NF (1998) The Napoleon of Crime

by Ben MacIntyre

  Worth moved out of his bachelor apartment in Piccadilly and began to live full-time in the West Lodge by Clapham Common, a more appropriate home for a wealthy family man, “standing in fine grounds of its own, and boasting a numerous but mysterious company of guests and a retinue of servants. Every one of them was his tried confederate; and none but such ever gained entry into the premises.”

  Marriage seems to have subtly altered Worth’s attitude toward his stolen painting. Hitherto the portrait had never been far from his grasp: in London, he would sometimes stash it “under the roof of a summer house at his place at Clapham Park”; while traveling, it came with him in the false-bottomed trunk, and when aboard The Shamrock “he hid it in the chartroom amongst the logs.” The thought of surrendering the painting never crossed his mind, but he plainly felt uncomfortable keeping it in the marital home and so, at the end of 1886, he set out with the Duchess in his trunk to find her new and safe accommodation in America. It seems unlikely that the new Mrs. Raymond ever set eyes on her husband’s peculiar keepsake.

  Taking with him “the proceeds from the big Tramway robbery at Ostend,” and posing as a London bond broker traveling in the grandest possible style, Worth took the Allen Line ship for Canada with the Duchess, a cache of diamonds, and additional cash stashed in the bottom of his trunk. The trip was nearly a disaster, for unbeknown to Worth another criminal, a Swedish thief called Adolph Sprungley, was also on the boat.

  In mid-Atlantic, Sprungley began breaking into passengers’ cabins and liberating them of various valuables while they dined, causing consternation on board. Worth did not want Sprungley, or for that matter the Canadian authorities, to find what was in the bottom of his trunk, so he decided to disembark at Rimouski and travel the rest of the way to Montreal by train.

  The police, however, had carefully examined the ship’s manifest for any passengers making a sudden change of plan, and were waiting in Montreal when Worth’s train arrived. Spotting the Mounties as his carriage pulled in, Worth moved quickly and prised away one of the boards of the train carriage. He had deposited most but not all of the diamonds and cash in the partition when the train came to a halt. Mr. Raymond, protesting vehemently, was escorted from the platform to a waiting room. Bizarrely, the Canadian police failed to uncover the Gainsborough, but they did find the few gems remaining in his pockets and immediately arrested him as the steamship thief and impounded the diamonds.

  Worth later recounted that “he made a great bluff and demanded a solicitor and telegraphed to London for a firm of solicitors for reference.” Finally, with great reluctance, the French-Canadian police let him go, less, as he claimed, because he had “scared them out of the thing” than because Worth’s diamonds did not match any of the items stolen from the ship. The gems were confiscated and Worth happily paid a fine for failing to declare them.

  The police grudgingly apologized for detaining the now gracious Mr. Raymond, and firmly told him to leave the country immediately. But Worth was not heading south without the rest of his valuables. According to the Pinkertons, “after his liberation, Worth succeeded in tracing the car on which he had left the jewelry, having taken the number of it, and when the car was put in the yard for the night, he entered it and regained possession of the missing diamonds, which he afterwards safely smuggled into the United States.” Delighted to have won his liberty, and generous as ever, Worth even gave a small diamond ring to the Pinkerton detective, George Skeffington, who had interrogated him but obligingly failed to recognize him in the Canadian jail. Worth “would have given him more but was afraid of tipping his hand off as being a crook if he gave too much.” The scrape had cost him “several thousand dollars’ worth” of diamonds, a small price to pay for his freedom. “At a small cost of a few thousand I was able to save my principal,” or the bulk of his hoard, he later boasted.

  Safely in New York, Worth wrapped the Gainsborough in clothes and stashed it and the Saratoga trunk in a Brooklyn warehouse, not far from where his brother John had married and settled down to raise a family. The stolen portrait was by now, it seems, deeply ingrained in his mind and personality; he no longer needed to see it on a daily basis, but simply to know that it was his. Worth returned to the United States several times in the next six years and on each occasion he would retrieve the Duchess and view it anew, before replacing his Noble Lady in the false-bottom trunk and shifting her to another warehouse. In this way the Gainsborough duchess moved from Brooklyn to Manhattan, then back to Brooklyn, and finally to a warehouse in Boston, where she would lie, unseen, for a decade.

  Back in London again at the start of 1887, Worth was riding on the leaf of his silk hat—wealthy, respectably married, and increasingly powerful. Never in any doubt that he was a more adept crook than any man alive, he would periodically carry out a robbery to keep his hand in and demonstrate his prowess, if only to himself—he being the only critic whose opinion he truly valued. On “one occasion he walked out of a London bank with £35,000 worth of gems belonging to a well-known actress, getting possession of them by the simple expedient of presenting a forged order for their delivery.”

  It is a sign of Worth’s status among his fellow criminals that he even set himself up as a peace broker when disputes arose between his minions, as happened in the celebrated feud between Eddie Guerin and Sophie Lyons. Guerin had developed a violent hatred for Lyons, believing she had given him up to the French police, an event which led directly to his incarceration on Devil’s Island. “Sophie Lyons was a pimp,” Guerin later declared. “She battened on crooks, sucked their life’s blood, and then bartered away their liberty to the police.” Worth made a point of trying to reconcile his two old friends. As Guerin recounted, “I was walking down Oxford Street, London, one day … in company with Harry Raymond [when] whom should we run into but the fellow whom Sophie Lyons had married quite recently, none other than my old friend Billy Burke”—a fellow known to William Pinkerton as a “noted American bank sneak.”

  “We went to have a drink together and over it Harry, always a good sort, said to us: ‘Now, you boys, you don’t want to start quarreling. Shake hands and be good friends. We’ll have dinner tonight and see if we can’t do a bit of business together.’ ” Worth planned to invite Sophie along, too, “thinking, no doubt, it would be a good thing to patch up our quarrel.” Guerin, still raging at what he perceived to be Lyons’s treachery, failed to materialize on the grounds that the “dinner might have been like an Irish wake by the time I had finished with it if I had found Sophie there.” When Billy Burke encountered Guerin some years later and asked why he had not appeared at Worth’s reconciliatory party, Guerin’s response was straightforward and to the point. “I didn’t say anything in reply—I just slugged him.” Despite his civilized manners and opposition to violence, Worth moved in a world of hard men of which he was, for all his scruples, perhaps the hardest, if least pugnacious.

  Peacemaker (in this case, unsuccessfully), job provider, receiver, by the end of the 1880s Worth had become a sort of criminal paterfamilias, offering counsel and crime on contract. “Thieves came to him for help,” according to one such individual. “Was there a bank official to be bribed or a skeleton key to be made? Adam Worth solved both problems. Did a particular job require the services of an expert burglar or forger? Adam Worth had a large supply of either on hand. He knew where to find the right man for every job.” But his fame was also rapidly extending beyond the criminal fraternity to a wider public.

  In 1888 the celebrated and corrupt chief of the New York Police Detective Bureau Thomas Byrnes, a man for whom Worth had as little respect as he had for John Shore, published an article in the New York World naming Adam Worth as “The Most Famous Criminal of All” and illustrated it with a picture of a sinister-looking fellow in a top hat. “Adam Worth,” Byrnes wrote, “the most noted of the American criminals abroad, resides in London. He is a fugitive from justice from the United States, having been concerned in the Boylston Bank robbery of Boston. This robb
ery occurred about eighteen years ago, but there is an indictment against Worth for the burglary of the Boylston Bank still standing, and it is this indictment which keeps him out of the United States. He had an interest with Marsh and Bullard, went to London and on the money taken from the Boylston Bank bought a residence there and is now living in grand style. Worth is the owner of a fine steam yacht, and each season entertains his friends aboard of it cruising up and down the Mediterranean … He looks up jobs for nearly every American thief of any note who goes to the other side, and those who go from here who are not acquainted with him are sure to get a letter of introduction to him. The work which Worth lays out is generally located on the Continent, as he is afraid of the English police, and dare not work in London, as he desires to make the city his home. He receives a percentage from all the successful burglaries he plans, and also has option on the goods, as he is an extensive ‘fence’ as well as ‘putter-up of jobs.’ ”

  Byrnes knew as well as Scotland Yard that the fugitive Adam Worth and the prosperous Henry Raymond of Clapham Common were one and the same. The article was intended as a warning shot across Worth’s bows, an implicit threat that the police on both sides of the Atlantic were on his trail. What it truly demonstrated, however, was their inability to bring him to book. The files on Worth were bulging, but still the police could not pin him down. Instead of being sent into a panic, as intended, Worth was delighted with the largely accurate portrayal of his life-style, and instead of being cowed, he became cockier still. Indeed, to show how little he was afraid of the English police, he tipped off Charlie Gleason, the Australian, when his Scotland Yard spies told him the old fellow was in imminent danger of arrest. Gleason very sensibly vanished to the Continent, and Worth made certain that Shore knew who was behind the tip-off. As Pinkerton noted, the enmity between Shore and his arch-enemy was approaching a climax.

  A story told by Sir Robert Anderson of Scotland Yard illustrates just one of the many methods by which Worth contrived to establish an alibi for every occasion. As Sir Robert recounted: “A friend of mine who has a large medical practice in one of the London suburbs, told me once of an extraordinary patient of his. The man lived sumptuously, but was extremely hypochondriacal. Every now and then an urgent summons would bring the doctor to the house, to find the patient in bed, though there was nothing whatever the matter with him. But the man always insisted on having a prescription, which was promptly sent to the chemist … I might have relieved his curiosity by explaining that this eccentric patient was a prince among criminals. Raymond knew that his movements were a matter of interest to the police, and if he had reason to believe he had been seen in dangerous company he bolted home and ‘shammed sick.’ And the doctor’s evidence, confirmed by the chemist’s books, would prove that he was ill in bed till after the hour at which the police supposed they had seen him miles away.”

  Goaded to distraction, Shore increased the surveillance on the Worth mansion in Clapham Common. In a letter to William Pinkerton, the English detective noted that Worth had recruited a man named Sunter, “who has been known to me for some years as an expert thief-tool maker.” The master thief and his underling “have fitted up the place with an anvil, forge &c. sufficient for them to make any implement they may require. This house is permanently under the observation of police, in fact a constable is posted outside at all times,” Shore reported, through gritted teeth.

  On May 22, 1888, the detective finally lost patience and the police staged a raid. In the basement of the house they found the machine shop, and a complete set of burglar’s tools neatly stacked along the walls. Shore had hoped to find more incriminating evidence—the Gainsborough or other stolen goods, forgery paper, or at least Worth himself in cahoots with some known criminals—but the house was deserted. Worth, his investment in bribery paying dividends again, had been warned off by his police spies and, after sending his pregnant wife to stay with her mother, had hurriedly taken a short vacation. He returned to find that Shore, out of spite, had confiscated all his burglar’s tools, even though they could prove nothing in a court of law. In a magnificent act of brass-necked effrontery, Worth sued Shore for breaking into his “office” and demanded the return of his valuable household tools. The case, naturally, was thrown out, but Worth was satisfied merely to have forced Shore to appear in court.

  Inspector Shore may not have been the brightest policeman (even Pinkerton considered him a fool), but he was nothing if not dogged. His latest run-in with Worth had ended in a draw, but Shore now waited, and watched, firm in the belief that Worth, whose temerity was increasing by the day, would eventually make a mistake. For once, he was right.

  EIGHTEEN

  Bootless Footpads

  Worth had successfully escaped the clutches of the law, but the same could not be said of most of his colleagues, thanks, in large measure, to the work of William and Robert Pinkerton, who had all but cornered the market in bank-robbery prevention. The number of U.S. banks was increasing rapidly, from 754 in 1883 to 3,579 in 1893. Nitroglycerine had made it easier to blow open their safes, but the authorities, ably backed by the Pinkertons and improved safe designs, were becoming more efficient at defending their property. As Max Shinburn remarked: “It was nip and tuck between the safe makers and the crooks, as to which should gain the upper hand.” In time, the Pinkertons would found the Protective Association of American Bankers, through which banks would pay for their special protection. It was a worthwhile investment, for Billy Pinkerton, the Big Man, or the Eye, as he was known—a reference to the Pinkertons’ motto—had become a towering figure among detectives, as skillful in championing the law as Worth was adept at breaking it.

  As the burglar Josiah Flynt recalled: “The guns leave the Big Man’s territory alone, if they can. If there was two banks standin’ close together, an’ one o’ them was a member of the Bankers’ Association an’ the other one wasn’t, the guns ’ud tackle the other one first. The Big Man protects the Bankers’ Association banks.” Eddie Guerin thought that “the Pinkertons did more than all the detective forces of the world combined together to smash up the big bank robbers.”

  Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency had left the early days of mere bounty-hunting far behind, to become the most effective and, after the bitter labor disputes of the 1880s and early 1890s, the most detested detective force in the United States. Many considered them to be hired strike-breakers, private police in the pay of the large industrialists. The Pinkertons insisted, in the words of an official report into their activities, that “the practice of employing Pinkerton guards or watchmen by corporations in cases of strikes or labor trouble has grown very largely out of the sloth and inability of the civil authorities to render efficient and proper protection.” They had a point, but the participation of Pinkerton’s men in the Burlington strikes of 1888 and then the Homestead riots of 1892 was among the ugliest chapters in the agency’s history.

  William Pinkerton, a man of unabashed conservative views, played a key role in those events, but he was always happier in the saddle, hunting down the bandits and thugs who terrorized the West. Whenever a train robbery was reported, William was usually the first to hasten to Denver and organize pursuit of the fresh breed of desperadoes: the Farringtons, the Burrows brothers, “Texas Jack” Searcy, Charles Morgan, the McCoys, Harvey Logan, alias “Kid Curry,” and, of course, Butch Cassidy and Harry Longabaugh, the Sundance Kid.

  No area of criminal endeavor was beyond the scope of the Pinkerton brothers: outlaws, blackmailers, fences, forgers, fraudsters, killers, and cattle rustlers learned to respect and fear them. The bankers were not alone in seeking the Pinkertons’ protection. When the Jewelers Security Alliance took on the agency as their detective corps, they were offered another punchy motto: “Prevention, Pursuit, Prosecution and Punishment.” Other detective agencies might be “principally constituted of thieves, pickpockets, blackmailers and porch climbers,” but Pinkerton’s prided itself on absolute incorruptibility.

  R
obert and William jointly ran the agency after their father’s death in 1884, in sharply contrasting ways. Where Robert, a dry and meticulous man, ruled the New York office, buried in paper work, William still operated out of Chicago and points west. The older brother was the more outgoing and expansive of the two, and the more formidable. He shared his father’s immunity to fear, but unlike the unbending Allan, William Pinkerton had a strangely subtle view of the criminal mind. He harried his quarry with the perseverance of a monomaniacal bloodhound, but he brought to his work an unlikely admiration, even affection, for the criminal classes. When the talented, and plainly insane, train robber Oliver Curtis Perry stole $8,000 by sawing through the side of a moving train, William made no secret of his awe. “There are few if any men who possess the daredevil courage to accomplish what this train robber did,” he said, shortly before Perry was nabbed by the detectives.