In 1877, a mysterious young woman allegedly turned up at the fashionable Long Branch beach resort in New Jersey. She was beautiful, glamorous, and seemed to have limitless cash — 11 horses, a huge retinue of servants, the best clothes... /1

She swanned around town as if she was an empress and caused quite a stir, for nobody knew who she was. A reporter noticed that she was being tailed by a "quiet unassuming man who was modestly dressed in black." He turned out to be a detective and subsequently revealed that:
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Like many of the stories reported in the Illustrated Police News, this was probably a work of fiction. But still, what a character! If anybody deserved a Netflix series... /3