NF (1998) The Napoleon of Crime

by Ben MacIntyre

  “On account of [Becker’s] tendency to squeal,” Worth decided that he “would have nothing more to do with him.”

  With his Duchess pinned down beneath his mattress at night, Worth seems to have retreated from friendship and human company. His social acquaintance grew ever wider, but the circle of his close and trusted colleagues shrank steadily, thinned out by fate, betrayal, and his own withdrawal. He was not a genuine part of the high society he emulated or the low society he truly represented, but a being suspended between the two, trapped by his own moral ambivalence, of which the Gainsborough was an ever present, tangible reminder.

  Worth’s sense of isolation was increased by news of Piano Charley Bullard. His old partner had finally been released from prison in Canada, but instead of reuniting with Worth, he had elected go into partnership with Max Shinburn, who had also been through some ups and downs since the days of the American Bar. The Baron had made another fortune safecracking in Europe, and with the proceeds he had formalized his aristocratic posturing by purchasing a castle in Holland to go with his assumed title of Baron Shindell. But Shinburn was an inveterate gambler, and the combined effects of Monte Carlo and ill-advised investments on the Paris Bourse had reduced his finances to a low ebb. “He might have lived in his fine feathers to the end of his life, but could not restrain his passion for gambling,” as one police account noted, and Worth recalled with glee how, on one occasion, he “came to London … with a twenty pound note, and said ‘Here is where I have got to.’ ” On the underworld grapevine Worth learned that Shinburn had emerged from retirement, entered into partnership with the recently released Piano Charley, and was now planning to revitalize his criminal career. Prison had dulled what few wits Bullard had not already pickled in alcohol. Worth rightly concluded that Shinburn had duped his former partner and would simply abandon him if circumstances required it. After Shinburn linked up with Bullard, Worth’s dislike for the Baron turned to loathing, a feeling that was strongly reciprocated.

  With the old gang in shreds, Worth concluded, it was time to seek out new colleagues and browse alternative criminal pastures. In the spring of 1878 Worth had taken on as accomplices one Captain George (his Christian name remains unknown) and a young thief named William Megotti. Together they broke into the money car on the Calais-to-Paris express train, removing Spanish and Egyptian bonds valued at 700,000 francs. From Worth’s point of view, the job was a success, but Captain George, showing traits similar to the idiotic John Worth’s, managed to get himself arrested in Paris. The imprisoned man appealed to Worth for funds to pay a defense lawyer, but then promptly made a full confession to the French police, naming Worth as the principal organizer. Worth was sentenced to twenty years’ imprisonment, in absentia. The profits from the train robbery were undoubtedly useful, but now France, too, was out of bounds.

  At the same time, the Pinkertons reported, Worth was suspected of being involved in a “number of dynamite explosions which took place at that time in Europe,” usually involving boats scuttled for their insurance value. In fact, the authorities later admitted, “he was entirely innocent of these crimes.” They were carried out, it later transpired, by none other than Max Shinburn. But Worth’s reputation had evolved to such an extent, and Scotland Yard’s determination to catch him was now so intense, that virtually every major crime was assumed to be his work.

  In the circumstances, it was time for Worth and his Duchess to take a holiday. With a gallantry indicative of how far he had anthropomorphized the painting, he bought a fine hunting coat (“the very best of the lot”) in which to wrap his trophy, which was then stashed securely in the secret compartment at the bottom of his trunk. For a combination of superstitious, romantic, and cautionary reasons, Worth refused to let the painting out of his immediate possession. According to Sophie Lyons, “he feared to leave it in storage lest someone recognize it. So he carried the roll of canvas with him about the world.”

  There is an uncanny resemblance, in Worth’s behavior, to that of Captain Nemo in Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, but whether the culture-hungry crook read the book, published ten years earlier, will never be known. Captain Nemo is the archetypal criminal aesthete whose gallery contained “thirty or so paintings by famous masters … a veritable museum, in which an intelligent, prodigal hand had brought together all the treasures of nature and art.” Nemo, Captain No-name, also cuts himself off from society, while vowing revenge on it, setting up his parallel world in the Nautilus submarine, a subaquatic Mr. Hyde. “I’m not what you would call a civilised man. I’ve broken with all of society for reasons which I alone can appreciate. I therefore don’t obey its rules,” says Captain Nemo, words that might as easily have been uttered by Worth. Verne’s antihero is a civilized man rejecting civilization, and there is no doubt Worth saw himself in the same light. Where Verne’s villain has his Nautilus and his sumptuous gallery to prove his superiority and rebellion, Worth had his false-bottomed trunk; where Nemo has thirty Old Masters, Worth had one.

  In 1880, soon after Kitty’s marriage, Worth and his Duchess set sail for Cape Town, South Africa, where the air was clear, the countryside beautiful, and Shore and his cohorts—indeed, the law in any shape—were enticingly absent. Worth later said he had come to South Africa “partly on business, partly on pleasure.” Having surveyed the criminal landscape, he had concluded that uncut diamonds represented an excellent, portable, and easily exchangeable form of cash. As an accomplice he brought along one Charley King, described in the Pinkerton files as “a noted English crook.” Apart from his criminal talents, King had the added advantage that he knew nothing about the theft of the Gainsborough, and remained completely ignorant of the unlikely traveling companion stashed in Worth’s Saratoga trunk. Worth was not about to be blackmailed again.

  The diamond fields, offering quick profits and “crystallized romance” or ghastly toil and heartbreak, depending on your luck, had already proved a magnet for a diverse mixture of visionaries and vagabonds. “Rabbis, rebels, rogues and roués from Russia and the Riviera, transports from Tasmania, convicts from Caledonia, ex-prisoners from Portland, brigands from Bulgaria, the choicest pickings of the dirtiest street corners in all of Europe … unfrocked clergymen with the air of saints and the souls of sinners … It was a hoard that increased and multiplied, and would have made a fine haul for the devil.” Two more crooks in the multitude would not stand out, and with diamonds being hauled out of the earth at a prodigious rate, the thieving opportunities were tremendous. The fastidious Worth was not about to get his hands dirty grubbing around for gems amid the flies and baked dust. As Cecil Rhodes and his ilk were already proving, the best way to extract a large fortune from the mines was to let others do the digging.

  This was the height of the ostrich-feather boom, thanks in part to the continuing craze for vast ostrich-feather hats of the type made glamorous by the Duchess of Devonshire, which were still firmly in fashion following the notorious theft of the Gainsborough portrait. Pairs of ostriches could fetch as much as £200. Even the locals had taken on a little of the Georgiana look, for, as one observer noted, “large ostrich feathers are frequently to be seen curling gracefully round the slouched felt hat of some stalwart young farmer.” According to the Standard Encyclopedia of South Africa: “As there were no restrictions on immigration, [Worth] entered the country without difficulty and set up business as an ostrich feather buyer.” Worth and King checked into the best hotel in Port Elizabeth and, as so many years earlier in Boston, began to build up a cover. “He opened an office, hired a clerk, bought a shipment of feathers and had them crated to a London warehouse.” In the guise of a respectable man of business, Worth could now travel the country without suspicion, apparently seeking “inland agents” for his feather business, while in reality planning one of his most ambitious robberies to date.

  “While looking about,” according to the Pinkertons, “Worth studied the manner in which diamonds in the rough were brought from the De Beers and oth
er mines in South Africa” to the coast, before being shipped to England. The mine owners were no fools, and elaborate precautions were in place to prevent just such a robbery as Worth intended. From Kimberley the diamonds were transported in a convoy of horse-drawn coaches, accompanied by heavily armed Boers. The timetable was worked out to the minute, ensuring that the shipment arrived just as the steamer for England was ready to sail, thus avoiding the necessity of keeping the diamonds in one place for any length of time where they might prove a temptation to criminals. Worth “looked the situation over carefully, and concluded that the most feasible way to get possession of the consignment from the mines was through what would be called in America a holdup robbery.” They recruited a third accomplice in Cape Town, “an American sea captain, who was then in hiding, he being wanted in America for sinking his ship at sea for the insurance.”

  The three duly set out one evening, full of misplaced confidence and, in the case of two of them, cheap whisky. They would intercept the coach at night on a deserted stretch of road, by stringing a rope across the way to trip the horses. They would then capture the driver, overpower the guard, and help themselves to the diamonds. The plan was straightforward but failed to take into account the armed men guarding the diamond convoy. As the Pinkertons reported, “the horses were thrown and the coach tipped over, but before they could carry out their plans, the big Boer guard in charge, who was armed with a repeating Winchester rifle, commenced firing in every direction, driving the thieves to cover.”

  Banditry was evidently not Worth’s forte, yet he seems to have had a penchant for this particularly unsophisticated form of robbery. This was not the last time he would attempt to pull off a highway robbery and regret it.

  The operation was an unmitigated failure. The attempted holdup “created quite a sensation” when the battered coach arrived safely at the coast, and convinced the diamond mine owners of the need to post extra guards on convoys. The American captain, who had come within inches of receiving a bullet in the head, proved to be rather less than the “game fellow” Worth had thought. He announced he was no Dick Turpin and returned to Cape Town. Charley King, too, as Worth later put it, “had weakened and got scared off.” Worth, however, “decided to remain to have another trial at it and see what he could do.”

  King was given instructions to return home but keep a close watch on the London papers. Should a South African diamond robbery be reported, he should send Worth “£200 immediately to Brindisi.” If Worth did manage to pull off the heist, this would certainly be reported in London, and Worth was planning an escape via the port on Italy’s Adriatic coast. Mindful of the time when Little Joe Elliott had had to pawn his gold teeth to get home, Worth did not want to be left short of traveling cash. “His intention,” as he later explained to Pinkerton, “was to take the long route home from there, which was a round-about way and would take him nearly 60 days to get home.” For the next few months, still posing as a feather buyer, Worth hung around Port Elizabeth, studying the situation. From various sources he learned that, in spite of the precautions taken by the mine owners, the convoy was periodically delayed by bad weather, floods, and other unanticipated obstacles. Since the convoy was timed to arrive at Port Elizabeth just before the steamer left for England, a delay of even a few hours meant that the diamonds had to be stored in the safe of the Port Elizabeth post office until the next boat was ready to leave. If Worth could delay the shipment long enough, and simultaneously find a way to break into the safe, he could make up for his earlier, irritating failure.

  The assistant postmaster was “an old gentleman, very social in his habits, and Worth cultivated his acquaintance” by buying him drinks and allowing him to win at chess, night after night. After a few months, the postmaster and the ostrich-feather merchant were firm friends. On one of his trips out of town, nominally in search of ostrich plumes, Worth “took three parcels out on the road and sent them registered mail, addressed to himself, and came in on the same train with the parcels.” He then waited until his new friend was about to close up shop and the post office was empty of customers, and “pleaded that it was of great importance that he receive the packages which had been locked up for the night. The assistant postmaster agreed to get them for him, and went back to get the books, and while his back was turned, Worth managed to get wax impressions of the keys to the safe for registered packages, received the packages which he had shipped to himself, and went about his business.”

  With one part of the plan now in place, all that remained was to ensure that the diamond shipment was delayed. Not far from Port Elizabeth “there was a deep stream, where the coach had to cross by the ferry, which was operated on wire rope cable: nearby was a small tavern, and Worth waited until time for the coach was come, which was in the evening, and then cut the rope, which allowed the ferry to drift down the stream with the current.” The convoy was delayed by eight hours as the ferry was laboriously poled back up stream and another cable attached. Sure enough, when the convoy arrived in Port Elizabeth, the steamer for England had sailed, and the packages of uncut gems were, as usual, placed in the post-office safe as a precaution. “The next night he entered the post office and abstracted from the safe diamonds and other valuables to the amount of $500,000.”

  “The swag,” as he later told Pinkerton, “consisted largely of packages of diamonds, money and government bills, all of which were valuable.”

  The assistant postmaster was immediately suspected of the theft and placed under arrest. There was no proof he had played even an indirect part in the robbery, but the police found evidence that “he had been embezzling money letters which passed through his office.” He was tried and sentenced to five years, but even though “experts from England were sent out to investigate the case,” of the real thief there was not a trace—which was less than surprising, since he had left Port Elizabeth several hours before the theft was discovered. “Knowing that anyone who attempted to leave the country would be under suspicion, Worth quietly went up the country from Cape Town pretending to be in search of investments and purchasing ostrich feathers.”

  After a month, Worth, this time with a large parcel of diamonds as well as the Duchess, set sail for Suez and then Brindisi. He was extremely short of ready cash and praying fervently that, as agreed, Charley King had sent money to Italy for his return passage. The old thief, however, scenting money, had gone one better and, “seeing the thing in the papers, instead of wiring the money to his account in Brindisi, for the purpose of declaring himself in with the money, started for Brindisi himself.” The two crooks could not find each other in the bustling port, and after he had waited more than a week, Worth pawned “some article which he had and took the other route home.” When the apologetic Charley King finally arrived back in London, Worth was forgiving. Despite the fact that he had played no part in the final theft, and had disobeyed Worth’s orders by failing to send the money, Worth nonetheless gave him £1,600, “more for the purpose of buying his silence than anything else.”

  Worth’s next act, on returning to his Piccadilly pad, was equally a mixture of generosity and self-interest. His brother John Worth, the criminal incompetent who had already caused so many problems, was down on his luck, threatening to return to England and keen to participate in another criminal enterprise—a prospect which, given John’s dazzling ineptitude, was distinctly troubling to his older brother. Almost half the proceeds from the South African heist were handed over to John Worth, on condition that he abandon a life of crime and settle down in America. John agreed, moved to Brooklyn, and to Worth’s deep relief and surprise, he never again attempted to break the law.

  Some years later Pinkerton reported what Worth had said and done about his younger brother: “He said that John was a damn fool for a crook and he stopped him at it a long time ago; that he had been used by Becker and others, and that he had given John a considerable sum of money at the time of the mail robbery in Cape Town [sic], and with that had kept John clean and ab
ove board, and he hoped he would never again be engaged in any crooked transaction.” Worth plainly felt a deep responsibility for his sibling, but it was less for the sake of John’s immortal soul that he persuaded him to go straight, and rather more because, given John’s gullibility and general incompetence, he was too much a liability as an accomplice.

  Worth’s generosity also reflected his extraordinary good humor on his return to London. For one thing, he had hit on an excellent and highly profitable way to dispose of the diamonds. The traditional method was to work back such stolen goods through a series of fences until they reached the open market. Not only was the process risky, since any one of the links in the chain could turn informer, but it meant that the diamonds fetched a fraction of their full worth. In a stunningly audacious move, Worth decided to cut out the expensive middle men by selling the diamonds himself.

  From America Worth recruited one Ned Wynert, alias Johnny Smith, described by the Pinkertons as a “clever, educated fellow and entirely unknown to the London police.” Wynert was an astute, reliable rogue, but an inveterate womanizer. According to Shinburn, who never missed an opportunity to slander his rivals, Wynert was “married to a lady of a very respectable family. He treats her shamefully, spending all of his stealings on other women.” For Worth’s purposes he was the ideal henchman, as discreet in criminal matters as he was intemperate in emotional ones. Worth set up his new partner as a diamond merchant under the name Wynert & Co., in Hatton Garden, the heart of London’s jewelry trade. “By putting their goods at a shilling or two on the pound less than the standard prices in London, they found no trouble in disposing of all their goods to merchants who came to London from Amsterdam to buy.” To Worth’s great pleasure, some of the gems were even sold to the very merchants who had already bought them once, on consignment, before he stole them. The final take was estimated at £90,000. As Sir Robert Anderson of Scotland Yard noted, a different sort of man might have been content to go into early retirement after such a coup. “If I had ever possessed ninety thousand pounds of anything, the Government would have had to find someone else to look after burglars,” the detective once remarked. “But Raymond loved his work for its own sake” and was already plotting new schemes.