This article comes out of a multi-year effort to index the “vertical clip files”—which are articles and pictures cut from newspapers and other sources over the past 100 years or so, lovingly saved by our wise predecessors at the library—that take up many long drawers in the Bethlehem Room. From time to time as we go through this trove of local information we’ll feature an interesting article to let people know what kinds of things are hanging out in our local history archive.
Bethlehem has contributed its share of celebrities to the world, but none may have shone as brightly as May Yohe. The granddaughter of the proprietor of the Eagle Hotel (the predecessor of the Hotel Bethlehem), Caleb Yohe, May left Bethlehem for the big city when she was young and ended up on the stage in Chicago, New York, Paris, and London. While in Europe she met and married Lord Francis Hope, the owner of the famous—and famously cursed—Hope Diamond. According to legend, May wore the gem twice while she was Lady Hope, thereby bringing the curse upon herself.
She left Lord Hope for the dashing Captain Putnam Strong, lost her fortune and eventually the Captain, and finally married another captain, John A. Smuts. With him she remained, moving around the world and fulfilling a dizzying array of roles as businesswoman, screenwriter, and, eventually, W.P.A. clerk in Boston.
To read about the adventurous life of Madcap May, as she was known at the height of her celebrity, is to be amazed at every turn. She was a darling of Edward, Prince of Wales; she ran a farm in New Hampshire, where she sold syrup; she toured the U.S. as an ageing vaudevillian; she produced two silent films with Boris Karloff in the cast; she was institutionalized for a time in Oregon, where legend has it she escaped; she (accidentally?) shot Captain Smuts!
Richard Kurin of the Smithsonian Institution and author of a recent biography of May Yohe (Madcap May: Mistress of Myth, Men and Hope, which the library has in circulation) attributed her gumption to being born in Moravian Bethlehem, As he told an interviewer ten years ago, “If you were born at the Inn at Bethlehem, you might think there’s something kind of sacred about your life. And so I think she was born in a community which had encouraged women, had never doubted the ability of women, had promoted women and made women feel that they can achieve anything on the planet. I think that she took that to heart. Now she took that to heart more in a kind of secular way than she did in a religious way but nevertheless I think she got it from a very strong Moravian upbringing.”
Was May Yohe cursed? You can read up on her at the library and decide for yourself!
“May Yohe Dies in Poverty at 72” by United Press
Philadelphia Record, August 29, 1938
“May Yohe Jailed; Hope Diamond Casts Its Spell” by Edward B. Lockett
Bethlehem Globe-Times, February 8, 1937
“May Yohe Dead; Once Owner Of Hope Diamond”
Bethlehem Globe-Times, August 29, 1938