My least-selling book, first published in 2019, is also my favorite. So much so, that once or twice a year I scour sources looking for new material that sheds additional light on the lives of criminal mastermind James B. Crosse and his paramour, Jane Fleming (aka Eusebia Lee/Fitzgerald/Woolley).
This week I’ve published a new, revised and expanded edition of The Writing Master that includes two new chapters, thirty new footnotes, and a larger index. Included in this edition:
- A new chapter with a lengthy anecdote on “Ross the Skinner,” i.e. Crosse’s alias in 1866 New York City, where he successfully pulled off a huge Wall Steet swindle. This anecdote was found in a column of “Thirty Years in Gotham” by Harry Hill in the New York Sunday Mercury–a newspaper that has not been digitized and only exists in hard-copy at the Library of Congress.
- When Crosse escaped from New York with this huge con in 1866, he had the help of a ship captain, E. S. Hardy. In the 1870s, Hardy moved to Marquette, Michigan, on the Upper Peninsula, where he became the police judge and probate judge. Crosse showed up in Marquette in 1876 to execute his “Iron Money” counterfeiting scam. Previously, I didn’t know why Crosse became interested in such a remote destination.
- Jane Fleming’s third (or fourth, if you count Crosse) husband, Edward Fitzgerald, disappeared in the Spring of 1885. We now know where he went and what happened to him.
- Fitzgerald’s headstone reveals some traumatic history of Jane Fleming, that helps to explain some of her mercenary behavior.