23-05-2025
The Victorian 'lady swindler' with 40 aliases who convinced an admiral to be her sugar daddy and tried to con an island of crofters
She was born into poverty as an illegitimate daughter of a Scots farm servant in the 19th century.
But despite being illiterate and uneducated, Annie Gordon Baillie forged herself a career as one of the Victorian era's most notorious con women.
She swindled charities, businesses and aristocrats in elaborate schemes spanning the globe.
And her remarkable story has now been retold as part of BBC Sounds podcast and Radio Four programme, Lady Swindlers with Lucy Worsley.
Gordon Baillie's cons included trying to relocate Skye crofters to marshland near Melbourne, Australia, and even inventing fake charities.
Her first crimes were running up massive debts in Dundee, where she moved in 1868 aged 20.
But then the scheming conwoman, who had 40 aliases and was dubbed the 'Queen of Swindlers' by the Press, moved onto different endeavours, raising money for a fictitious school for Protestant girls in Rome, Italy.
It proved to be a huge success, and the Peterhead-born crook fled with the cash raised to live the high life across Europe.
Sir Richard Duckworth-King, a retired admiral, fell under her spell and she managed to persuade him to fund her lifestyle with the equivalent of millions of pounds of his money.
And she was also involved in a land scheme involving Skye crofters - wading into a dispute between them.
Describing herself as the 'crofters' friend' to campaign for their rights, she travelled to Australia to secure new land for them to emigrate.
But her scheme crumbled when the islanders refused to move.
Historian Rosalind Crone said Gordon Baillie, who was born in 1848, evaded the law by exploiting loopholes in legislation which meant that you needed to prove illegal debtors had not intended to pay, while there was little oversight on charity work.
Ms Crone, who tells the story on the new podcast, told The Times: 'She is interesting because she gets away with it for so long.
'Gordon Baillie was certainly a prolific swindler and this case in particular is really interesting because of the different kinds of fraudulent activity that she's actually engaged with.
'She is taking goods and services on credit and not paying for it and she's also taking money for charities which didn't exist and also spun fictions in order to tap into particular social networks.'
Gordon Baillie's crimes were reported in newspapers at the time, including the Fife Herald (above)
Gordon Baillie had four children and was married to an opera singer - but her public profile brought her to the attention of Scotland Yard and she was soon connected to a string of frauds.
London-based Detective Inspector Henry Marshall, working with police in Edinburgh, tracked her across the country.
The 40-year-old conwoman was eventually arrested on June 23, 1888, and jailed for five years.
At a committal hearing Mr Marshall described her as an 'extraordinary woman' who was 'one of the greatest swindlers in the country'.
Aberdeen newspaper the Evening Gazette savaged her in a story titled 'A Queen of Swindlers' in 1888.
The report said: 'There has been a King of the beggars. Why should there not be a Queen of the Swindlers?
'If there should be, here is the candidate for the purple of that ancient craft.'
It added: 'There has never been quite such a bold, bad woman in her peculiar line, quite such a free hand, quite such a face of brass - and a handsome face withal.'
In reporting her release in 1892, London publication the Pall Mall Budget described her as having had 'one of the most extraordinary careers of deception on record'.
Once released she was caught stealing paintings and jailed for another seven years - and then later left Britain to find a new life in America.
Calling herself Louise JF Bailie, she soon found herself in trouble again.
She was last reported to have been sent to a New York workhouse, but little is known of any further movements or her death.
Ms Crone said: 'We love an antihero in history, we absolutely do. But it's very interesting the way in which particular Victorians who were very famous in their time quickly become forgotten.'
