Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Very Strange Life of Ida Wood

Episode Date: September 7, 2022

Ellen Wood was born in 1838 in England.  She moved to the United States, changed her name, climbed the social ladder, and wound up an extremely wealthy woman.  In 1907, she abruptly disappeared from public life.  Then 25 years later, she appeared once again, and her life became tabloid fodder that shocked the world. Learn more about Ida Wood and her very unique life on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Subscribe to the podcast!  https://link.chtbl.com/EverythingEverywhere?sid=ShowNotes -------------------------------- Executive Producer: Darcy Adams Associate Producers: Peter Bennett & Thor Thomsen   Become a supporter on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/everythingeverywhere Update your podcast app at newpodcastapps.com Search Past Episodes at fathom.fm Discord Server: https://discord.gg/UkRUJFh Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/everythingeverywhere/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EverythingEverywhere Twitter: https://twitter.com/everywheretrip Website: https://everything-everywhere.com/everything-everywhere-daily-podcast/ Everything Everywhere is an Airwave Media podcast." or "Everything Everywhere is part of the Airwave Media podcast network Please contact [e-mail] to advertise on Everything Everywhere. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ellen Walsh was born in 1838 in England. She moved to the United States, changed her name, climbed the social ladder, and wound up an extremely wealthy woman. But in 1907, she abruptly disappeared from public life. And then, 25 years later, she appeared once again, and her life became tabloid fodder that shocked the world. Learn more about Ida Wood, in her very unique life on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. The story of Ida Wood is sad and shocking. And when the story broke in 1932, it became scandalous. It all starts with a young girl who was born on January 14th, 1838,

in the town of Oldham England. The woman who became known to the world as Ida Wood was actually born Ellen Walsh. Her parents were Anne Crawford and Thomas Walsh. Her father was an Irish peddler who would travel and sell items from town to town. Her family immigrated to the United States when she was young. They first landed in Massachusetts, but moved around frequently. When Ellen's father died in 1864, he was actually living in San Francisco. It was in 1857, however, at the age of 19, that Ellen decided,

decided to take matters into her own hands to make a better life for herself. She moved to New York City. And the first thing she did was change her name. She went from Ellen Walsh and became Ida Mayfield. She reinvented a new history for herself, claiming that she was the daughter of Henry Mayfield, who owned a large Louisiana sugar plantation just outside of New Orleans. She poured over the New York Society pages and read the gossip of elite New Yorkers.

And during the course of her research, she frequently came across the name of one Benjamin Wood. Wood was the 37-year-old owner of the New York Daily News, which was a Democrat-leaning copperhead newspaper. Ida set her sights on Benjamin Wood. The problem was she wasn't in the same social circles that Wood traveled in, and there was no real chance that she would ever meet him. So she did something which was rather audacious for women at the time. She wrote him a letter, an extremely forward letter. She wrote him, quote, Mr. Woods, Sir. Having heard of you often, I venture to address you from hearing a young lady, one of your former love, speak of you. She says that you are fond of new faces. I fancy that I am new in this city, and in affairs the cure, that I might contract an agreeable intimacy with you, of as long a duration as you see fit to have. I believe that I am not extremely bad-looking, nor disagreeable. Perhaps not quite as handsome as the lady with you at present, but I know a little more, and there's an old saying knowledge is power.

If you would wish an interview, address a letter to the address attached, stating what time we may meet. End quote. She basically just sent him a cold email offering herself as a mistress. And Benjamin Woods swiped right. Woods was married at this time to his second wife, so Ida became his mistress. Being the mistress of Benjamin Wood catapulted her into elite society. She ended up meeting both the Prince of Wales and Abraham Lincoln.

Ida was nothing if not patient. After 10 years, his mistress, his wife died in 1867, and Ida became his third wife. During this time, the political fortunes of Benjamin Wood rose. He was elected to the United States Congress, twice, serving from 1861 to 1865, and then elected to the New York State Senate. Her brother-in-law, Fernando Wood, was also elected the mayor of New York, serving from 1855 to 1857, and again from 1860 to 1861. While married to Ida, Benjamin was elected to Congress once again in 1881, and his newspaper grew to become one of the largest circulation newspapers in the United States.

But Benjamin also had a serious gambling problem. Ida struck a deal with him that whenever he won, he had to split the winnings with her, and if he lost, he had to observe it himself. This system allowed her to save up a nest egg, separate from her husband, and to protect the family's wealth. Benjamin Wood died at the age of 79 in February of 1900. Ida, who was 18 years younger than her husband, was left with an enormous fortune. Her estimated net worth was around $2 million, which in 1900 was a lot of money. It would be worth well over $60 million today in inflation-adjusted terms. Ida was 62 years old at this time, and one of the richest women in America.

She dabbled in running the newspaper for a bit, but in 1901 she sold it for around $300,000. After she sold it, the newspaper faltered and was out of business by 1906. The real story, however, does not begin until 1907. In 1907, showing great financial acumen, Ida Wood withdrew $1 million in cash from her bank, anticipating the 1907 banking crisis, which hit in October of that year. She took the money from the bank in a grocery. bag. Then she and her two sisters, and her $1 million in cash, went and booked a suite at the Harold Square Hotel, in particular, room 552. Then, pretty much no one heard from them again.

The hotel staff was not allowed into the room, not even to clean. No one in the hotel had any contact with the women for years. No one on the staff of the hotel had even seen the occupants of the room. Yet, somehow, they managed to pay their rent on time every month in cash. In 1928, Ida's sister Emma died at the hospital at the age of 71. No one in the hotel knew that it had happened or that there was even a woman by that name living there. The event that changed everything and brought this story to the world's attention occurred in 1931. An elderly half-naked woman rushed out of room 552, shouting, quote, my sister is sick, get a doctor. I think she's going to die.

No one in the hotel had ever seen this woman before. The unknown woman was Ida Wood. She was 93 years old, and it was the first time she had been out of her room in 25 years. The woman in question was her younger sister, Mary Mayfield, who also changed her name to match Ida's backstory, and Mary was found in the room dead. When Ida opened the door to help her sister,

she had led in the hotel staff, city officials, and inadvertently the entire world. Everyone was shocked at what they found inside. Room 552 was filled with filth and garbage. There were stacks of old yellow newspapers. There were tons of empty boxes of crackers littering the suite. Ida herself weighed only 93 pounds. She appeared not to have bathed in several years.

However, oddly enough, she took care of the skin on her face, on which she applied petroleum jelly every day. The hundreds of empty jars of petroleum jelly were also evidence of this. One of the attorneys assigned to her case, Morgan O'Brien, stated, quote, her complexion in spite of her age, was as creamy and pink and unwrinkled as any as I've ever seen. It was like tinted ivory, her profile like a lovely cameo, end quote. She also smoked slender Cuban cigars and used snuff imported from Copenhagen, which was also all over the suite.

What I'm describing today would be considered a classic case of hoarding. Such cases are sad, but not unheard of. But there was something else that made this case different, however. Interspersed with all the trash and garbage in her room was money. Lots of money. They found $247,000 in cash in an old shoebox. They found another half million dollars in $10,000 bills sewn into the pocket of an old dress. And 10,000 bills were actually a thing back then.

They found un-cashed dividend checks from stock she owed. They found unclaimed gold certificates. There were boxes with expensive jewelry, including necklaces, bracelets, and a golden tiara. As hard as she tried, word of what was discovered in Room 552 eventually made it to the press. The newspapers were merciless. Headlines included, Reckleuose 93 hoarding millions defies treasure searchers, and Reckleuze found naked in Hotel Suite. The fact that this story broke in the middle of the Great Depression made it all the more sensational.

It was only a matter of days before people began coming forward to try and claim Ida's money. A man by the name of Otis Wood, who was the son of Ida's brother-in-law and former mayor of New York, Fernando Wood, contacted an attorney and claimed that they wanted to help Ida. He, his brothers, and all their children were represented by lawyers. The children from Benjamin Wood's previous wives also came forward, as did all of their relatives. There were also claimants from her fictitious New Orleans family who came forward as well. The one thing that everyone agreed upon was that Ida should be declared incompetent. And so she was. She was escorted by police to a room directly below where she had lived for a quarter century.

She wept as they took her away, as despite her odd lifestyle, she did seem very competent. From her new room, she would often shout from her window that she was being held prisoner. Under this new state of affairs, over $3,000 were spent per month on doctors, lawyers, and other people for her supposed benefit. The stress of all the publicity, plus her already advanced age, took a toll. Ida Wood passed away on March 12, 1932, at the age of 94. At the time of her death, there were 1,130 people who had laid a claim to her fortune. The attorneys hired by all the people who wanted her money began investigating her past. They discovered the truth that she wasn't from a plantation-owning family in New Orleans,

but rather from an Irish family who migrated to the U.S. The resulting court case to resolve her estate was called a carnival of greed by the New York Times. The court found that her estate would be divided between 10 living relatives in Ireland because Ida had no living descendants. Each person received over $90,000, which is over $2 million inflation-indjusted dollars today. The case of Ida Wood is one of the strangest cases of its type ever recorded. She was a social climber, a fraud, and highly ambitious. She was also a socialite, a shrewd businesswoman, and one of the wealthiest women in the world. And finally, she was a recluse, a hoarder, and a miser.

She ultimately just wanted to be left alone, but she died a celebrity with a fame that she never wanted. Everything Everywhere Daily is an Airwave Media podcast. The executive producer is Darcy Adams. The associate producers are Thor Thompson and Peter Bennett. I just wanted to extend a big thank you to everyone who is supporting the show over at Patreon. I have show merchandise available there, including hoodies, t-shirts, and stickers. Plus, it really just helps me get this show out every single day, including, of course, weekends and holidays.

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