A brand new BBC Sounds collection, Woman Swindlers with Lucy Worsley, examines the story of an English-born fraudster who was obsessive about Scotland.
A automotive crashes at a harmful bend on a clifftop street in Anglesey, North Wales, on a moonlit night time in January 1909.
The automobile’s two passengers are unharmed, however the driver – Violet Charlesworth – is lacking, apparently thrown from her seat into the ocean under.
The one indicators of Violet are discovered on rocks – her Tam o’ Shanter hat and a pocket book recording street journeys she had made to locations together with Sheffield and Edinburgh.
Initially there was unhappiness at her loss of life, it coming simply days earlier than her twenty fifth birthday.
Collection host, historian Lucy Worsley, says: “However there have been questions.
“The place was the physique? There was one thing humorous right here.”
Lucy provides: “In fact she had survived.
“She had crashed her personal automotive and the explanation she had performed this was as a result of she had been dwelling the lifetime of a faux heiress.”
Within the days following the crash it emerged that Violet owed her stockbroker £1m, and had borrowed 1000’s of kilos from her ex-fiancé and a whole lot from a widowed neighbour.
She had conned individuals into believing she would inherit big sums of cash on her twenty fifth birthday, and that they’d be richly rewarded for giving her loans.
The ill-gotten positive factors had been used to fund her and her household’s lavish life-style.
They owned a rustic home close to Bangor, in Wales, stayed in costly motels and Violet wore diamonds, furs and had a ardour quick vehicles.
After which there was Violet’s obsession with Scotland.
Based on Woman Swindlers’ in-house historian, Prof Rosalind Crone, she had been renting a rustic home close to Inverness.
The property was decked out in tartan, and Violet purchased bagpipes and wore Highland gown.
She owned an auto-piano, an autonomous musical instrument, and it performed Scottish music on repeat.
Prof Crone says this had all performed a component in Violet’s fastidiously constructed picture to seem rich.
After the crash, Violet’s household barricaded themselves inside their house for weeks till police carried out a night-time raid.
In the meantime, the hunt for Violet turned to Scotland and suspicions fell on a lady calling herself Margaret MacLeod.
She had left a resort on Mull in Argyll with out paying, even reducing out her identify from the visitor e book earlier than leaving.
A telegram addressed to Violet was present in her room.
Newspaper reporters caught up with Margaret in Oban. She denied she was the fugitive fraudster.
Pleasure was constructing throughout the nation, with individuals throughout Scotland shopping for 4 or 5 papers at a time to get the newest about “Violet on the run”.
Violet had a change of coronary heart and determined to money in. She bought her story to a newspaper, inflicting a sensation.
She was provided a deal – and starring function – in a silent movie about her exploits.
Scottish crime author and podcast visitor, Denise Mina, suggests Violet might have hoped celeb standing might hold justice at bay.
The next yr, nevertheless, Violet and her mom have been discovered responsible of swindling Violet’s ex-lover and their widowed neighbour. They have been jailed for 3 years.
Violet was launched on licence in 1912.
She returned to Scotland and vanished.
Denise says: “I feel she’s superb and I feel fairly sinister.
“I imply, three years is not quite a bit for that amount of cash when you concentrate on the injury that did.”
Lucy provides: “I wouldn’t be in any respect shocked if we have been to find in the future that she went on to dwell a protracted and outrageous life as someone else altogether – someone Scottish.”