Sarah Emily Howe (c. 1826 – January 26, 1892) was an American

fraudster In law, fraud is intentional deception to secure unfair or unlawful gain, or to deprive a victim of a legal right. Fraud can violate civil law (e.g., a fraud victim may sue the fraud perpetrator to avoid the fraud or recover monetary compensa ...

who operated several

Ponzi scheme A Ponzi scheme (, ) is a form of fraud that lures investors and pays profits to earlier investors with funds from more recent investors. Named after Italian businessman Charles Ponzi, the scheme leads victims to believe that profits are comin ...

s in the 1870s and 1880s, most famously the Ladies' Deposit Company of Boston. Howe was arrested in 1880 and imprisoned for three years for fraud, but upon her release she repeated similar frauds until she was arrested again in 1888.

Early life

The details of Howe's early life are uncertain. Newspaper accounts gave inconsistent reports of her age, suggesting she may have been born as early as 1820 or as late as 1827. The ''

Boston Herald The ''Boston Herald'' is an American daily newspaper whose primary market is Boston, Massachusetts, and its surrounding area. It was founded in 1846 and is one of the oldest daily newspapers in the United States. It has been awarded eight Pulit ...

'' claimed she was born in

Providence, Rhode Island Providence is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Rhode Island. One of the oldest cities in New England, it was founded in 1636 by Roger Williams, a Reformed Baptist theologian and religious exile from the Massachusetts Bay ...

. A reported early marriage to a man named James Solomon may have been

annulled Annulment is a legal procedure within secular and religious legal systems for declaring a marriage null and void. Unlike divorce, it is usually retroactive, meaning that an annulled marriage is considered to be invalid from the beginning almost ...

due to

miscegenation Miscegenation ( ) is the interbreeding of people who are considered to be members of different races. The word, now usually considered pejorative, is derived from a combination of the Latin terms ''miscere'' ("to mix") and ''genus'' ("race") ...

, followed by a marriage to a second man who subsequently died. Many of these details came from sources hostile to Howe and are difficult to confirm. In 1852, she married Florimund L. Howe in

Manchester, New Hampshire Manchester is a city in Hillsborough County, New Hampshire, United States. It is the most populous city in New Hampshire. At the 2020 census, the city had a population of 115,644. Manchester is, along with Nashua, one of two seats of New Hamp ...

. After the

American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states th ...

, the couple moved to Boston, Massachusetts, where she worked as a

fortune teller Fortune telling is the practice of predicting information about a person's life. Melton, J. Gordon. (2008). ''The Encyclopedia of Religious Phenomena''. Visible Ink Press. pp. 115-116. The scope of fortune telling is in principle identical w ...

and in various other occupations, some of them criminal. She spent several weeks in jail in 1875 after taking out multiple loans secured with the same collateral, but her conviction was overturned on appeal.

Ladies' Deposit

Howe opened the Ladies' Deposit Company sometime before April 1879 as a

savings bank A savings bank is a financial institution whose primary purpose is accepting savings account, savings deposits and paying interest on those deposits. History of banking, They originated in Europe during the 18th century with the aim of providi ...

that accepted deposits only from unmarried women. She told depositors that the bank worked with a

Quaker Quakers are people who belong to a historically Protestant Christian set of Christian denomination, denominations known formally as the Religious Society of Friends. Members of these movements ("theFriends") are generally united by a belie ...

charity that wanted to help women of modest means. She promised a very high interest rate on the deposits, initially described as two percent per week, which was later adjusted to eight percent per month. In fact there was no such charity and Howe relied on new deposits to pay the interest on older ones. Howe did not advertise the bank, but was able to attract $500,000 () in deposits from about 1200 women in cities as far away as Chicago and Washington by relying on referrals from her depositors. In September 1880, the ''

Boston Daily Advertiser The ''Boston Daily Advertiser'' (est. 1813) was the first daily newspaper in Boston, and for many years the only daily paper in Boston. History The ''Advertiser'' was established in 1813, and in March 1814 it was purchased by journalist Nathan ...

'' began publishing articles attacking the Ladies' Deposit as a swindle, which led to a

run on the bank A bank run or run on the bank occurs when many clients withdraw their money from a bank, because they believe the bank may cease to function in the near future. In other words, it is when, in a fractional-reserve banking system (where banks no ...

by its depositors. By October the scheme had collapsed and Howe was charged with multiple counts of fraud. She was convicted and served three years in prison.

Later life

After her release in 1884, Howe set up another fraudulent bank, the Women's Bank. The new bank operated on the same principles as the Ladies' Deposit, but promised a slightly lower interest rate of seven percent per month. She accepted an estimated $50,000 in deposits before the new fraud was exposed in April 1887. Howe fled Boston before she could be indicted. Howe attempted similar schemes in other cities, including one in Chicago under the name Ladies Provident Aid. She returned to Boston where she was arrested in December 1888, but she was released in March 1889 because victims were unwilling to participate in her prosecution. She returned to fortune telling until her death in Boston on January 26, 1892.

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