#like a dirtbag but not THAT level of dirtbag. still objectively a bad person! don't get me wrong!

[marzipanandminutiae]

okay but now I'm so happy I know about Elizabeth Bigley/Cassie L. Chadwick, 19th-century American con artist (okay she was Canadian, but she mostly worked in the US)

favorite thing she did: ran a brothel and then, when she set her sights on marrying a wealthy doctor, pretended to believe that it was a boarding-house for respectable women only to be SCANDALIZED when he told her it was a well-known House of Ill Repute. oh she would never have intended such a thing! he must rescue her from here at once! could she possibly impose upon his hospitality to stay at his large elegant home?

the marriage plan worked