Big Scores · STOP 13 · South End
Sarah Howe ran a bank for single women at eight percent a month in 1879, and went to prison for it, forty years before Ponzi.
Forty years before Ponzi, a former fortune teller named Sarah Howe ran a bank in the South End for single women only, at eight percent a month. Over a thousand women signed up. She bought a house on a fenced green square across from a grand hotel, and in 1881 she got three years. The square and the hotel building are both still there. Take the Silver Line.
This is stop 13 of Big Scores. Walk it - any two stops are free.
The plate
Collected on site
After her last release, in 1889, Howe went back to her old trade, fortune telling, at 25 cents a reading.
More footnotes on the story card, in the app.
Argue about it
Should it be called a Howe scheme?
Both sides, with their sources, are on the story card in the app.
In these collections: Legends Busted, Crime Scenes
Sources (3)
- The Ladies' Deposit: The 19th-Century Ponzi Scheme by Women, for WomenMental Floss (Alana Mohamed) · 2018-05-14
- Sarah Howe (fraudster)Wikipedia (citing Henry A. Clapp, 'Sympathetic Banking', Atlantic Monthly, July 1881; George Robb, Ladies of the Ticker, 2017; Boston Globe Sept 28 1880) · n.d.
- Ladies' Deposit (Boston, MA) - bank run episode 7934FinHist (compiles Chronicling America newspapers) · n.d.