How a millionaire bonanza farmer was swindled out of $25,000, then died on the Titanic

MINNEAPOLIS — The beaker was, to them, filled with truth serum. It was the night of Oct. 13, 1909, at the Pauly House, a Minneapolis hotel. Herbert F. Chaffee, a wealthy bonanza farmer from Amenia, North Dakota, and his son Eben bent over a tumbler holding a pile of shavings. This was a chemistry test with life-altering consequences. The shavings were supposedly gold, trimmed from an entire disc of gold. But if the liquid turned the color of the sky, it meant Chaffee had been swindled out of a fortune of $25,000 (over $900,000 today). "A bottle of nitric acid was clinked against the glass by a nervous hand," a reporter later described the moment. A splash, the liquid submerging the shavings. They eyed its color. "Blue! Brass!" The reporter recorded. Chaffee had been conned, swindled by a stranger with two worthless hunks of brass. It was a scandal. Front page news. An upstanding citizen had been brought low by lies.

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