Fredericka Mandelbaum

Fredericka "Marm" Mandelbaum (1818 – February 1894)^[1] was a New York entrepreneur and operated as a criminal fence to many of the street gangs and criminals of the city's underworld, handling between $1-5 million in stolen goods between 1862 until 1884. Like her principal rival John D. Grady and the Grady Gang, she also became a patron to the criminal elements of the city and was involved in financing and organizing numerous burglaries and other criminal operations throughout the post-American Civil War era. ^[2]

Life and career

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, Adam Worth, Sophie Lyons, and George Leonidas Leslie 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 fled the United States with an estimated $1 million. She settled in Toronto where she remained until her death in 1894.

Notes

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

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
• Conway, J. North (2009). King of Heists: The Sensational Bank of Robbery of 1878 That Shocked America. The Lyons Pesss. ISBN 1599215389. 
• Lardner, James and Thomas Reppetto. NYPD: A City and Its Police. New York: Henry Holt & Co., 2000. ISBN 978-0-8050-6737-8
• Ben MacIntyre, "The Napoleon of Crime; The Life and Times of Adam Worth, Master Thief," 1997.

External links

• Adam Worth: The World in his Pocket - Marm Mandelbaum by Joseph Geringer
• Frederika "Ma" Mandlebaum at Rotten.com
• The Sins of New York: As "Exposed" by the Police Gazette by Edward Van Emery
• WNYC - The Next Big Thing: Out Laws (Queen of Fences)
• "Marm - A Gilded Age Mastermind" by William Bryk - New York Sun - December 22, 2004

[[Category:Jewish refugees