Welcome back to another exclusive sneak preview of the Hue Jackson School of Scam Artistry!

I think we’re due for another running back revitalization. I know that football people seem to have this conversation every 3 or 4 years, but after seeing the lack of high picks used on running backs, I find myself convinced that teams are missing out. Considering how the game continues to evolve, I firmly believe that RBs (and players shaped like them) have to be the future of the game. Why shouldn’t every-down backs know how to tackle? Kick field goals? Play man-to-man D on a receiver? All I’m saying is that people need to give them a shot. Stout people of the world, unite. Hell – this week’s Hall of Fame Scammer never let her physical appearance get in the way of making a killing out there.

“BIG” BERTHA HEYMAN: THE CONFIDENCE QUEEN

BORN: 1851, Kobylin, Prussia (modern-day Poland)

DIED: May 1901, Chicago

Many people are total suckers for an attractive woman. From Helen of Troy to Cleopatra to Jackie Kennedy, people, and in particular, men, have been embarrassing themselves in pursuit of women since time immemorial. For many women, the gift of good looks is an important asset in pulling off scams of all varieties. So what, then, for women not endowed with those same prized physical traits? There’s no doubt that society’s perception of physical attractiveness harms women in many ways, but for a scant few, including this week’s Hall of Fame scammer, being ugly never prevented some from getting ahead in life.

Bertha Heyman was never a person who might have been considered physically attractive in her lifetime; born Bertha Schlesinger in the German principality of Prussia in the mid-19th century she stood approximately 5’4″ and weighed about 250 pounds. One source describes her as a “stout, gross-looking woman”, but by all accounts, whatever she may have lacked in physical beauty, she more than made up for it in charisma. In her prime, famed NYPD detective Thomas F. Byrnes considered her “the boldest and most expert of the many female adventuresses who infest the country.” Bertha arrived in the United States in the year 1878 with her first husband, Friedrich Karko (or Kerkow), landing, as virtually all European immigrants did during this time, in New York City. She would later migrate with him to Milwaukee to open a millinery store, where her marriage later came to an end for unknown reasons. In Wisconsin, she met John Heyman, a traveling suspender salesman, whom she married and assumed his last name.

Like so many Americans of this era, Bertha spent much of her time criss-crossing the country on the newly-built railroad system, visiting cities and towns all through the Northeast and Midwest. She spent a considerable amount of time in New York, starting out with some fairly small cons such as stealing watches and jewelry and forging checks and bond certificates. However, as she hit her stride as a criminal, her efforts became increasingly elaborate. By the mid-1880s, she’d honed her craft to an elite level; her greatest successes always came from targeting men for increasingly large sums of money.

Why men? As Bertha herself put it, “The moment I discover a man’s a fool I let him drop, but I delight in getting into the confidence and pockets of men who think they can’t be ‘skinned.’ It ministers to my intellectual pride.” While Bertha claimed she gave away almost all of the money that she conned from others, the reality is that she actually kept just about every penny that she grifted. She was in and out of prison many times during the 1880s, for a whole host of capers committed across the country. Among her most notable con jobs:

• While on a train from Chicago to NYC, she convinced a conductor that she had a job opportunity for him – he was the perfect man to manage a large estate she owned back in New York. He quit his job on the spot – and when she took him back to a large house (complete with fake butler and maid, whom she’d hired to pose as the jobs for the day), it was enough to convince him of her wealth that he loaned her $1000… in order to pay her “estate manager”. When he sued to get his money back, Bertha even swindled her own attorney representing her, claiming that she was worth millions of dollars, all in order to get some premium legal representation… for free, I guess.
• When her second husband left her, Heyman boarded with various people, and stole a number of watches and pieces of jewelry; to avoid arrest, she escaped to Canada. In London, Ontario, Bertha was again arrested on a train, this time for swindling a Montreal businessman out of several hundred dollars. Deported back to NYC, she stood trial for her previous jewelry theft, and was convicted; she got two years in prison, serving her time on Blackwell’s Island.
• While in prison, she befriended another prisoner – a man – and swindled him out of his life’s savings, believed to be around $900.
• While walking out of prison, she was arrested again – this time for a previous unrelated incident where she scammed two New York businessmen out of $1460. This time, she got five years in prison, and was released in 1887.
• Bertha Heyman surfaced in San Francisco a year later, going by the name “Bertha Stanley”. In San Francisco, she approached a prominent rabbi, claiming that her previous husband, a Gentile, left her a fortune, and that she wanted help in finding a suitable Jewish man to marry – as she had apparently also grown up Jewish in Germany, according to her backstory. The rabbi introduced her to his congregation, where his unmarried brother-in-law, Abraham Gruhn, was entranced by her charm. This was great! One catch, though: Bertha now had with her a “son”, by the name of William Stanley. Apparently William was not keen on the idea of his mother re-marrying, so he asked Gruhn for $500… to help take the sting off things. Willie also mentioned to other ladies of the Beth Israel congregation that he’d be happy to “re-set” their jewelry into more modern casings in order to make it look more hip and fashionable, similar to the large “diamonds” that Bertha wore. With cash and jewels all quickly pawned, Bertha and Willie then quickly fled California. Several months later, detectives tracked them down in San Antonio, Texas. Both of them were brought back to stand trial, but due to Abraham Gruhn’s continued soft spot for Bertha, she was acquitted, and her “son” took the fall, getting six months in prison.

By the 1890s, Bertha’s criminal career had come mostly to an end, and she transitioned into a performer, re-enacting her various capers as a one-woman act in a variety show. She also did scenes with a human punching bag by the name of Oofty Boofty, which mixed various parts of Romeo and Juliet with full-on boxing matches – where she would inevitably knock him out. (Also, they had to do the balcony scene with Bertha on the ground, because the rickety set couldn’t take her weight, apparently.) Eventually, she moved into the world of professional wrestling, where, as “Big Bertha” – a name she gave herself – she fought men of all varieties, and virtually always won. Everywhere Bertha went – from the courthouse to the opera house to the wrestling ring – she attracted a crowd, and it’s no surprise that as someone who got a taste for fame, she wanted to keep it going as long as possible.

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All hail running-backed shaped people! Versatility At Every Size is gonna be the new health craze of the 2020s… as soon as people are able to get back to a more normal life, I think we’ll see some major societal changes happening. As for now, I’ll keep getting my playbook set up… but before I go, don’t forget to call 1-900-FAST-BUX to subscribe to another exclusive round of audio cassette lessons on the art of scamming! If you call in the next 20 minutes, you’ll also receive a free meal supplement* subscription to go along with it – you won’t have another deal like this one any time soon, folks. Don’t wait!

*Cold Crisco with some food colouring, honey and lavender – you can’t go wrong! You can’t go right, either, but that’s a separate issue.

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Information from this article taken from here, here, here, here, and here. Banner image by The Maestro.