How a 19th century Scottish con artist used 40 aliases and exploited a war for fraud

Daily Record

23-05-2025

Annie Gordon Baillie built a life on deceit with a number of different scams.
A notorious 19th century Scottish con artist who went by more than 40 aliases once duped crofters on Skye with a wild promise of a better life, thousands of miles away in a swamp.
Annie Gordon Baillie, born into poverty in Peterhead in 1848, built a life on deceit. From defrauding shopkeepers in her twenties to posing as an aristocrat and philanthropist, she scammed her way through Britain and beyond.
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Her story is now the focus of a new episode of Lady Swindlers with Lucy Worsley on BBC Radio 4. By the 1870s, Baillie's ambitions had grown. She launched a fake charity to fund a Protestant school for girls in Catholic Rome.
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Donations flooded in, but no school ever materialised. 'The law catches up with her briefly in 1872 and she spends nine months in prison for fraud,' said historian Lucy Worsley.
After her release, Baillie appeared to turn a new leaf. She married an opera singer, had three children and spent time in New York. But it wasn't long before she returned to her old ways.
In November 1884, dressed in luxurious clothing and dripping with jewels, Baillie arrived on the Isle of Skye. According to Worsley, 'she passes herself off as a wealthy literary lady, who is writing a novel about the plight of the crofters of Skye.'
She had chosen her moment carefully. The island was in turmoil during what became known as the Crofters' War, a bitter struggle between tenant farmers and landowners over soaring rents and mass evictions.
These tensions were a continuation of the Highland Clearances that had displaced families from their ancestral lands to make way for large-scale farming.
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One of the most violent flashpoints was the 1882 Battle of the Braes, where police baton-charged islanders protesting their treatment. The unrest escalated in Glendale, prompting the deployment of Royal Navy marines from the iron-hulled gunboat Jackal in 1883 to support police in making arrests.
Amid the chaos, Baillie saw an opportunity. Victorian Britain was gripped by a wave of philanthropy, and Baillie fashioned herself as a charitable novelist championing the crofters' cause. In a flamboyant interview at a Portree hotel with the Aberdeen Evening News, she arrived in a crimson dressing gown, her hands glittering with jewelled rings, to talk about her fundraising mission.
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But her plan soon took an outrageous turn. Baillie suggested that 1,000 crofters should emigrate to Australia, where she claimed she had secured new land for them.
She even travelled to Melbourne to negotiate a deal and was shown an unwanted patch of swamp. Her pitch was simple: the crofters would abandon farming and become fishermen instead.
But the scheme collapsed before it could begin. Back in London, Baillie's growing notoriety had caught up with her. Her elaborate plans and high-profile interviews had drawn the attention of Scotland Yard detective Henry Marshall, who had long tracked her fraudulent dealings.
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She was arrested in 1888, leaving the crofters still waiting for their promised "golden ticket" to Australia. Baillie was sentenced to five years in prison for a string of shopkeeper swindles, though the true scale of her deception is believed to have been far greater.
Even after her release, Baillie couldn't stay out of trouble. She was later jailed for stealing paintings, and eventually resurfaced in New York where, in 1902, records show she was placed in a workhouse for vagrancy. After that, she disappeared without a trace.
Professor Rosalind Crone, resident historian on Lady Swindlers, said Baillie's story reveals 'the dark side' of Victorian charitable culture. 'It wasn't always about helping the unfortunate or supporting worthwhile causes,' she said.
For the crofters, however, the war did lead to progress. A public inquiry into the unrest eventually resulted in legislation protecting their land rights, offering hope that no phoney aristocratic novelist would fool them again.