The Gangs of New York

by Herbert Asbury

  THE extraordinary success of the many well organized bands of thieves which flourished in New York during the city’s great era of wickedness would scarcely have been possible had they not possessed an equally efficient outlet for the distribution of their plunder. This was accomplished through the fences, or receivers of stolen property, who operated in the recognized criminal districts within easy reach of the resorts frequented by crooks, and masked their real business with small stores, generally carrying an imperishable stock which was never changed and was seldom removed from the shelves, for legitimate customers were few and were not encouraged.

  Nothing was so large or so small that the fences would not undertake to convert it into cash; in the middle seventies one even handled successfully fifty thousand dollars worth of needles and thread which had been stolen from the warehouse of H. B. Claflin & Company. While such receivers were probably no more numerous than they are today, they had better political and police connections than their modern prototypes, and were consequently bolder and more powerful. Many scornfully refused to resort to any subterfuge whatever; one of the notorious places of the city was the Thieves’ Exchange in the Eighth Ward, near Broadway and Houston street, where fences and criminals met each night and dickered openly over their beer and whiskey for jewelry and other loot. Annual retainers were paid to criminal lawyers, and poUticians and policemen received stated fees, and occasionally commissions on gross business. Some of the more successful of the fences not only disposed of the goods brought to them, but tided thieves over periods of adversity, and provided funds for the preliminary surveys which were necessary before a bank vault or the strong box of a store could be successfully attacked.

  The first of the great fences of whom there is extensive record was Joe Erich, who kept a place in Maiden Lane before the Civil War. Erich’s principal rival was Ephraim Snow, better known as Old Snow, who owned a small dry goods store at Grand and Allen streets and dealt in stolen property of every description. It is related of Old Snow that he once disposed of a score of sheep which a gang of Bowery thugs, on a vacation in the country, had stolen from a Westchester county farmer and driven through the streets of the city to the shop of the fence. Old Unger’s house in Eldridge street was also a favorite bargaining place for the thieves, especially sneaks and pickpockets. Equally popular were Little Alexander, whose real name was never known to the police, and Bill Johnson, who operated a dry goods store in the Bowery.

  All of these fences were still in operation at the close of the Civil War, but they were soon eclipsed by the brilhant successes of Marm Mandelbaum and John D. Grady, better known as Travelling Mike, a thin, stooped, shabby, dour-visaged little man who padded about the streets wearing a heavy overcoat summer and winter and bearing a peddler’s box on his shoulder. Ostensibly Travelling Mike sold needles and other small articles for the use of the housewife, but his box was more apt to contain pearls and diamonds, or stolen bonds, than legitimate objects of barter. Travelling Mike seldom went abroad with less than ten thousand dollars worth of goods in his box or on his person. He maintained no regular establishment, but he was a frequent visitor to the Thieves’ Exchange, and from time to time called upon his clients to suggest robberies and dicker for anything they might have stolen since his last visit. He had an especial fondness for jewelry and bonds, and rarely bought anything which he could not carry away in his box. His occasional exception was silk, which was always in great demand. One of his most brilliant sneak thieves was the original Billy the Kid, otherwise William Burke, who was arrested one hundred times before his twenty-sixth birthday.

  Travelling Mike was believed by the police to have suggested the raid upon Rufus L. Lord’s treasure in 1866 by Greedy Jake Rand, Hod Ennis, Boston Pet Anderson, and Eddie Pettengill, which resulted in the greatest single haul ever made by sneak thieves in the United States. Lord was an important financial figure of the time, and is said to have been worth, in bonds, stocks, and real estate, more than four million dollars. His business acumen was remarkable, but he was so grasping and penurious that he had the reputation of being a miser, and had no friends and few acquaintances. He maintained a dingy, shabby office in the rear of No. 38 Exchange Place, where he spent much of his time clipping coupons and sorting them into bundles, or listening eagerly to the clink of the double eagles which he kept in great canvas bags. He wore disreputable clothing which was constantly in need of patches, and in summer his footgear was a pair of worn felt slippers. He had a burglar and fire proof safe built in the rear wall of his office, but during his latter years became so feeble and absent-minded that he frequently went home and left it unlocked, with several millions of dollars in cash and securities at the mercy of thieves. His office was always in semi-darkness, for he would not burn more than one candle at a time, and there was but one small window through which sunlight could penetrate.

  Greedy Jake and his accomplices made several calls upon the capitalist, ostensibly to discuss a proposed loan or investment; and on the afternoon of March 7, 1866, a dark, foggy day. Greedy Jake entered the office in Exchange Place and proceeded to distract Lord’s attention with much glib talk about the high rate of interest he was willing to pay. When he offered twenty per cent., and high-class collateral. Lord became frantic with eagerness, and clutching Greedy Jake’s coat lapels implored him to consummate the deal immediately. While he was so engaged Boston Pet and Eddie Pettengill sneaked into the darkened office, and a few moments later sneaked out again bearing two tin boxes containing $1,900,000 in cash and securities, most of which were negotiable. The boxes were planted in a saloon at Spring and Wooster streets for a few weeks, and after the hue and cry had slackened, about two hundred thousand dollars of the negotiable bonds found their way into the hands of TraveUing Mike Grady, who speedily converted them into cash. The remainder of the stolen property was recovered by the police within two years, but the shock was so great that Lord became more misanthropic than ever, and thereafter would not permit a stranger to enter his office, which he barricaded with a steel door.

  Fredericka Mandelbaum, better known as Marm or Mother, was probably the greatest and most successful fence in the criminal annals of New York. She was a huge woman, weighing more than two hundred and fifty pounds, and had a sharply curved mouth and extraordinarily fat cheeks, above which were small black eyes, heavy black brows and a high sloping forehead, and a mass of tightly rolled black hair which was generally surmounted by a tiny black bonnet with drooping feathers. She owned a three-story building at No. 79 Clinton street, on the corner of Rivington, and lived with her husband, Wolfe, and their son and two daughters, on the second and third floors, which were furnished with an elegance unsurpassed anywhere in the city; indeed, many of her finest pieces of furniture and some of her most costly draperies had once adorned the homes of the aristocrats, from which they had been stolen for her by grateful and kind-hearted burglars. In these apartments Marm Mandelbaum entertained lavishly with dances and dinners which were attended by some of the most celebrated criminals in America, and frequently by police officials and politicians who had come under the Mandelbaum influence.

  On the ground floor, at the Rivington street corner, Marm Mandelbaum operated a small haberdashery, but her real business was carried on in a clapboarded wing which sprawled down Clinton street, where she handled the loot and financed the operations of a majority of the great gangs of bank and store burglars. In the early days of her career she peddled the plunder from house to house. Among the famous criminals who dealt with her were Shang Draper, George Leonidas Leslie, Banjo Pete Emerson, Mark Shinburn, Bill Mosher, and Joe Douglas. Shinburn was a bank burglar of distinction who complained that he was at heart an aristocrat, and that he detested the crooks with whom he was compelled to associate. He lived frugally and invested all his gains in foreign money orders payable to relatives in Prussia. Eventually he retired and sailed to Europe, where, by the judicious expenditure of a part of his fortune, he became Baron Shindell of Monaco, and lived ha
ppily and aristocratically ever after. Mosher and Douglas were the men who stole four-year-old Charley Ross from his home in Germantown, Pa., on July 1,1874, this precipitating the greatest kidnapping mystery this country has ever known. They were soon suspected, and were trailed all over the East by New York detectives; but they were not found until the morning of December 14, 1874, when they were killed while trying to rob the home of Judge Van Brunt in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. Mosher was shot by Judge Van Brunt’s son, Albert, and the Judge himself fired a bullet into Douglas’s back as the burglar ran from the house. Mosher was killed outright, but Douglas lingered for several moments, and as Judge Van Brunt approached Douglas raised himself on one elbow and said, “It’s no use lying now. Mosher and I stole Charley Ross from Germantown!” But he died before he could divulge the whereabouts of the boy, and Charley Ross has never been found, although about once every two years someone appears and lays claim to being the missing child.

  Marm Mandelbaum also had an especial soft spot in her heart for female crooks, and was the friend and patron of such famous women criminals as Black Lena Kleinschmidt, Big Mary, Ellen Clegg, Queen Liz, Little Annie, Old Mother Hubbard and Kid Glove Rosey, all sneaks, pickpockets and blackmailers; and Sophie Lyons, perhaps the most notorious confidence woman America has ever produced. Her husband was Ned Lyons, a bank burglar. Black Lena obtained enormous sums of money through thievery and blackmail, but in her middle age she became ambitious for social conquest and removed to Hackensack, N. J., where she posed as the wealthy widow of a South American mining

  engineer. She gave elaborate functions, and aroused such a furore in New Jersey society that she became known as the Queen of Hackensack. But she remained a practical pickpocket and shoplifter, and spent two days of each week in New York replenishing her coffers. She was finally dethroned when she wore an emerald ring which one of her dinner guests, whose husband Black Lena had appropriated for her own uses, recognized as having been stolen from her handbag during a shopping trip to the metropolis.

  The New York Police first listed Marm Mandelbaum as a suspected fence in 1862; and during the next twenty years she is estimated to have handled between $5,000,000 and $10,000,000 worth of stolen property. Several times during her long career she made the experiment of putting a few of her clients on salaries, binding them to deliver to her everything they stole, and to exercise reasonable industry and sagacity. However, she soon became convinced of the truth of Inspector Thomas Byrnes’ dictum that there is no honor among thieves, and abandoned the practice after she had caught several of her hirelings disposing of loot to Travelling Mike Grady. She is said also to have been a Fagin and to have maintained a school in Grand street, not far from Police Headquarters, where small boys and girls were taught by expert pickpockets and sneak thieves. She also offered advanced courses in burglary and safe-blowing, and to a few of the most intimate of her associates gave post graduate work in blackmailing and confidence schemes. The fame of this institution became wide-spread, but Marm Mandelbaum became alarmed and dismissed her teaching staff when the young son of a prominent police official applied for instruction.

  In all of her operations Marm Mandelbaum had the benefit of the expert legal counsel of Big Bill Howe and Little Abe Hummell, comprising the celebrated law firm of Howe & Hummell, to whom she paid an annual retainer of five thousand dollars. They not only appeared in her behalf on those rare occasions when the law made an impudent gesture in her direction, but also represented her clients whenever any of them were caught flagrante delicto. But they were unable to save her in 1884, when the reform element came into power and the District Attorney procured several indictments charging her with grand larceny and receiving stolen goods. The case was called for trial in December of that year, but Marm Mandelbaum had forfeited her bail and fled to Canada, where she spent the remainder of her days, although she is said to have made several visits to New York in disguise. But the state received nothing for its trouble, as Marm’s bondsmen had transferred the property which they had pledged for her appearance by means of backdated instruments, and Marm herself had shifted her holdings to her daughter. Of her noted lawyers, Howe died in 1903, and two years later District Attorney William Travers Jerome sent Little Abe to prison for various malpractices.

  SEVERAL well-organized gangs of ghouls operated in New York during the post-bellum period, but for the most part they confined their activities to the tombs of Negroes and paupers, selling the bodies to doctors and medical students. They were seldom molested by the police and attracted little attention until the death of Alexander T. Stewart, a pioneer merchant prince around whom, after his death, was enacted one of the most extraordinary crimes ever perpetrated in the metropolis. Stewart began his business career in a very humble way, acting as his own bookkeeper, salesman, porter, and errand boy, but by the exercise of vast industry and excessive shrewdness he died the foremost storekeeper of his age. He became the owner of a fine store at Broadway and Chambers street, in a building now occupied by The Sun, and later of a great emporium which covered the block between Fourth avenue and Broadway and between Ninth and Tenth streets. It is now a part of the Wanamaker store. He did business for cash only and defied competition; at the height of his commercial power many of his clerks were merchants whom he had driven out of business. He had several children, but all died in infancy: and he had few if any friends, although because of his wealth and position he possessed great influence. His attitude toward everyone was suspicious and forbidding, and he is said to have made it his rule never to trust either man or woman. He was undersized and thin, with coarse, reddish hair and sharp features, and slate-grey eyes of almost unbelievable coldness. He died in 1876, worth thirty million dollars, and was buried in the churchyard of St. Mark’s-in-the-Bouwerie, at Second avenue and Tenth street.

  Stewart’s body had scarcely been lowered into the grave before rumors were afloat that ghouls planned to steal the corpse and hold it for ransom. Several well known criminals were found loitering near the churchyard during the succeeding few weeks, and the police investigated reports that George Leonidas Leslie and his gang of bank robbers were planning a raid upon the burial ground, but no actual attempt was made to enter the vault until the night of October 8,1878, when Sexton Hamill discovered that the name slab had been clumsily lifted from the grass. It was feared that the intruders had descended into the vault, where four other bodies were interred beside that of the great merchant, but nothing had been disturbed beneath the surface of the ground.

  By direction of Henry Hilton, attorney for Mrs. Stewart and the estate, new locks were put on the churchyard gates, and the name plate was removed to a point some ten feet southwest of the grave, where it was sunk into the grass to mislead the ghouls. The old location of the slab was carefully sodded over, and as an additional precaution, the watchman of a livery stable in Second avenue was employed to visit the churchyard every hour during the night and warn trespassers from the enclosure. But nothing further occurred and on November 3, 1878, the guard was dismissed. Attorney Hilton believing that all danger had passed.

  Four days later, on the morning of November 7, the assistant sexton, Frank Parker, entered the churchyard an hour after dawn and was horrified to find a great mound of earth upturned at the mouth of the Stewart vault. Without investigating he hurried to the home of Sexton Hamill in Tenth street, and the latter went immediately to the church, where he entered the vault and found that the body of the merchant had been stolen. He hastened to the Stewart store, and learning that Hilton had not yet arrived, hired a cab and drove at top speed to the lawyer’s home in Thirty-fourth street, adjoining the marble mansion occupied by Mrs. Stewart. Hilton immediately notified the police, and Superintendent George W. Walling took personal charge of the investigation.

  The Stewart vault was of brick, ten by fifteen feet and twelve feet deep, and had been covered over by three feet of earth. It had been dug in almost the exact center of the yard, east of the church, and was flanked on either side by
the graves of Benjamin Winthrop and Thomas Bixby, members of old New York families. The ghouls had ignored the decoy name slab, and had gone straight to the grave, into which they had descended after removing the protecting layer of earth. They had unscrewed the cover of a great cedar chest and cut through a lead coffin, and had then forced the casket containing the body. They also carried away with them the expensive knobs and the name plate of the casket, and a piece of the velvet lining, which they had cut out in the shape of an irregular triangle. As further evidence of their visit they had left a new coal shovel and a tin bull’s-eye lantern. The body of the merchant weighed about one hundred pounds, and had not been embalmed. It had apparently been hauled away in a cart, the tracks of which were found near the eastern gate.