The Mysterious Mrs. Watson

Between 1902 and 1932 many newspaper articles appeared about a woman named Mrs. C. R. Watson.

These articles — which appeared in newspapers stretching across the country from Ohio to California — were publicity for Mrs. Watson’s itinerant photography business.

Starting around 1912, and continuing until 1922, a photo of Mrs. Watson often appeared along with the text of these “articles”, which are clearly all based on the same press release. I made the following collage of the photos of Mrs. Watson, which show what she looked like in the photos that appeared in the newspapers between 1912 – 1922:

As I mentioned, The information that was provided along with photo was all very similar. Over the years, Mrs. Watson was described as as a woman who was ..

• … well-known in France before her marriage as “Gaby Michel”, a “Champion Baby Photographer”
• … a petite brunette married to an American photographer named Watson
• …a NYC based photographer who had run a successful studio there for years
• … a native French-speaker who spoke English like a native-born American

Also, according to the information published in the newspapers, Mrs. C. R. Watson travelled with a group of photographic assistants, including 5-8 woman, her brother, and her brother’s wife.

Mrs. Watson’s itinerant business model was straightforward, and even seemingly somewhat altruistic. Mrs. Watson’s scheme idea was that she was helping a local photographer build up his or her business.

For example, let’s say in “Town A” there was a local photographer called “Mr. Smith”. Mrs. Watson and her group would come into Town A and offer to partner with Mr. Smith by selling “coupons” for discounted photos to be redeemed at Mr. Smith’s photograpy studio. E.g., a customer would pre-pay $2 for a coupon that could be redeemed at Mr. Smith’s studio for a $10 photo. Mrs. Watson and her group would keep the $2 from the coupons they sold, and Mr. Smith would get a new customer, who would undoubtedly want to get more than just the one discounted coupon photo. Mr. Smith was led to believe thought this would bring him more business when customers who redeemed the coupons then bought additional photos at the regular $10 price.

However, the reality was that Mrs. Watson and her group would sell so many $2 coupons that Mr. Smith was actually lose money trying to fulfill all these coupon orders (for which, you will remember, Mr. Smith had received NO money at all). Further, it would turn out that customers who came in with the coupons were NOT inclined to buy any other photos from Mr. Smith at his regular $10 price, since they had gotten such a great deal initially by paying only $2 for the coupon.

So, even though Mrs. Watson claimed that the coupon scheme would result in Mr. Smith become wealthy, the reality was that Mr. Smith would eventually actually go bankrupt and his studio would go out of business. Mrs. Watson and her group would be long gone from the town, of course, before any of this reality would set in on Mr. Smith.

In other words, Mrs. Watson was a smooth-talker who was able to convince local photographers that the coupons her group would sell would create a financial windfall for them. Essentially, she played on the greed of these photographers by dangling the idea of great wealth before their eyes. The photographers’ own greed effectively obscured their ability to see what this scheme will really cost them.

Hmm. If this were a movie I’d cue up the music from the movie The Sting right about now, at the moment the Robert Redford and Paul Newman succeed with their swindle of Robert Shaw.

Anyway, in 1913, a Fort Wayne, Indiana photographer name Skinner goes public to complain that he was driven to bankruptcy by Mrs. Watson’s “coupons scheme”.

In the month following Skinner’s public complaint, Mrs. Watson herself counters with her allegations against Skinner, penning her own letter to same publication that had printed Skinner’s complaint. She very neatly and very effectively flips the narrative, claiming that it was she and the coupon-holders were swindled by Mr. Skinner when he refused to honor all the coupons that she had sold.

Interesting, eh? Note that even with all this publicity – and the doubt it cast one the “coupon scheme” – Mrs. Watson is successful at supporting herself using this racket business plan for almost 30 years.

BTW, it took a lot of digging, but thanks to the persistence of my husband Chris we can now posit some facts about Mrs. C. R. Watson:

• Her real name was, we think, Nellie (or “Millie”) Mitchell, born in Iowa around 1874. So, she wasn’t really French, nor was she really named “Gaby”.
• As an American-born, it’s therefore not surprising she spoke English “like a native”, I guess. 😉
• Her husband, Watson R. Cordaire, was really a photographer – or at least a travelling salesman of photographic equipment. They get married in 1895, and he’s already using variations of his name, sometimes going by C. Richard (or Richland) Watson. Note that he dies while on one of his sales trips in Spokane in July 1911 – in the arms of his wife. There’s an article about this tragic death in the newspaper at the time of C. Richard Watson’s death.
• His wife seems to have settled down for a short time in Fort Worth Texas in the early 1920sm running an art studio there from 1921-1922. However, when she’s attacked and robbed while in the studio, she closes the studio in Fort Worth and takes to the road with the “coupon scheme” yet again.
  
• We didn’t find evidence of either Mr or Mrs. Watson ever running a studio in NYC, despite the claims in the early articles about Mrs. Watson. Also, we haven’t found any examples of any photos taken by either Mr or Mrs Watson; nor have we found evidence to support Mrs. C. R. Watson’s claims to be a “champion baby photographer”.

Ah well.

BTW, below is an ad for the Fort Worth “Art Studio” that Mrs. Gaby Watson ran in 1921:

So, was Mrs. Watson really a celebrated photographer at all? Or was she just really good at convincing people to believe her stories – and her get-rich-quick schemes? We may never know … but she certainly is a fascinating mystery. She was at the very least successful at a photography-related business. I mean, she kept that coupon gimmick going for almost 30 years, and was able to make enough money over the years to support not only herself, but also those 5-8 women assistants, plus her brother and his wife.

I’ll end this saga with the following intriguing photo in a newspaper in 1917. The photo pictures Mrs. C.R. Watson in a fancy motor car. The digital scan of photo in the newspaper is too dark to make our Mrs. Watson clearly … and the caption under the photo encapsulates the mystique of our mysterious Mrs. Watson.