In 1932, a 94 year old woman died in New York
City. Her death made national headlines because the woman, Ida Mayfield Wood, who had been
a recluse for the last 24 years of her life, had once been described as the Grand
Dame of New York's glittering 1870s. But her death represented more than the passing of
a famous socialite, it represented the beginning of a startling mystery with twists and turns
that were more strange than anyone imagined they could be. The mystery of Ida Mayfield Wood
is history that deserves to be remembered. A year before she died, Ida Wood had to do
something she hadn't done in more than two decades…contact the outside world. In 1931 she
opened the door to her hotel room, room 522 in The Herald Square hotel and called for a maid. No
maid in years had been able to get into room 552, and clean linens were passed through a barely
cracked door. “My sister is sick. Get a doctor, I think she's going to die.” Dr Hal Babcock
from a hotel nearby responded, what he found was shocking. First there was the 93 year old
Ida Wood, wraith-like with matted white hair. “How much are you going to charge?” she demanded
to the Doctor, who told her that he wouldn't charge anything if she couldn't afford it. “Oh
I'll pay you.” Ida responded, “but I warn you, not more than three dollars.” No one besides Ida
and her sisters have been in the room since 1907. The two-room suite was a disaster, full to
the brim of boxes, rubbish and dust. Rolled up carpets, barrels, newspapers and more were
stacked haphazardly in every available space. A makeshift sofa made of dirty blankets and sheets
sat in one corner. Ids’s sister Mary lay emaciated on a cot in the second room already comatose.
Dr Babcock guessed she weighed only 75 pounds. Her abdomen was terribly swollen and
the doctor guessed she was dying of cancer. Within a few minutes she was dead. “Oh
dear” Ida said, “Now she’ll have to be buried, and that will cost money.” That night was the
first time the hotel manager had ever seen Ida or her sister Mary. In 1928 he had seen Emma,
Ida's daughter, when she had been taken out of the hotel. She later died at a hospital. The
Mayfields had always paid their hotel bill in cash although only reluctantly. The only employee
in the hotel who had ever been inside the room in decades was William Henry Grant, the night
elevator operator who brought food. Always the same list, bacon, eggs, coffee, crackers,
butter, evaporated milk and fish every few days. Every time she gave him money Ida would tell Grant
that it was the last money she had in the world. But now she had to deal with real problems, and
she was no longer particularly capable of it. She refused to listen when the Undertaker
arrived, rocking in her chair with her head bowed. She finally suggested they contact Judge Morgan
O'Brien, a former Justice of the New York Supreme Court and O'Brien was retired, but his son,
a lawyer, stepped in to handle the situation. After decades of seclusion Ida Wood was about
to be dragged back into the limelight and her long-held secrets would soon be revealed. Ida was
stooped like a question mark, in poor health and beginning to lose her mind. The law firm arranged
for 24-Hour guards in the hotel room and doctors to judge her health. They determined she
suffered from a paranoid state of mind in the condition of senile deterioration, and she
was declared incompetent by the New York Court. The court appointed her nephew by
marriage Otis Wood to be her guardian. Hidden about her hotel room Ida had hundreds of
thousands of dollars in bonds and claimed that she had 385,000 in cash. She wouldn't let anyone take
it from the room despite, as the law firm claimed, her deafness, blindness and weakness. Meanwhile,
knowledge that Ida was still alive was spreading as lawyers searched for her next of kin. Nephews
and grand-nephews along with children from her husband Ben's earlier marriages were already
circling. Newspapers were already reporting, Rich Recluse Found in Dingy Suite. They started
digging up her past and the Herald Tribune described her as, “A belle from New Orleans
who swept across the social horizon of New York in the 1860s and 70s with bright plumage and
a fragile beauty.” She danced with the late King Edward VII in 1860. On October 6 1931, Otis had
her moved to an identical set of rooms directly below hers, she fought the whole way claiming
they're only doing it to steal her money. Searching through the room afterwards they found
247,000 in cash, later a nurse discovered that Ida had tied a bag around her waist which held another
500,000 dollars in ten thousand dollar bills. Diamond necklaces and rings were
found including one in a cracker tin. Hundreds of people would turn up claiming to be
her nearest relatives, Mayfields from Louisiana and across the country, Crawfords who claimed
to be related to her maternal grandfather. Every word she said was recorded by nurses but she
spoke at length, and told conflicting stories. She had a five dollar bill that she kept
like a teddy bear and she wouldn't part with. She fought against every attempt to care for her,
and one nurse remarked that “The 94 year old woman had powerful hands. She could have broken
your wrist easily.” she said. In March 1932, she developed pneumonia and on March 12th she
had a heart attack. She died that afternoon. Her death certificate recorded the facts as
they knew them. Father, Thomas Henry Mayfield, mother Ann Mary Crawford. Little did anyone
know how wrong that was. It would take some time to untangle the messy facts of Ida
Wood's life, but eventually painstaking detective work would prove that almost
nothing anyone knew about her was true. Ida Wood was born Ellen Walsh in Oldham,
Manchester England in 1838, the daughter of Thomas Walsh and Ann Crawford. Her father immigrated to
Massachusetts and then to San Francisco in 1867. When she appeared in New York City in 1857 at
age 19 she was poor but pretty, and looking for a way up in the world. She quickly identified
Benjamin Wood, a married newspaper magnet and sent him a daring letter. “Having heard of you often, I
ventured to address you from hearing a young lady, one of your former loves, speak of you. She
says you are ‘fond of new faces.’ I fancy that I am new in the city and affairs de coeur that
I might contract an agreeable intimacy with you. I believe that I'm not extremely bad looking, nor
disagreeable. Perhaps not quite as handsome as the lady with you at present, but I know a little more
and there's an old saying, ‘Knowledge is power’.” The message apparently intrigued the 37 year
old Wood who met her and found her suitable. She became his mistress and 10 years later his
third wife. On Valentine's Day 1857 Wood wrote Ida an acrostic love poem which called her, “Ida
with the lovely eyes.” As his mistress she entered the top of New York Society, she met Prince Albert
Edward, later King Edward VII, when he visited New York in 1860 in an extremely exclusive event, and
Abraham Lincoln as he traveled to Washington as President-Elect. She met several more presidents
including Grover Cleveland and Benjamin Harrison, as well as the French Empress Eugenie.
Though she claimed to be the daughter of a sugar planter Henry Mayfield she never seemed
to have spoken with a Louisiana accent and for a time before they were married she went by the
name Mrs Harvey, though it isn't clear why. Ida seems always to have been best at saving money
while Ben was an incorrigible gambler. He even bet his newspaper on a single hand in a game
of cards, a hand he fortunately won. He would often sign letters apologizing to Ida
‘Unfortunately for you, your husband Ben’. According to popular stories Ida would sometimes
wait outside the club while he gambled so that if he won she could demand a share. She wouldn't
bother him about the gambling, she told him, as long as he gave her half his winnings and covered
his own losses. They had a daughter together, Emma, who was born before they were married. Ida
had a sister Mary took on the Mayfield name just like Ida. However, like so many things it turns
out that Emma was not only not Ben's daughter, she wasn't even Ida's daughter. According to a letter
found in her effects Ben had adopted and treated Emma as his daughter, but she was actually Ida's
sister. A fact apparently kept from Emma. Life was hardly without its storms, in addition to gambling
Ben was an ardent secessionist and his paper the New York Daily News championed the cause. Her
brother-in-law Fernando Wood, Mayor of New York City had declared that New York should become a
Sovereign Free City and secede like the South. The meeting with Lincoln, who Fernando refused
to refer to as Mr President, was likely frosty. Ben was elected to New York's Third District
in 1861 and the Daily News became so viciously anti-union that Lincoln's Administration barred it
from being carried by the post office. They even seized copies of the paper sent out to the city
on trains. Indeed The Daily News helped to stir up the New York City draft riots. And after the war
the paper was incredibly successful and for a time advertised as having the largest circulation
of any Daily Newspaper in the United States. When Benjamin died in 1900, Ida became the
New York Daily News's editor. She fared badly alienating the staff and firing most of the
reporters and editors, she still managed to sell the paper in 1901 for 340,000 in thousand dollar
bills. Between 1901 and 1907, Mary, Emma and Ida traveled the world. They took soap from hotels
they visited and entire boxes of the collected soap were found after her death. Ida seemed to
develop a horrible fear of dying in poverty, and in 1907, hearing unsettling news about the
Panic of 1907 she rushed to the bank to save her money from a collapsing economy. She arrived at
the bank and demanded the money, nearly a million dollars in cash, be withdrawn immediately. The
sum was so large that the bank refused to obey, reassuring her that the money was safe and that
she couldn't just walk away with such a large sum in cash, but she threatened them telling them
she would tell every newspaper that the bank would not, or could not cover its liabilities. She
walked out with a bag full of cash. From then on the money remained in a safety deposit box
which was occasionally opened, always by Mary. She seemed to have already been growing paranoid
and in late 1907, she moved with her sisters to The Herald Square hotel. To trick anyone following
her she registered as a resident of Philadelphia. While her sisters occasionally left the room,
especially Mary, Ida herself happily spiraled into the life of a recluse. Emma died in 1928,
Mary in 1931, and finally Ida herself in 1932. Ida's will left everything to Mary and Emma and
the legal battle regarding her money would drag on after. The will was not probated and instead
the state took over, appointing Joseph A Cox, the public administrator to administer
the will and determine the nearest kin. Cox had the unenviable job of digging through
decades of correspondence and papers, as well as hundreds of letters from people claiming to be
Ida’s kin all over the country. Ultimately 1,100 people would make a claim on Ida's fortune
and one would even produce a forged will. Discovering Ida's identity was no easy task. Cox
tracked records and letters, and poured over the extensive notes nurses had taken during Ida's
last months. Persistence and copious notes taken by Ida among her possessions left clues, which
firmly connected Ellen Walsh and Ida Mayfield. Through her conversation with nurses Cox tracked
down her father who had died in San Francisco. They found a monument in New York City where
Ida had buried her mother and a brother. Cox discovered that around 1865 the remaining
family, Ida’s mother and siblings Emma, Mary and Michael went to New York to join Ida and
all of them had changed their names to Mayfield. Ultimately the big break actually came
from an employee in a firm representing Otis Wood, a former newspaperman, he had the
idea of running a large ad, including pictures, in the Boston Globe seeking information to
which he added the apparently made-up claim that Ida had promised her money to her uncle's
children. Cox used that information to track more hints in England and Ireland and eventually
succeeded in identifying 10 relatives in England, Ireland and the United States who
would receive her inheritance. There's still questions
that haven't been answered, for example what is her connection to or
how did she even know about Henry Mayfield? And of course there's that note of tragedy
that her paranoia meant that she spent the last decades of her life as a recluse, she didn't
even leave to attend Emma or Mary's funerals. Of course no one else did either. But maybe
that's the way that she wanted it. If she hadn't been forced to call a doctor to tend to her
ailing sister, maybe she would have just passed away in anonymity, and all those secrets that
she kept for so long would have stayed buried. I hope you enjoyed watching this episode of the
History Guy and if you did please feel free to like and subscribe, and share the History Guy
with your friends. And if you also believe that history deserves to be remembered then you can
support the History Guy as a member on YouTube, a supporter of our community, at locals
or as a patron on Patreon. You can also check out our great merchandise shop or book a
special message from the History Guy on Cameo.
