Fredericka "Marm" Mandelbaum (March 25, 1825 – February 26, 1894)Holub, Rona
"Fredericka Mandelbaum."
In ''Immigrant Entrepreneurship: German-American Business Biographies, 1720 to the Present'', vol. 2, edited by William J. Hausman. German Historical Institute. Last modified October 15, 2013. operated as a criminal fence to many of the street gangs and criminals of

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * '' ...

's underworld, handling between $1–5 million in stolen goods between 1862 and 1884. Like her principal rival John D. Grady and the

Grady Gang The Grady Gang was a New York City sneak thief gang during the 1860s. Organized by fence (criminal), fence John D. Grady, John D. "Traveling Mike" Grady following the American Civil War, the Grady Gang operated in Broadway theatre, Broadway's "Thiev ...

, she also became a matriarch 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 The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states th ...

era.

Life and career

Mandelbaum was born Friederike Weisner in

Kassel Kassel (; in Germany, spelled Cassel until 1926) is a city on the Fulda River in northern Hesse, Germany. It is the administrative seat of the Regierungsbezirk Kassel and the district of the same name and had 201,048 inhabitants in December 2020 ...

, a city in modern-day Germany. Not much is known of her early life, other than that her family was Jewish. She married Wolfe Mandelbaum in 1848; they worked as itinerant

peddler A peddler, in British English pedlar, also known as a chapman, packman, cheapjack, hawker, higler, huckster, (coster)monger, colporteur or solicitor, is a door-to-door and/or travelling vendor of goods. In England, the term was mostly used fo ...

s in Germany before emigrating to the United States in 1850. When the family arrived in New York, they began a series of small businesses, taking in goods collected by

scavengers Scavengers are animals that consume dead organisms that have died from causes other than predation or have been killed by other predators. While scavenging generally refers to carnivores feeding on carrion, it is also a herbivorous feeding be ...

and reselling them. The pair purchased a dry goods store on Clinton Street, but 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). Mandelbaum began financing thieves and burglars and was involved in planning some of the biggest thefts in the city's history, including the Ocean National Bank. Expanding her operations, she controlled several gangs of

blackmail Blackmail is an act of coercion using the threat of revealing or publicizing either substantially true or false information about a person or people unless certain demands are met. It is often damaging information, and it may be revealed to fa ...

ers and

confidence men ''Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington and the Education of a President'' is a book by journalist Ron Suskind, published by HarperCollins on September 20, 2011. Having obtained an advance copy of the book, ''The New York Times'' published a re ...

as well as a school, known as Marm's Grand Street School, to recruit and teach younger criminals how to

pickpocket Pickpocketing is a form of larceny that involves the stealing of money or other valuables from the person or a victim's pocket without them noticing the theft at the time. It may involve considerable dexterity and a knack for misdirection. A th ...

. She was also a top competitor to the

. 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 Adam Worth (18448 January 1902) was a crime boss and fraudster. His career in crime, stretching from the United States to Europe and South Africa, included the infamous theft of Gainsborough's celebrated Portrait of Georgiana, Duchess of Devo ...

Sophie Lyons Sophie Lyons (December 24, 1848 – May 8, 1924) was an American criminal and one of the country's most notorious female ''thieves, pickpockets, shoplifters, and confidence women'' during the mid-to-late 19th century. She and her husbands ...

, and

George Leonidas Leslie George Leonidas Leslie (1842–1878) was an architect turned bank robber. Early life and education George Leslie was born in 1842, two years after his parents arrived in America from England. Early into his childhood, his father moved the fami ...

as well as judges and police officials. However, in 1884, New York District Attorney Peter B. Olney hired the

Pinkerton Detective Agency Pinkerton is a private security guard and detective agency established around 1850 in the United States by Scottish-born cooper Allan Pinkerton and Chicago attorney Edward Rucker as the North-Western Police Agency, which later became Pinkerton ...

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

Hamilton, Ontario Hamilton is a port city in the Canadian province of Ontario. Hamilton has a population of 569,353, and its census metropolitan area, which includes Burlington and Grimsby, has a population of 785,184. The city is approximately southwest of T ...

where she remained until her death in 1894.Hamilton Spectator, February 26, 1894

References

Sources

* Asbury, Herbert. ''The Gangs of New York''. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1927. * Sifakis, Carl. ''The Encyclopedia of American Crime''. New York: Facts on File Inc., 2001. * Phillips, Charles and Alan Axelrod. ''Cops, Crooks, and Criminologists: An International Biographical Dictionary of Law Enforcement, Updated Edition''. New York: Checkmark Books, 2000.

External links

Adam Worth: The World in his Pocket - Marm Mandelbaum
by Joseph Geringer
Frederika "Ma" Mandlebaum
at

Rotten.com Rotten.com was a shock site active from 1996 to 2012. The website, which had the tagline "An archive of disturbing illustration", was devoted to morbid curiosities, pictures of violent acts, deformities, autopsy or forensic photographs, depictio ...

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 ''The New York Sun'' is an American online newspaper published in Manhattan; from 2002 to 2008 it was a daily newspaper distributed in New York City. It debuted on April 16, 2002, adopting the name, motto, and masthead of the earlier New York ...

'' - December 22, 2004 {{DEFAULTSORT:Mandelbaum, Fredericka 1825 births 1894 deaths American crime bosses Gang members of New York City Emigrants from the Electorate of Hesse Immigrants to the United States American female gangsters 19th-century American criminals Jewish women in business Jewish American gangsters

Life and career

References

Sources

Further reading

External links