May Yohe at her Hastings-on-Hudson cottage. (photo credit 9.3)
Strong and May gave “every outward appearance of bride and bridegroom,” to reporters and offered only the briefest responses to questions, leaving more complete answers to their lawyer, Emanuel Friend.16 They said they would stay with May’s mother, that May would return to the theater, and that Strong would start a business in the city. Strong referred to May as his wife, saying that the couple had a “contract” to live as a married couple even if they could not legally do so.
They settled into Lizzie’s house in Hastings-on-Hudson. Lizzie, long familiar with her daughter’s behavior, told May she accepted the relationship “as long as he gives you happiness.”17 Strong’s mother Mary, ill at this time, was neither supportive nor forgiving. He tried to reconcile with her, but she refused, holding out until he fully repudiated the relationship with May.
The couple enjoyed their time in the Hudson River village and planned to marry formally on September 26, the day they thought May’s divorce would be finalized, and hence the first day they could legally wed under British law. Most evenings, they sat and talked on the wrap-around veranda of “Home Villa,” the name they gave to Lizzie’s beautiful house perched on a rising slope above the river. During the day, they enjoyed decorating the house with items brought back from Japan—silks, a table and tea service, weapons, and even suits of armor. Outside they planted Japanese cuttings. As an observer noted, “The Japanese idea prevails throughout in the decoration and the interior of the cottage looks as though some residence from the land of the Mikado had been transplanted to the banks of the Hudson.”18
May and Strong played with the dogs on the lawn, sat in the house’s open turret enjoying a panoramic view of the Hudson, and walked through town, always showing a great deal of affection toward each other. They took day trips to New York City, often at Morris Park, Gravesend, and the Sheepshead Bay races where Strong would, according to various reports, typically lose $200 to $300 per race.
Strong feared having all of May’s jewelry—worth almost $300,000 (close to $8 million today)—in the relatively insecure house. He suggested that they rent a safety deposit box at a company in New York. This they did, in his name, at the Knickerbocker Trust Company on Fifth Avenue at Twenty-seventh Street. He kept the key. Sometime later, at her request, Strong took May to the premises to see that her jewels were safe and secure.
According to their acquaintances at that time, May would call Strong “Putty,” “Dearie,” “Lovey,” and “Pettie,” terms of endearment that irked him, especially when she said them in public. For several of Strong’s friends, the match was a somewhat curious one. Their difference in age was amplified by their looks. Strong, though athletic in build, had a youngish, effeminate face and a manner that tended to repel men but attract women. May, on the other hand, had gotten a bit stout; she used a lot of makeup, was typically well-perfumed and “togged out,” and had a boisterous, forward, and ornery manner, as is common among alcoholics. As some of Strong’s acquaintances cruelly said, “She looked old enough to be the young man’s mother.”19
I vowed to myself that he should come back to me.
—May Yohe1
CHAPTER TEN
Betrayed, Again
WHAT STRONG AND MAY DID NEXT IN 1902 was more sensational than their elopement and hit the front pages of every major paper in the nation. The drama began with headlines such as these in the New York Times:
MAJOR STRONG IS MISSING
Left Miss Yohe on Tuesday, Wrote
He would Kill Himself
PAWNED SOME OF HER JEWELS
Brooch on Which He Got $10,000 Located
In Pawnshop—Deposit Vault to be Opened 2
Strong had been with May in New York on Tuesday, July 15. She had seen the doctor, and then they lunched at Delmonico’s—the same place May had originally met Lord Francis. Strong said he had to go see his mother, who was gravely ill and probably needed surgery. He packed some things from Hastings for his trip to Lenox, Massachusetts, where she was staying, and dropped May off at the 125th Street train station to return home.
The next day, she received a note from him. So did Mrs. Strong. The note to May was succinct:
Dear Maysie,
When you have received this I will have committed suicide. I have stolen all your jewels—the tickets you will find at the Knickerbocker. BRADLEE.3
The note to Mrs. Strong apologized for his failures and also mentioned suicide. Additionally, it included a number of pawn tickets and a key to a safety deposit box. The receipts indicated that about $10,000 had been received for what was roughly $100,000 worth of pawned jewelry. Strong’s note suggested that his mother should redeem them for May.
May sent one of her servants to look for Strong with the message that “all would be forgiven if he returned” and that he could be “assured of May’s undying affection.”4 Mrs. Strong and her son-in-law Albert Shattuck hired the Pinkerton Detective Agency to track him down.
The press got wind of all this and descended on Hastings to interview May. “Attired in a wondrous kimono of soft silk, and surrounded by the collections of queer looking dogs, birds, and other things that she brought back from Japan,” May spoke in measured language about the disappearance and tried to shield her beloved Putty from any shame, “refraining from saying anything unkind about Strong,” according to the Chicago Daily Tribune, even though “her sorrow was apparent … She sat on the porch of her cottage at Hastings all day looking up and down the road as though expecting Strong to come around the curve at any moment.” The Tribune quoted May:
“All I can say is that Captain Strong, my husband, has gone away. There is no denying that and I don’t mind admitting that I don’t know where he has gone. I will say, though, that I believe he will come back again. We were going to sail for Japan in September and we may yet.”5
Neither May nor the Strong-Shattuck family seriously thought Putnam Bradlee Strong would commit suicide. But they were concerned about his whereabouts. When, by the second and third day, neither May nor Strong’s family nor anyone else could locate him, May grew more despondent.
May Yohe on the porch of her Hastings-on-Hudson cottage, with (right to left) her maid, Yori Komatsu, her mother, Lizzie Batcheller, and her lawyer, Emanuel Friend. (photo credit 10.1)
According to the Washington Post, “while talking Miss Yohe toyed with two lockets attached to a chain about her neck. Each bore a likeness of Major Strong.” May mused,
“Why even my parrot calls ‘Bradlee, Bradlee’ all day long. My private opinion is that he met some friends whom he fell in with while we were on our way back to this country … Now, they have probably been wandering about together and the Captain is ashamed.”6
Lizzie told reporters that her daughter was “heartbroken and in danger of total collapse.” “May loved him devotedly. She would readily forgive him if he would return.”7 May was also concerned about what may have become of her jewels—how many of those not pawned by Strong remained in her vault. But his return mattered more to her than the jewels:
“If the Captain only knew that I would forgive him everything! The jewels are nothing, if he would but return. Why, if I saw him now coming up the garden walk, I would run to meet him and bid him welcome home!”8
May’s lawyer, Emanuel Friend, explained the situation with regard to the supposed stolen jewelry:
“Mrs. Strong will bring the key to New York on Monday along with the pawn tickets. We will then go to the safe deposit company, open the box, and see.”9
Given the situation, reporters pushed May to reveal details about her life with Strong, especially with regard to his spending and any prior history of pawning her jewelry. She readily told them all that she had supported Strong. To the New York Times, she said, “Why this whole thing began a year ago almost. You see, I was like a child. You wouldn’t think it of me, with all my experience: but I was just the same.”10 In another interview, she added, “Si
nce his father died and left him bankrupt, he has been mainly supported by me.”11 She told the Atlanta Constitution that “ever since we reached Japan I have supported that man, though he kept assuring me that he possessed a fortune in his own right.”12
Describing how they lived in Japan, she said:
“We’d been living in Yokohama and we got behind in our bills. He didn’t have any money, and I gave him three pieces of jewelry to pawn … With what we received on them we lived beautifully for a time and paid all our bills. When we sailed for England, Bradlee gambled heavily on the way and when the vessel reached Genoa, we were broke.”13
And on their return to New York, she said nothing had changed: “When we arrived here from Japan, Mr. Strong desired to entertain his friends and he gave many luncheons and dinners, but I paid for them.”14
The drama played out in the press over the rest of the week. Emanuel Friend speculated that Strong ran off because he was at the end of his rope with financial losses. He also suggested that Strong finally fell victim to his family’s pressure to abandon May. Rumors abounded. Sightings of Strong were widely reported. One even had Strong telephoning May, apologizing for everything, saying he was coming home, and claiming that all her jewels would be returned that day. None of these proved true.
A rumor spread that Putnam Bradlee Strong was seen with another woman. At first May didn’t believe it. “Miss Yohe pooh-poohed the idea that another woman had ‘cut her out’ and stolen her captain from her,”15 one reporter wrote. But when the rumor started to acquire more detail, May was infuriated:
May Yohe had just finished telling how she would forgive Strong when the report that he had left her to go to the home of another woman was brought to her. The metamorphosis was sudden and startling. Miss Yohe jumped from her chair, bumped into the diminutive form of Lawyer Emanuel Friend, made two circuits of the veranda in a dozen strides, and then said things that would have made Putnam Bradlee’s hair curl if he could have heard them. The last lingering tenderness that the former Lady Francis Hope had for her captain disappeared at that moment, and from now on Miss Yohe says that she will be out for revenge.16
The papers closely followed May’s change in attitude toward Strong. “Until yesterday I believed that I loved him, but now I know him as a coward and worse.”17 She proclaimed,
“Yes, I’m indignant. Why shouldn’t I be? I have been outrageously treated. It was bad enough to be deserted this way without being held up to ridicule. Why didn’t he come to me and tell me he had done wrong? If he had taken the jewelry he needn’t have been afraid of the consequences. I would have hollered about it. I’m not that kind. I’d just have made the best of it, and if there was no other way, for it I’d have gone back on the stage and earned a living for us both.”18
On Tuesday, July 22, a representative of the Strong-Shattuck family turned over the pawn tickets and safe deposit key to May and Friend. Friend promised that if indeed there were jewels missing from the box, he would seek an arrest warrant for Strong for grand larceny unless Strong came forward with the stolen jewels. May confirmed that approach, and said that she hoped Strong would bring back any gems he might have taken. That afternoon, May, Lizzie, and Friend went to the Knickerbocker Company to inspect the safe. Met by the company’s vice president, Joseph Brown, they made sure all of the paper work and permissions were in place.
They stood in front of the deposit box, number 35, with May visibly nervous and trembling as Friend worked the combination and turned the key to open the box. As the Chicago Tribune reported,
When the box was drawn out of its niche and Miss Yohe saw that three little cardboard boxes were all that it contained, she fell back with a scream … “I’ll be even for this. I’ll have my revenge for this dirty work. That man will get in jail this night if I can get him behind the bars. O[sic], if I could only put my hands on him now!”19
She then cried out, “My God, My God! He left me nothing. All my jewels are gone. All gone. Why?”20
May and Friend had come prepared for the worst. She had a typewritten list of the jewels that were supposed to be in the box, as well as other items Strong had pawned and not redeemed. There are some inconsistencies between the list May gave to the police, which was published in the papers, and another list May included in her 1921 book The Mystery of the Hope Diamond, but the following captures the sense of what she had. It also reveals a who’s who of May’s admirers, including an Indian Maharaja; the British banker and financier Alfred Rothschild; Barney Barnato, who sold his Kimberley diamond mines to Cecil Rhodes to form DeBeers; and the personally smitten admirer, Captain Holford, who was arrested years later for pilfering jewelry.
diamond and turquoise bracelet, in safe deposit in New York (gift of Henry Guest, $15,000)
cluster diamond broach with immense emerald set in centre, in safe deposit in New York (from Mr. Walters, $12,000)
turquoise and diamond arrow, in safe deposit in New York (from Mr. Alfred Rothschild, $8,000)
diamond brooch set with twenty pure diamonds, in safe deposit in New York (from Mr. Barney Barnato, $20,000)
diamond and sapphire “dog collar,” in safe deposit in New York (from the Maharaja of Cooch Behar $80,000)
black lace fan with tortoise shell frame studded with diamonds, in safe deposit in New York (from Charles Rose, $8,000)
a score or more of diamond rings—dinner rings, banquet rings, clusters and solitaires, in safe deposit in New York ($95,000)
ruby bracelet, in safe deposit in New York ($17,500)
diamond and turquoise necklace, (gift from Captain Holford, $25,000)
32 stone diamond necklace pawned in Yokohama
pearl and diamond tiara, pawned in Genoa21
May and Friend went to the police station to ask that Strong be arrested. An arrest warrant was issued. Friend also put up a $1,000 reward. Some two dozen police officers were assigned to the case and fanned out around the city to see if they could locate Strong. Friend then went to the pawn shops indicated by the tickets to see what remained and determine their redemption value.
May, Friend and Lizzie adjourned to the Sturtevant House café. Hundreds of people came to the window to try to get a glimpse of May. Reporters surrounded her. May was furious and lashed out at Strong during the makeshift press conference. “Here is the ring with which we were to be married,” May said to reporters as she exhibited a small diamond solitaire ring. On the same finger was a larger diamond. She was asked how it happened that Captain Strong left it. “I guess he could not get it off my finger. He took about everything else that I had,” a writer for the Atlanta Constitution reported. She added,
“He left me two cheap fans. I suppose that was to suggest that I keep cool. I will keep cool enough. I wish I could cool him.
“It is bad cricket for a man to fawn upon a woman and profess to love her, and then steal from her. Just think! While he was caressing me and telling me that he loved me, Captain Strong was sneaking my jewels and ‘soaking’ them.”22
To the Chicago Daily Tribune, she fumed,
“I did not think the man could be so base. I did not think there were such low instincts in his nature … I am through with Captain Strong. This thing has ended it. I am ruined. Everything that I had is gone. You can depend upon me getting justice for this outrage if justice is to be had in the land.”23
And to the New York Times, she said, “They say that hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Well, I’ve been scorned and I’ve got a right to be furious. Now I want justice.”24
The next day, July 23, Mrs. Strong and the Shattucks offered to settle with May rather than see Putnam Bradlee Strong possibly arrested for grand larceny—even though their lawyer indicated that since May and Strong were living as husband and wife and the vault was rented freely in his name, she didn’t have much of a case. Still the scandal had taken its toll on Mary Strong, who was now in New York, ill, and disgusted by the stories of her son’s ignominy and May’s daily rants to reporters.
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May and Friend visited the offices of Job E. Hedges, the former private secretary to Mayor Strong and legal advisor to the family. They came to an agreement. Though it was not publicly disclosed, the family would pay May about $22,000. This would cover the cost to redeem the pawn tickets for jewelry worth ten times that or more, plus interest, plus money for jewels pawned in Yokohama and in Genoa. In return, May agreed to drop the charges against Strong and rescind the reward offer.
May, Lizzie and Emanuel Friend then went to the police station to do just that. Their next stop was Goldstones Jewelers at 234 Sixth Avenue, where most of May’s jewelry had been pawned. It took about half an hour to locate all the pieces and redeem them. May was reported to be carrying a roll of cash about six inches in diameter. She paid about $7,500 in cash.
May’s next stop was the telegraph office. Strong was said to be headed back to Japan. May was worried that he was carrying some of her jewels and would try to pawn them in Yokohama. She sent a telegram to one of her contacts there.
To Wood, Yokohama
Look out for diamonds. I sail on the next
steamer.
MAY YOHE.25
In the following days, rumors started cropping up in the papers that even though they might be departing separately, May and Strong were arranging a rendezvous in Japan.
Reporters asked May about this. “Reconciliation? Ugh!” was May’s reply. Friend was more articulate, but the message was the same: “Never, I can tell you. If ever a woman hated a man, she hates that man.”26
The affair occasioned a great deal of commentary and editorializing around the nation about relationships between men and women. It was a transformative time, with questions of gender roles and women’s rights rising to the fore of American social consciousness.
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