The Extraordinary Story Of The Rich Socialite Who Hid In A Hotel Room For 24 Years

After she died, her legacy—a large fortune—created a hysterical frenzy amongst the American population. The subtitle of a famous book written about her many years later was, “A stranger-than-fiction report of intrigue and greed that resulted in one of the most important and exciting inheritance cases in American law.” Read on to learn more about Ida.

Or how it would turn polite society upside down. Who was this Ida Wood? She would barely say a word to anyone—or at least nobody had been able to land an interview. She had, after all, evaded society for a quarter of a decade.

She claimed to be the daughter of Henry Mayfield, the New Orleanian patriarch of a sugar plantation family, and Ann Mary Crawford, a down-the-line daughter of the Earls of Crawford. Ida passed herself off as a Southern belle in the Big Apple. 

The life of a socialite in New York was not very much different from being a socialite in the courts of old. It was a means of survival. Hosting a party was a tactical affair. Members of American high society were even indexed in a semi-annual publication called the Social Register.

As an outsider, she was a breath of fresh air. She set her eyes on many bachelors at these balls, flirting between one man and another, before she caught wind of one particular man by the name of Benjamin Wood. 

“I believe that I am 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 is an old saying—‘Knowledge is power.’” She arranged to meet him in the same letter.

Ida managed to maintain a comfortable lifestyle during this time, thanks to Wood’s great fortune, all behind Mrs. Wood’s back. The parties and soirees continued, as did the relationship. After a decade, Wood’s wife fell ill and passed away.

After years of being considered something of an outsider in the high society of New York, she finally gained legitimacy in the city. Ida had a daughter a little while before their marriage was formalized. She named her “Emma.”

In 1860, Edward, the Prince of Wales, came to visit New York City. At a ball, Ida met the prince and even charmed him into a dance on the ballroom floor with her. Prince Edward would go on to become King Edward VII. 

Lincoln was passing through New York in 1861 on a rail tour that began in Illinois and ended with an inauguration ceremony in Washington. Ida entertained the 16th president at an event in the city. The exchange was sure to have been interesting, given that Ida purported to have come from a wealthy sugar planter family—and given her husband’s political views.

The newspaper was notable for its racist and Confederate-centric views. Under Wood’s direction, the paper ran pro-slavery and pro-secession headlines. This brought Ire upon Wood after Lincoln was elected into power, after which the paper was shut down for two years.

Wood was often at odds with the rest of society. He was a stubborn man who nonetheless played with his fortune. He despised those he deemed lower than him—be it in class, race, or wealth. Later in his life, he was considered a traitor by many northern citizens for his aiding the Confederacy.

He won big—but when Ida caught wind of this, she was none too happy. While Benjamin loved playing with money for the thrill, Ida was extremely careful with her spending habits. His gambling was not a happy subject in their household.

While Wood had only slightly diminished his fortunes over years of gambling, Ida gathered an enormous fortune of siphoned winnings from her husband’s risky games. Rather than flaunt it, she moused it away into savings.

He spent the year before his death traveling back from Europe, which took a tremendous toll on his body. Upon his death, Ida inherited $2 million—a staggering amount of money in 1900. However, Ida had already been tapping Benjamin’s assets over the years.

This included the New York Daily News, which had, after a short closure, been running again since 1863. After Benjamin’s funds dwindled to the extreme, Ida offered him $100,000 dollars (a million today) for ownership of his newspaper. He accepted.

Ida was not considered a very successful leader by many at the Daily News. As a result, she received many resignations on her desk. Ida did her share of hiring and firing. During the restructuring, she brought in her late husband’s nephew, Benjamin, as a business manager.

She doubled her money and swept up a tidy $250,000 in exchange for her 160 shares. After only three years, Munsey sold his shares again after the Daily News failed to take off, and by the end of 1906, the paper officially ceased publication.

The stock market lost half of its value overnight. The crisis eventually led to the creation of the Federal Reserve. Everyone was affected—the richest and poorest in the country. As news spread about the deepening crisis, Ida moved to act.

This was an inconceivable amount of money to pull all at once. The bank initially refused until Ida threatened to announce to all the other newspaper businesses that the bank would be unable to honor its obligations to its customers. 

But that money wasn’t enough for her. She sold all the furniture, paintings, and property. Everything that wasn’t (or was) nailed down had to go. She liquidated everything into a pot of cash savings. Ida wouldn’t just withdraw her money from the bank—she also removed herself from the world.

Mary and Emma eventually joined her and returned to the city sometime after. They found that Ida had moved into the Herald Square Hotel. They decided to move in with her, in their own rooms. This was the last anyone would ever see of the women—at least for a long time.

It seems that newspapers followed Ida wherever she went. But at the Herald Square Hotel, Ida and her sisters were as far from the headlines as possible. The staff kept her life private and did not question her decision to pay her dues in cash.

Bellhops would deliver newspapers to their rooms and cigars on rare occasions, and Ida would ask for petroleum jelly. Even when these goods were delivered, their door never opened wide enough for anyone to get a good look inside. 

The only clue as to what Ida did with some of her time was the petroleum jelly. For two and a half decades, she would massage it into her face and body as a kind of anti-aging treatment. Their newspaper copies yellowed up with time, and like the news, they, too, grew old.

She left the room and entered hospitalized care. After turning 71, Mary died in the hospital. Neither Ida nor her sister Mary left the hotel to check on her. Even after her death, they remained in their hotel room. 

But suddenly, in 1931, a 70-pound Ida, now 93 years old, came screaming out of her hotel room for help. She was, by then, partially deaf. She feebly demanded medical help for her sister, who, it turns out, had already died.

Lawyers were assigned to look further into her case, including one Morgan O’Brian Jr. Upon searching her room, they found $10,000 in cash—worth almost $200,000 in today’s money, as well as stock records, jeweled necklaces, and other priceless treasures. 

Her lawyer, O’Brian, commented, upon interviewing her, that he could tell what an “extraordinarily pretty woman” she had once been. According to her lawyer, her complexion was “creamy,” “pink and unwrinkled,” like “tinted ivory.” 

Ida refused to move out of the hotel, and while the staff tried their best to prevent the press from getting wind of the story, the news soon broke. Soon, Ida’s “relatives” were calling in from every corner of the country. The hotel agreed to move Ida to a room below.

In the bathroom, they found a portable stove where they had occasionally heated their meals. Near the window, they found an ebony walking stick with a solid gold head—a gift Benjamin Wood had received from President James Monroe. More discoveries were made every day. An old box of crackers contained a diamond necklace worth $40,000.

In less than a year after emerging to the outside world in an attempt to save her already dead sister, Ida Wood passed away. Her trunks, 54 in total, were moved into vaults in the Harriman National Bank.

When the bellhops went to her or her sister’s rooms, she would tip them 10 cents, claiming it to be ”the only money she had left.” One maid who worked for the hotel had to convince the mysterious women in the rooms to change the towels only twice.

The Brooklyn Standard Union read, “A frail but spirited little lady of 93 years, once the belle of mid-Victorian days, today stomped her defiance of searchers spurred by the discovery of nearly a million dollars in currency she hoarded in her hotel room ‘because she was afraid of banks.’”

Relatives of Benjamin Wood came from every corner of the country. Additionally, people with “Mayfield” in their family tree also sprung at the chance of getting some of her inheritance money. But there was a complication.

But not a single one of them would get a cent. As it turned out, Ida Mayfield, later Ida Wood, had never been who she had claimed to be. Her real name had been Ellan Walsh. Her story about coming from a sugar plantation family was all fiction. She had fooled them all for years.

Her sister changed her name to Mayfield to match her sister. Ida, or “Ellan’s” late husband, Benjamin, had been in on all of it, but he carried her secret to the grave. But why had she gone to such lengths to cover her tracks? What caused her to reinvent herself?

She yearned for the big-time—and to get there, she had to make herself look and sound “white-passing.” A woman of Irish descent would never be allowed into high society. She knew this, and with flair and charm, she fooled them all.

Of her “sugar plantation” story, Cox said, “She was not related to anyone in Louisiana […]. Instead, she had left home in Massachusetts in 1857, a lovely and determined lady of 19 years, whose wit, beauty, and vivaciousness bought her entrée into New York society under her assumed name.”

Receiving inheritance money out of the blue from a relative you’ve never known sounds like a dream come true today, but back in the 1930s, during the Great Depression, it would have seemed like a miracle—a gift from above.

Countless books have been written about her, although her tale has drifted into obscurity in popular consciousness over the last hundred years. While her life story had a tragic and ominous end, she could be an unlikely inspiration for those from a lowly background who dreams of making it big.