaker 4: They need a common enemy, so they start turning on
Speaker 4: each other. First, Gould manipulated stock to ruin Drew financially.
Speaker 4: Drew loses his fortune.
Speaker 3: Ok.
Speaker 4: Fisk turns on Gould. Fisk and Gould start plotting against
Speaker 4: each other. Gould temporarily lost control in eighteen seventy, regained
Speaker 4: it and then lost Fisk as an ally. But things
Speaker 4: kept falling apart. There were investigations, lawsuits, all this like
Speaker 4: political pressure. By eighteen seventy two, Gould was forced to
Speaker 4: resign from the Erie Railway, and under his management, the
Speaker 4: Erie had become a symbol of absolute corruption. It was
Speaker 4: financially unstable, it was plagued by fraudulent accounting. Yeah and
Speaker 4: fortune correct, now here comes Lord Gordon Gordon. So, according
Speaker 4: to that Manitoba Historical Society quote, it is apparent that
Speaker 4: he spent some time looking over the situation.
Speaker 2: Whether the J.
Speaker 4: Gould Erie Railway development was a flash of inspiration or
Speaker 4: a pre arranged scheme cannot be proved. Either Khan's illusion
Speaker 4: could fit the method of Gordon. Gordon arrived in New
Speaker 4: York at the height of a speculative boom and at
Speaker 4: the peak of the commercial and political corruption which followed
Speaker 4: the Civil War. In the two months following his arrival,
Speaker 4: he obviously gained much information about past operations from the
Speaker 4: men with whom he was associating, so he got a
Speaker 4: suite of rooms at the Metro Hotel. He used those
Speaker 4: letters of introduction from Colonel Loomis to meet Horace Greeley,
Speaker 4: then founder and editor of the New York Tribune, Go
Speaker 4: West Young mang Right. He became acquainted also with Horace F. Clark,
Speaker 4: the politician and railroad executive, so he's just collecting Horace's
Speaker 4: everywhere he goes. Gordon told Greeley that he owned sixty
Speaker 4: thousand shares in the Erie Railway and quote, with this
Speaker 4: and the holdings of his English friends, he intends to
Speaker 4: control the next election for directors. So Greeley he's stoked. Right.
Speaker 4: The idea that a group with their wits about them
Speaker 4: come in and reform the railway was refreshing. Greeley wanted
Speaker 4: to make sure that Gordon met all.
Speaker 3: The big players, so he takes him around like.
Speaker 4: He's the clergyman for him. So, according to writer Charles
Speaker 4: Lewis Shaw, quote, word of this imminent management shakeup quickly
Speaker 4: spread throughout New York's business community and caused Gordon Gordon
Speaker 4: to receive a frantic visit from Jay Gould on March second,
Speaker 4: eighteen seventy two. Let's stop here for a bit, okay,
Speaker 4: and when we get back, we'll see what happens when
Speaker 4: the con man meets the robber barons.
Speaker 2: Zarin, we're back.
Speaker 4: We're back, bite good ads, right, Oh the best, gimme some.
Speaker 3: I just kept throwing money at my ears.
Speaker 4: That's the only way to do it.
Speaker 3: Why bye, so bye.
Speaker 4: Let's get back to this story. Jay Gould robber baron.
Speaker 3: Yes, he had been pro I love robbing robber barons,
Speaker 3: so I'm so screws turned.
Speaker 4: He'd been the president of the Eerie Railroad, but no more.
Speaker 4: After the Eerie War, his position had become fragile. He
Speaker 4: had power still as treasurer and the de facto controller
Speaker 4: of the company, but then he had been ousted from
Speaker 4: official control March of eighteen seventy two. So all these
Speaker 4: new factions are fighting for dominance on the board. Newspapers
Speaker 4: and political rivals are like attacking his credibility. Lord Gordon Gordon,
Speaker 4: thanks to the introduction letters from Loomis met Horace Greeley.
Speaker 4: Greeley connects him. Greeley's supporters thought that maybe Gordon could
Speaker 4: help raise funds for Greeley's eighteen seventy two presidential campaign.
Speaker 4: That one did not go well, right, and so that introduction,
Speaker 4: though gave Gordon political credential. Goulds impressed, so Goulden Gordon.
Speaker 4: They first met March second, eighteen seventy two, at the
Speaker 4: Erie Railway offices in New York. Gordon presented himself as
Speaker 4: acting on behalf of British shareholders. He said he was
Speaker 4: committed to supporting Gould's leadership and ironically opposed the eerie corruption.
Speaker 4: It's so easy to say, but also it's you know,
Speaker 4: it's like it's projection, it's you.
Speaker 3: Know, yeah, of course I'm against. You are literally implement.
Speaker 4: Every accusation is a confession. So he wanted to negotiate
Speaker 4: a truce among the warring factions and Gould he's like
Speaker 4: accustomed to all these like elaborate financial maneuvers, but he
Speaker 4: was really impressed by how fluent Gordon was and stuff
Speaker 4: like railroad governance and European investment practices and even eerie
Speaker 4: shareholder distribution. I guess, yeah, he was well versed. He's
Speaker 4: a good con man, like he just tips, yeah, And
Speaker 4: I think he focused on obscure information to really hone
Speaker 4: in like and give the impression of this deep knowledge.
Speaker 4: So he also it seemed like he knew details about
Speaker 4: the eerie capitalization structure that weren't widely published.
Speaker 5: So it's not like what you would find in like
Speaker 5: essentially the business not business newspapers, but like the publications
Speaker 5: of stockholding right, So.
Speaker 4: Gould later said under oath that Gordon Gordon displayed quote
Speaker 4: a perfect knowledge of Eerie's shareholder politics. I mean like
Speaker 4: he almost certainly learned things from newspapers but also public filings.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's what I was wondering. But this seems like
Speaker 3: he knows even more than.
Speaker 4: That, figured out how to get information out of people.
Speaker 3: He's also just a good researcher, charming fellow, a big
Speaker 3: time reader.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So Gordon said that he held power of attorney for
Speaker 4: a major block of Erie stock owned by English and
Speaker 4: Scottish investors, and he could deliver enough votes at the
Speaker 4: upcoming shareholder meeting to restore Gould. Right, he could also
Speaker 4: prevent the anti Gould faction from consolidating control.
Speaker 3: Okay, because the percentage you own.
Speaker 4: Sure this is entirely false. Of course, no part of
Speaker 4: this is true so Britain, I mean the true part.
Speaker 4: They did hold large amounts of American railroad stock, which
Speaker 4: made the claim plausible. And Gould he's just like politically isolated,
Speaker 4: He's hungry for allies.
Speaker 3: Andy's got charming believable, He's so believable, American susceptible to
Speaker 3: a charming bri accent.
Speaker 4: He dressed and he spoke and behaved convincingly like a
Speaker 4: Scottish aristocrat, and he had like financial authority, can.
Speaker 3: Put his elbows on the table.
Speaker 4: The barn door was never down, zipper up. It would
Speaker 4: come out later that there were several respectable New Yorkers
Speaker 4: had already been taken in by him, like he was conning,
Speaker 4: like just doing little side gig cons so Gordon. Gordon
Speaker 4: told Gould that to persuade British shareholders to side with him,
Speaker 4: he needed to demonstrate that Gould was trustworthy. So to
Speaker 4: prove this up, he needed temporary cut study of eerie securities,
Speaker 4: you know, as like a good faith bond. But don't worry,
Speaker 4: these are going to be returned once the shareholder alignment
Speaker 4: is secured. I just want to hold him real close
Speaker 4: and put him in my pocket and get them warm.
Speaker 4: Gould thought he was engaging in like a private political negotiation,
Speaker 4: not a criminal act. He believed Gordon. He was sure
Speaker 4: that the shares would serve only as like symbolic collateral
Speaker 4: during these negotiations. So mid eighteen seventy two, Gould delivered
Speaker 4: to Gordon about a million dollars worth of negotiable eerie securities.
Speaker 4: Now remember a million, then twenty six point five mil today.
Speaker 4: Gould delivered these personally, He's like, here you go, Gordon, Gordon.
Speaker 4: He immediately starts selling them in New York and Chicago,
Speaker 4: selling these securities like hot sheeting of like, like, folks,
Speaker 4: what we got here is some good old fashioned fraud.
Speaker 4: When the securities began turning up on the market, brokers
Speaker 4: notified Eerie officials and Gould realized he'd been duped, so
Speaker 4: he demanded their returne He confronts Gordon. Gordon's like, whoa,
Speaker 4: I sold them to test the market. In fact, I
Speaker 4: need more securities to complete the deal. Come on, this
Speaker 4: is this is how it.
Speaker 3: Works, don't you know how high finance.
Speaker 4: It's like big nope, no, no, no, We're not doing that.
Speaker 4: So Gordon returned all the cash, but he only had
Speaker 4: some of the shares he'd sold the rest. Gould calculated
Speaker 4: the missing shares as being worth about one hundred and
Speaker 4: fifty thousand dollars, so he filed a formal criminal complaint
Speaker 4: against Gordon in New York for fraud, larceny, and grand embezzlement.
Speaker 4: Oh it was grand Gordon. He gets arrested on April ninth,
Speaker 4: eighteen seventy two, and in a surprising turn, Horace Clark
Speaker 4: Horace paid Gordon's forty thousand dollars bond. Whoa, yeah, so
Speaker 4: he's walking free, saying I didn't expect Yeah. So Gordon
Speaker 4: gets brought before a police court like magistrates court in
Speaker 4: New York City to answer the complaint. So it's like
Speaker 4: a preliminary here. Yeah, it's not a formal trial. So
Speaker 4: Gould presented his accusations and witnesses described the transfer of securities.
Speaker 4: Gordon responded with all He's like, I got well, see
Speaker 4: here's the thing. It's might a little complex. See for
Speaker 4: your tiny little brains, what had happened was But he says,
Speaker 4: look I was acting in good faith and this was
Speaker 4: all within an agreement. And his lawyers also argued that
Speaker 4: the dispute was civil not criminal. What are we doing
Speaker 4: here in criminal court? This is civil matter.
Speaker 3: I've been there. This is criminal here.
Speaker 4: May seventeenth, eighteen seventy two. Gordon Gordon. He spent the
Speaker 4: day being questioned and he denied everything. Gould's lawyer was
Speaker 4: asking Gordon about his family, and this kind of caught
Speaker 4: Gordon out. He gave the names and addresses of people
Speaker 4: he said were his stepfather, sister, a brother in law,
Speaker 4: and an uncle. And then he said he wouldn't answer
Speaker 4: anything else about his family because it was irrelevant. Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 4: So the judge agreed and adjourned the court for the day,
Speaker 4: and Gould's lawyers immediately sent cables to the American consulates
Speaker 4: in Paris, London, and Burne, asking them to look into
Speaker 4: the names and the addresses. They checked and they responded,
Speaker 4: no one Gordon mentioned had ever lived at any of
Speaker 4: those addresses.
Speaker 3: How is he forgetting that a telegram goes across the
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 4: But what is interesting is I did I didn't mention
Speaker 4: it earlier, but about like his life history, there was
Speaker 4: like a theory floated that he came you know, he
Speaker 4: had this like step stepdad and a sister in all
Speaker 4: and they were from the Isle of Jersey, and they
Speaker 4: were well to do because they were the heart the
Speaker 4: center of an international smuggling ring, but like the high level,
Speaker 4: like the capo, right, and so that was kind of
Speaker 4: never it wasn't There wasn't enough to back it up,
Speaker 4: but I thought it was interesting they named off the
Speaker 4: same you know, family members for that anyway, so no
Speaker 4: one knows Gordon at any of these places. So, but
Speaker 4: where's Gordon now? Where he's on the night train to Montreal.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Gould then puts up a bounty twenty five thousand dollars
Speaker 4: for Gordon's arrest.
Speaker 3: He's not hiring pinkertons, Like, what the hell?
Speaker 7: Bro.
Speaker 4: He also sent detectives to Europe to investigate Gordon's past.
Speaker 4: I pray those were pinkertons.
Speaker 6: Oh God.
Speaker 4: The detectives found out about the whole Lord glen Cairn
Speaker 4: thing from the jewelers. When they were there, they showed
Speaker 4: photos of Gordon. They're like, oh, that's Lord glen Cairn.
Speaker 4: He stole from us. What a Gordon care? He's hiding
Speaker 4: out in Canada. So the bail bondsman got wind of
Speaker 4: this though about the Canada thing, and they sent a
Speaker 4: dispatch to Minnesota. If they could get together a group
Speaker 4: of bounty hunters to snatch Gordon and bring him back
Speaker 4: across the border to face justice, they could make a
Speaker 4: pretty penny. Oh, Jay Gould would see to it. I
Speaker 4: bet Zarin, close your eyes. I want you to picture it.
Speaker 4: It's the evening of July second, eighteen seventy three. You
Speaker 4: are a merchant in Saint Paul, Minnesota. You got word
Speaker 4: that a guy calling himself Lord Gordon. Gordon had skipped
Speaker 4: bail in New York and was hiding out in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
Speaker 4: You remember the guy he fleeced some railroad guys in
Speaker 4: Minnesota a while back. You were currently in a saloon
Speaker 4: in Fort Gary, Winnipeg. You and a couple of pals
Speaker 4: made the trek up from Saint Paul to get this
Speaker 4: Gordon character and take him back across the border. You
Speaker 4: talk to locals who told you about the Scott who
Speaker 4: liked to drink here, and you matched him with the
Speaker 4: photo the Minneapolis police had provided you with.
Speaker 2: And that's how you.
Speaker 4: Find yourself sitting next to Gordon, getting him incredibly drunk.
Speaker 4: It's a lively crowd, lots of hooping and hollering. Gordon
Speaker 4: thinks you're matching him drink for drink with your wee
Speaker 4: DRAMs of whiskey, but in truth you've been slyly dumping
Speaker 4: your drinks into a bucket next to your chair. One
Speaker 4: of the other guys in your party is nursing beers,
Speaker 4: getting them down about a third and then jumping up
Speaker 4: to declare that he needs a refill. Gordon's too slosh
Speaker 4: to notice, his eyelids are getting heavy, and he's entering
Speaker 4: the maudlin drunk portion of the evening. You chatted with
Speaker 4: the piano player earlier in the evening. You look over
Speaker 4: at him and nod the signal. He begins a mournful
Speaker 4: rendition of the Bonnie Banks O La Polomen. Gordon lifts
Speaker 4: his head toward the piano. Tears begin to rim his eyes.
Speaker 4: He mouths the words to the first verse, and when
Speaker 4: the chorus begins, he belts out at full volume.
Speaker 7: Oh you take the high road, and I'll take the
Speaker 7: lo and I'll be in scarl Duffior, but me on
Speaker 7: Metrolaw will never meet again.
Speaker 2: On the body money Banks soul lock Loo Man.
Speaker 4: Fat tears fall from his face onto the scarred, lacquered tabletop.
Speaker 4: You put your arm around him as you turn and
Speaker 4: wink at the piano player. He nods back at you.
Speaker 4: You tell Gordon that maybe it's time to call it
Speaker 4: a knight. You and your pals will get him home.
Speaker 4: Where are you staying? You ask? He mumbles the name
Speaker 4: of a hotel, and you and your posse all stand,
Speaker 4: bringing a limp Gordon with you. He continues to sing
Speaker 4: Lochloman with boozy vigor, punctuating verses with comical hiccups. You
Speaker 4: get him outside and load him into the back of
Speaker 4: a wagon. What you don't see is a telegraph man
Speaker 4: standing in the doorway of a post office. He's got
Speaker 4: his eyes on you, his flaming red hair and bushy
Speaker 4: beard glow in the moonlight, a tartan vest visible under
Speaker 4: his jacket. You toss a blanket over Gordon, and you
Speaker 4: and the posse hop in the front bench seat and
Speaker 4: whip horses into action. You tear down the street and
Speaker 4: head south befoard the border. About fifty miles away is
Speaker 4: the Pambina border crossing. It's the port of Emerson. The
Speaker 4: wagon is screaming along at full speed, dust flying up
Speaker 4: behind the wheels in the darkness. The horse hooves and
Speaker 4: creak of wood the only sound while this is happening,
Speaker 4: and Scott, who runs the telegraph and Fort Garry, takes
Speaker 4: the initiative to send a message to Pembina. He says,
Speaker 4: it looks like some Feenians have abducted a nobleman and
Speaker 4: are headed for the States. Take action. He tells the
Speaker 4: custom house. There you can see the dim light of
Speaker 4: the Pembina Customs building in the distance. Almost there. You're
Speaker 4: so close to a payday you can taste it. But
Speaker 4: as you hit the rise right before the border, you
Speaker 4: have to pull back on the reins as tight as
Speaker 4: you can and come to a screeching halt. In front
Speaker 4: of you is a wall of men Canadian police, English troops,
Speaker 4: guns up, aimed your way, your plans. Aaron has been flied.
Speaker 3: Damn right it has. Wow. So I was wondering if
Speaker 3: the amount of Scots over in Canada would be a problem,
Speaker 3: A big problem.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I was like, you know, that's the wrong place to
Speaker 3: go trying to grab a Scott, right.
Speaker 4: So the kidnappers were sure that they were a few
Speaker 4: yards across the border in US territory.
Speaker 2: It didn't matter.
Speaker 4: They all got arrested and thrown in jail. Gordon escaped
Speaker 4: into the night, Off he goes. This kicked off an
Speaker 4: international set to so Canada. The US and Britain fought
Speaker 4: over the legality of the pickup in the bar, the
Speaker 4: arrest of the posse, and like the court proceedings within
Speaker 4: their respective authorities. The border and kings got tense, really
Speaker 4: this was he could have kicked off like.
Speaker 3: The Queen Victoria would think, I'm coming back from Canada.
Speaker 4: Yeah, like everybody grab your arms. So so things are
Speaker 4: so tense. A headline in the Saint Paul Pioneer of
Speaker 4: August first read quote our people should make ready, and
Speaker 4: then it went on to rant about the corrupt Canadian
Speaker 4: authorities harboring a criminal, and it went so far as
Speaker 4: to take the side of the Fenian Brotherhood, the Irish
Speaker 4: republican organization that was operating within the US with the
Speaker 4: aim of ending British rule in Canada in the spirit
Speaker 4: of Finn McCool. So finally a solution was agreed upon.
Speaker 4: The kidnappers would serve there twenty four hours in jail
Speaker 4: and then be released. An arrest warrant would be issued
Speaker 4: by a Canadian court for Gordon's arrest in the matter
Speaker 4: of the Edinburgh Jewelry con and Gordon would be captured
Speaker 4: and extradited to the US, specifically to New York. Oh wow,
Speaker 4: so Gordon was located.
Speaker 3: I guess everyone gets their piece of the pie.
Speaker 4: Everyone gets their piece Gordon. They found him. He met
Speaker 4: a very tragic end and I'm not going to tell
Speaker 4: that part of the story. It's his life and his
Speaker 4: escapades that matters.
Speaker 2: Okay, asking a question, but.
Speaker 4: We now draw to a close the life and crimes
Speaker 4: of Lord Gordon.
Speaker 3: Gordon. I'm just gonna pretend he was eating by wolverine.
Speaker 3: He just went out of the woods and cons right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I tried to see if like was there.
Speaker 4: Now there's no chance you know what and scene drop
Speaker 4: the curtains. What's your ridiculous takeaways?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 3: Man, one, I guess like the just straight straight off
Speaker 3: you and McGregor could probably still play the part.
Speaker 5: But he really made a mistake not having this become
Speaker 5: a movie. I think you could have done a heck
Speaker 5: of a job. But he was like, I like doing
Speaker 5: period pieces.
Speaker 4: You could do it now.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean I think he could think he could
Speaker 5: play young enough to make it reasonable and whatever.
Speaker 3: He could see g I D agent or whatever.
Speaker 5: I don't know, but like he could do the charm
Speaker 5: part in the smart part, and they're like, oh, I'm
Speaker 5: also like able to go to Minnesota and being the
Speaker 5: rustic you know, like pretend I'm on a motorcycle, you know,
Speaker 5: like you get the idea. But uh, more than that
Speaker 5: is I loved all the nuances of the northern latitudes
Speaker 5: of America, the Canadian border, the Scottish English, like the
Speaker 5: fact that, like, you know, there's so many Scots in Canada,
Speaker 5: and that the English law is still the law of
Speaker 5: the land, all of that because we don't normally talk
Speaker 5: about that here in America. We're not too we forget
Speaker 5: all of our past involvements with one Canada, the UK
Speaker 5: Scotland in particular, And I thought that his story is
Speaker 5: nice bringing it back around, like of like, oh yes,
Speaker 5: and I want to know is how much the people
Speaker 5: in Scotland mostly and then also the English were tickled
Speaker 5: by him basically mugging the robber barons who think they're
Speaker 5: on their high horse at this time, or if if
Speaker 5: that's what it was even part of it, now, what
Speaker 5: would your ridiculous take away, Elizabeth?
Speaker 4: I just love that it's Gordon Gordon. My takeaway is
Speaker 4: that you know these cons all we see so many
Speaker 4: repetitive elements of them, and I'm just charmed by the
Speaker 4: weird little details so that the I could see in
Speaker 4: the end game the purpose of the Minnesota trip. But
Speaker 4: it's hilarious of like You're gonna go to Minnesota and
Speaker 4: make them drive you around on horseback for three months,
Speaker 4: like that's a that's a long con.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but go out to see the country.
Speaker 4: Life.
Speaker 3: I mean he's got.
Speaker 2: Nothing anywhere exactly.
Speaker 4: There's all these letters that like yeah.
Speaker 3: And also the memories Elizabeth.
Speaker 4: But I'm just curious, how did he think the eerie
Speaker 4: railway thing would resolve itself?
Speaker 5: Because, like, I think he was planning on going over
Speaker 5: the border and getting away and then catching a boat
Speaker 5: up to Saint Lawrence and going back to St.
Speaker 2: He went.
Speaker 4: He went up with the big dogs.
Speaker 6: On that one.
Speaker 4: Why not.
Speaker 3: He's been working his way up the ladder.
Speaker 4: It's true.
Speaker 6: I would like a talk back.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, did.
Speaker 6: I let cheat?
Speaker 9: Hi? I just wanted to share a ridiculous dream that
Speaker 9: I had the other night with Elizabeth and Zarn doing
Speaker 9: a live podcast episode, and you guys were just so funny,
Speaker 9: and I was laughing so so hard in the dream
Speaker 9: that I guess I ended up laughing in real life
Speaker 9: so hard that I was shaking the bed and woke
Speaker 9: my husband up and really freaks him out because I
Speaker 9: was just shaking.
Speaker 3: It that hard.
Speaker 7: I love it.
Speaker 4: I love it that you're a fellow laugh in your
Speaker 4: sleeper because I laugh in my sleep and it's creepy apparently,
Speaker 4: but sometimes i'll laugh so hard I wake myself up
Speaker 4: and then I try to remember what was so funny,
Speaker 4: and I have a hard time remembering it. But what
Speaker 4: a way to sleep, right.
Speaker 3: Dude, I love That's like one of your dreams, you know.
Speaker 3: Whe's just like, it's so ridiculous one you laugh out
Speaker 3: loud in real life, but also you're like, Okay, so
Speaker 3: there's this podcast I listened to and I'm at a
Speaker 3: live taping and it's so funny I'm laughing. Of course,
Speaker 3: yours would involve, like, you know, a talking celebrity that
Speaker 3: no one can remember and an animal that is on
Speaker 3: their shoulder who's also talking.
Speaker 2: That is true, but I like that.
Speaker 4: You know what, Let's celebrate dreams full of laughing. Oh yeah,
Speaker 4: you know, instead of sleep paralysis or no sleep at all. Anyway,
Speaker 4: that's it for today. You can find us online at
Speaker 4: ridiculous Crime dot com. We're also at Ridiculous Crime on
Speaker 4: both Blue Sky and Instagram. We're on YouTube at Ridiculous
Speaker 4: Crime Pod. Email Ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com, and
Speaker 4: please please please leave a talkback on the free iHeart
Speaker 4: app reach Out. Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton
Speaker 4: and Zaren Burnett, produced and edited by Lord Dave Dave Cousten,
Speaker 4: starring Annale Rutger as Judith. Research is by Monarch of
Speaker 4: the Glenn Marissa Brown and Laird of the Realm Jabbari Davis.
Speaker 4: The theme song is by Feenian up starts Thomas Lee
Speaker 4: and Travis Dutton. Post wardrobe is provided by Botany five hundred.
Speaker 4: Guest heron makeup by Sparkleshot and mister Andre. Executive producers
Speaker 4: are Railroad Baron, Ben Bollen and Tammany Hall, Groupie, Noel Brown.
Speaker 6: Dick QUI Say It One More Time CUI.
Speaker 1: Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio four More Podcasts
Speaker 1: my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows.