Elizabeth Martin’s Paternity Fraud: New York, 1903

FULL TEXT: The New York police are after Mrs. McLeod Martin [Mrs. Elizabeth Starr Keefer Martin], wife of a prominent physician. She will be prosecuted for fraud. Last May she left her husband, and six months later notified him a baby had been born to her. The doctor denied the child was his. An interesting fight took place in the courts, with the baby as star exhibit.

During the trial public sympathy was strongly with Mrs. Martin. At its close a nurse confessed the child was spurious. Mrs. Martin is believed to have worked the deception in order to obtain dower rights on her husband's Scotch estates.

[“Police After Mrs. Martin Wife, Who Tried to Palm Off Bogus Baby on Prominent Physician, to Be Tried for Perjury.” The St. Paul Globe (Mn.), Mar. 15, 1903, p. 22]

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For more cases, see: Paternity Fraud Rackets

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