NF (1998) The Napoleon of Crime

by Ben MacIntyre

  To make matters worse, early in 1876 Worth’s younger brother John, who had participated in Worth’s first, botched heist back in New York, arrived in London without a penny to his name. John Worth was a notably ineffectual criminal, “a damn fool for a crook,” in Worth’s words. A credulous, weak fellow, John was liable to brag and easy to manipulate. Worth saw him as a serious menace, but since both their parents were dead, he seems to have felt a strong, almost paternal bond with his siblings. His sister Harriet had married in America, and Worth had sent his brother-in-law enough money to launch his own corrupt legal business in Buffalo. John Worth would have to be added to the payroll.

  Charles Becker and Little Joe Elliott were anxious to go on an other forgery spree. Since his escape from the Turkish jail, Little Joe had returned to the United States and fallen hopelessly in love with Kate Castleton, an English comic star of the American stage. He had become a theatrical groupie and spent most of his ill-gotten gains financing disastrous American productions. “He has generally followed in the wake” of Castleton’s touring theatrical company, the police noted, “and under its cover, beaten banks, and taken a trick on the sneak, when opportunity offered.” Why Kate Castleton, this “rose cheeked girl,” as William Pinkerton remembered her, should have had anything to do with the reptilian robber is a mystery, but Elliott pursued her with astonishing energy and lavish expense and she finally agreed to marry him. “Joe courted the lady with lightning speed and married her within three days,” according to Eddie Guerin. Little Joe persuaded Kate to leave the stage, and for a while “they settled down in elegantly furnished apartments on 21st Street,” in New York. But by 1876 Elliott had tired of domesticity and was reunited with his bent buddies in London, having abandoned Kate in New York.

  All of which left Worth in a bind: money was short, but his life-style was increasingly lavish; the gang was clamoring for work, but Inspector Shore of Scotland Yard was itching for him to make a false move. The policeman knew he was being made to look foolish in the eyes of the underworld, and his determination to catch and jail Worth had become a personal vendetta. Worth complained bitterly that Inspector Shore “persecuted him like a human tiger”—a bizarre and peevish grievance (Shore would hardly be expected to do otherwise), but he was so wrapped up in his own grand invented world that he took personal offense when the forces representing the law tried to stop him from breaking it. On one occasion when Worth noticed he was being tailed by John Shore himself, he suddenly “turned on him in the streets and denounced him.”

  William Pinkerton was also back in London and had warned Shore, his police colleagues, and the country’s banks and brokerage houses to be on the lookout for another wave of forgeries. By now the authorities were acutely aware of Worth’s methods. Pinkerton warned: “To prevent detection and avoid arrest, after obtaining money on the forged paper, the thieves would at once flee to the Continent and get the money changed at broker’s offices, banks or exchange offices for notes of other numbers before the numbers of the stolen notes were published.”

  Worth began his new counterfeiting campaign cautiously, telling Becker to forge checks for small sums only. But over the months, as the gang got into gear, the forgeries grew larger and more audacious. Worth’s coffers were again becoming pleasantly full when, in April 1876, the Scratch made up a counterfeit check for £3,500 which Little Joe, as insouciant as ever, promptly cashed at the London and Westminster Bank. It was now necessary to get the money to France and change it fast before the bank realized what had happened and the police sent word for cashiers to be on the lookout for notes with certain numbers.

  Instead of relying on one of his minions at the bottom of his pyramidal organization, on this occasion Worth dispatched his brother to Paris with instructions to change the money at a busy currency-exchange office on the Grand Boulevard and return by the next boat to London. The inept John Worth proved unequal even to this simple task. He did not go to the bureau de change as directed, but for reasons that remain obscure went instead to the Paris office of Meyer & Co. on the rue St.-Honoré. Meyer had already fallen victim to one of Becker’s scams and had been alerted by John Shore to watch for English notes of large denomination. An eagle-eyed clerk spotted one of the notes and John Worth was arrested.

  Back at Scotland Yard, Inspector Shore was ecstatic when a telegram arrived announcing the arrest. Although the bovine John Worth looked quite different from the rat-like Little Joe Elliott, John himself was charged with carrying out the forgery. John Worth was extradited to England after a brief but fierce legal tussle, and lodged in Newgate jail. Whatever the imprisoned man might call himself (John had had the wits to give a false name), Shore was convinced that the forgery had to be the work of Adam Worth, alias Henry Raymond, or his associates. Worth threw one of his rare tantrums when informed of his brother’s arrest and pledged to get even, not just with Shore but also with Monsieur Meyer, the director of Meyer & Co., who would eventually feel the full force of Worth’s wrath. But first Worth had to get John out of prison, preferably on bail, and send him back to America, where he could do no more damage. This was no easy task.

  Although Worth had money enough to furnish bail, English law at that time required anyone posting bail to be a freeholder and “a man of good position, character and property.” His elaborate smokescreen of wealth, his smart London properties, his expensive possessions, his racehorses, and his yacht might convince any judge that Henry Raymond was a gentleman of substance, but that would only confirm suspicions at Scotland Yard that he was implicated in, if not the mastermind behind, the entire operation. The police were watching closely, and Worth knew that “the application for bail would be bitterly opposed by the prosecution, backed by the Bankers’ Protection Association, it being the fourth of a series of forgeries done in an identical manner, and aggregating to some £12,000.” Bail for John Worth was finally set at £3,000.

  Worth needed someone who would not be linked to Henry Raymond. This person would post bail for John and then profess absolute astonishment when the felon absconded. With John’s trial just weeks away, Worth needed such a person fast.

  On the afternoon of May 27, 1876, Worth was walking down Old Bond Street with Jack Junka Phillips, the giant English thug with the drooping mustaches and barrel chest, a terrifying sight. Junka had a reputation in the London underworld for extreme and gratuitous violence, which suited Worth’s purpose. Worth’s activities had earned him enough enemies to make a bodyguard an essential part of his entourage; his principled opposition to violence did not include self-defense. With Junka lumbering along at his side, clad in the somber outfit of a gentleman’s gentleman, even the boldest antagonist or bravest Scotland Yard detective would think twice about accosting Worth. If Worth’s respectable neighbors in Piccadilly had given it any thought, they might have paused to wonder why the rich American had employed a gorilla for a manservant. But although some of the elegant passersby browsing the art galleries of Bond Street may have been startled at the ferocious-looking mastodon who trundled along behind the dapper little gent, most did not give the pair a second glance: Worth was just another rich man enjoying the art galleries with a chunky butler in tow. Quite apart from his protective role, Junka was a useful companion in other ways: his almost total ignorance on every subject meant that, apart from the odd primal grunt, he was silent, offering no interruption to his leader’s train of thought.

  A large crowd was milling outside Agnew’s art gallery, where the celebrated Gainsborough portrait of the Duchess of Devonshire, sold just two weeks earlier, had been placed on display in an upper gallery. The Duchess, now valued at some £20,000, was the focus of London gossip and the source of countless rumors. According to one such, the extraordinary auction was the result of a feud between Sir William Agnew and Lord Dudley, who “was at this time buying pictures largely, and had employed Agnew to buy for him.” Dudley had fallen in love with the painting but “employed another agent to bid for him at the sale … Agnew, hearing of
this, bid 10,100 guineas [and] then wrote to Earl Dudley and offered him the picture at the price he had paid for it plus his commission.” If that was indeed Agnew’s ruse, prompted by pique at not being asked to bid for Lord Dudley, it did not work. Immediately after the sale, none other than the Duke of Devonshire whipped up fresh controversy by claiming, in a letter to The Times, that the only “portrait of the Duchess of Devonshire by Gainsborough was in his possession and had been in the possession of his father and grandfather, and therefore [the one sold to Agnew] could not be the original.” In fact, the duke was referring to the other Gainsborough portrait of 1783, but nonetheless some concluded “that it was owing to this letter that the Earl of Dudley declined the offer made to him by Agnew.” Perhaps, on the other hand, the earl was simply teaching the art dealer a lesson.

  A fortnight after the auction, The Times reported, “the interest in the sale of the Wynn Ellis collection, of which we gave the details last week, continues to be kept up with considerable vigour in the various differences of opinion which have arisen as to the portrait of the Duchess of Devonshire.” Whether or not it was the genuine article, Sir William Agnew was already recouping some of his investment by selling tickets to see the portrait at a shilling apiece and had received subscriptions for engravings to the value of £3,000 in just two weeks. Sir William’s extravagant bidding for the painting would become the stuff of legend, and ever afterwards he retained a reputation as a man who was prepared to pay inflated prices for works of art. In Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, published in 1891, Basil Hallward remarks to Lord Henry Wotton, “You remember that landscape of mine for which Agnew offered me such a huge price, but which I would not part with?”

  Worth watched the excited, milling crowd for a few moments and then turned to Junka and told him to buy a pair of tickets. He later recalled that Junka, whose appreciation of fine art was exactly nil, was initially unwilling to waste time on such an unprofitable activity, but Worth insisted and Junka sullenly pushed his way to the front of the throng, which parted with some alacrity as the huge figure approached.

  Once inside the building, the pair followed the line of people to the upper gallery, until finally they stood before the great picture, separated from the jostling spectators by a thick velvet rope. William Pinkerton later described his reaction, based on Worth’s own account: “Then and there the idea occurred to him that if he had possession of the picture that he could, by holding the picture off, effect the release of his brother by making the owner of the picture go on the bond for his brother and then let his brother skip out of the country.” It was a brilliant ruse. With the portrait “hostage,” William Agnew, a figure of adamantine respectability who was later knighted for services to art, could be forced to post bail for John Worth, probably through a third party. John could jump bail and no one would dream of suspecting Henry Raymond.

  Back at the apartment, Worth summoned Joe Elliott and outlined the operation. As he later told Pinkerton, he “would go to an acquaintance, a solicitor of shady reputation who was an ex-convict, and instruct him to call on the prisoner [John Worth] in the jail, and hand him a small canvas clipping cut from the side of the picture. The attorney was then to go to Agnew & Co. and say to them that he had a client in Newgate prison who could give them valuable information concerning the Gainsborough picture. The prisoner in jail was to say to them, that if his liberty was effected, he would guarantee to return the picture, and as an evidence of good faith and that he was telling the truth, he was to produce the piece of canvas cut from the side of the picture which they could fit on the frame as a test.”

  William Agnew might be a pillar of London society, but Worth knew enough about human nature to be confident that he would do anything to get back such a valuable commodity, even to the extent of compounding a felony. Morality was an elastic quality when money was involved. Little Joe quickly agreed to the plan. Junka, who preferred blowing up safes and bashing policemen to the delicate business of art theft, was dubious, noting that a picture was “a clumsy thing to do anything with,” but he was quickly brought into line.

  Although Worth had seen the Duchess only once, the painting had had a profound effect. “All England was talking about it. All London was flocking to see it. The picture was the sensation of the hour. This was enough for Worth. He made up his mind to possess it.”

  But Worth was not the Duchess’s only suitor. The Earl of Dudley, worsted by Agnew at the Christie’s sale and unwilling to accept the dealer’s subsequent offer, had not given up hope of possessing her. That very evening, the aristocrat came to Agnew’s gallery and gazed at the painting in reverence—Lord Dudley was, as it turned out, the last person to see the Duchess before she vanished—but by now the portrait had already been promised to another. Ferdinand de Rothschild had privately put in a bid, but it had been topped by Junius Spencer Morgan, the wealthy American banker resident in London, whose son, John Pierpont Morgan, was well on his way to becoming one of the richest men in the world.

  Junius Morgan was an art connoisseur and owned an impressive array of works by Reynolds, Romney, and Gainsborough. His taste for fine art had been inherited by his son, whose collection would eventually become the largest private assemblage of art ever created. Having read of the extraordinary auction in The Times, the elder Morgan decided to buy the famous painting as a “princely gift” for his son, with precisely the right dynastic connotations. In the early 1870s the elder Morgan had hired a genealogist to trace his ancestry and discovered that his mother, Sally Spencer, was distantly related to the noble Spencers of Althorp through a common ancestor—an ambitious sheep farmer from Northampton called Henry Spencer. Delighted with this discovery, Morgan had books and charts printed up to display his illustrious newfound pedigree, for the banker was a social climber with a head for heights. The relationship was distant, indeed almost imperceptible, but “the connection was enough to fuel that peculiar brand of Anglomania mixed with ancestor worship that was much in vogue.” Junius Spencer Morgan was himself representative of the breed of wealthy (often American) individuals of the period, who sought to demonstrate their taste and refinement by buying up valuable (often English) artworks, the better to show that they, too, had attained the all-important rank of gentleman. A Gainsborough automatically conferred status, but how much more magnificent that possession was if one could claim kinship, however remote, with its aristocratic subject.

  The elder Morgan’s interest may have been further stimulated by the knowledge that the Rothschilds, rivals to the burgeoning financial power of the Morgans, were also in the market for the Duchess. Sensing a potential public-relations coup, Junius Morgan was one of the first people to visit Agnew’s gallery after the sale. Herbert Satterlee, his son-in-law and chief sycophant to the Morgan family, described how “Mr. Junius Morgan dropped in to see the picture and asked Mr. Agnew the price and thereupon bought it, telling the dealer that it was for his son Pierpont, who had begun to collect pictures in New York.” Morgan agreed to pay $50,000 (the equivalent of some $620,000 today) for the painting, providing William Agnew with a reasonable profit and doubtless putting the nose of Ferdinand de Rothschild out of joint for a second time. Agnew was enjoying all the attention and made one stipulation: “he had to consent, however, to leave the picture on exhibition some weeks longer.” In return, the elder Morgan insisted that both the sale of the picture and its price be kept “absolutely secret.”

  So, in a technical sense, the Duchess was already the property of Junius Morgan when, at around midnight on May 27, 1876, Adam Worth set out in his most fashionable attire, as he later put it, to elope with the duchess. Junka Phillips was brought along as best man, and Little Joe as chief usher. On one level, the escapade had all the hallmarks of the crook’s handiwork: a characteristic amalgam of daring, rebellion, and greed, carried out with speed and efficiency. But what began as a clever act of thievery would eventually take on a far more elaborate meaning.

  As Worth stood before t
he painting in the dark gallery that night, he might have pondered the words of a previous occupant, for it was in this very chamber, on March 18, 1768, that the writer Laurence Sterne, another of Thomas Gainsborough’s subjects and one of the great satirists in the English language, had breathed his last. In his most celebrated book, Tristram Shandy, Sterne had written with characteristic wit of the way an idea can grip the mind when once it has taken root: “It is in the nature of a hypothesis, when once a man has conceived it, that it assimilates everything to itself, as proper nourishment; and from the first moment of your begetting it, it generally grows stronger by everything you see, hear, read or understand …” Stealing the Gainsborough was for Worth the first act in a strange hypothetical relationship, the idea of which would grow stronger in his mind, evolving from conception to conviction to obsession.

  Henceforth, the stories of Adam Worth and Gainsborough’s Duchess would be one.

  TWELVE

  A Wanted Woman

  THE TIMES

  SATURDAY, MAY 27, 1876

  The picture which had already become famous for having been sold for 10,100 guineas (£10,605), the highest price ever paid at auction for a portrait, has now been rendered still more so by having been stolen from the gallery in which it had only recently been placed for exhibition, No 39b Old Bond Street. The greatest excitement arose in the neighbourhood when it became known yesterday morning, soon after 7 o’clock, that this extraordinary and daring robbery had been committed. The large printed placards in the windows inviting attention to the picture were soon surrounded by little crowds, who read with no small astonishment the written notice that during the night some malicious person had cut the picture from the frame and stolen it. From inquiries made on the spot it was found that the picture had been very neatly cut from the stretching frame after it had been removed from the gilt frame in which it hung against the wall, near the window above the doorway on the first floor. The stretching frame was seen leaning against a sofa opposite the now empty gilt frame, and it showed that no unpractised hand had operated on the canvas, as the picture itself had been completely removed. The gilt frame had the nails simply bent back and not extracted so that the thief or thieves lost no time in needless trouble. The apartment in which the picture was exhibited showed scarcely any marks of what had been done, beyond some crumpling of the drapery hung in front of the picture. The room is not more than 10 ft square, having only one window opening on to Bond Street. The one window was found to be open about two feet, and on examining the lead outside there was distinctly visible the mark of a nailed shoe. The window had no blind to it, consequently if any light had been used during the work of the thieves it would in all probability have been noticed by the policemen in the street, who were aware that no one resided in the house after the doors were closed and the premises left locked up for the night. All the doors were found fastened as they had been left. The window, however, would enable the thief to drop his booty in the shape of a roll of very moderate size into the hands of a confederate.