Fredericka Mandelbaum
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Fredericka "Marm" Mandelbaum (1818-1894) was a New York entrepreneur and operated as a fence to many of the street gangs of the city's underworld, handling between $1-5 million in stolen goods between 1862 until 1884 [1].
Emigrating from Prussia with her husband Wolfe Mandelbaum, the two arrived in New York in 1848. Purchasing a dry goods store on Clinton Street, by 1854, the business was operating as a front for the Mandelbaums' criminal operations (she would later need to store goods in two large warehouses in the city). However, instead of waiting to be approached by criminals, Mandelbaum began financing thieves and burglars and was involved in planning some of the biggest thefts in the city's history. Expanding her operations, she controlled several gangs of blackmailers and confidence men as well as a school to recruit and teach younger criminals on pickpocketing. She was also a top competitor to the Grady Gang.
During this time, she had become one of New York's most prominent hostesses of New York's high society as well as the underworld regularly associating with some of the most well-known criminals of the day including Queen Liz, Big Mary, "Black" Lena Kleinschmidt and Sophie Lyons as well as judges and police officials.
However, in 1884, New York District Attorney Peter B. Olney hired the Pinkerton Detective Agency to infiltrate Mandelbaum's organization. An agent, posing as a prospective thief, arranged to have several marked bolts of silk stolen from a store where it was discovered in a police raid on her home the following morning. Arrested with her son Julius and clerk Herman Stroude, Mandelbaum was released on bail and left the United States with an estimated $1 million and settled in Toronto, Canada where she lived until her death in 1894.
[edit] Further reading
- Asbury, Herbert. All around the town: The Sequel to the Gangs of New York. New York: Alfred A. Knoff, 1929. ISBN 978-1-56025-521-5
- Lardner, James and Thomas Reppetto. NYPD: A City and Its Police. New York: Henry Holt & Co., 2000. ISBN 978-0-8050-6737-8
[edit] References
- Asbury, Herbert. The Gangs of New York. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1927. ISBN 978-1-56025-275-7
- Sifakis, Carl. The Encyclopedia of American Crime. New York: Facts on File Inc., 2001. ISBN 978-0-8160-4040-7
- Phillips, Charles and Alan Axelrod. Cops, Crooks, and Criminologists: An International Biographical Dictionary of Law Enforcement, Updated Edition. New York: Checkmark Books, 2000. ISBN 978-0-8160-3016-3
