ENCOURAGING PICKPOCKETS
The pawn shops were practically unregulated by law in those days and the German girl's painful experience as a customer, instead of making her angry, impressed her with great admiration. There was a field for an ambitious person, and if ambition is a virtue none was ever more virtuous in that particular than "Mother."
But how to enter this profitable industry was the question. To be a pawn-broker has always required capital. That is, it always has for anyone but this woman, who had none. She made a hurried survey of the pawn shops along the Bowery and elsewhere, and among others noticed the place of one William Mandelbaum.
William was unmarried, rather weak willed for a man of his calling, lazy, and afflicted with chronic dyspepsia. He cooked his own meals over a kerosene lamp, which was undoubtedly the cause of his indigestion. "Mother" Mandelbaum introduced herself as Fredericka Goldberg, and offered to cook and tend store at nominal wages.
The "nominal wages" item secured her the position and the cooking made her firm in it. Within a week, William's digestion was better than he could ever remember since boyhood; he had gained seven pounds in weight and business was growing beautifully—all on account of the capable Fredericka.
At the end of the week, William and Fredericka had a business talk. Fredericka didn't want an increase in wages. She didn't want any wages at all. It was partnership or nothing. William ate one meal cooked by himself and then surrendered. Within a few weeks they were married. Mrs. Mandelbaum forever afterward was the head of the house of Mandelbaum.
Among her customers Mrs. Mandelbaum noticed an occasional one who would hurry in and get what he could on a miscellany of watches and small pieces of jewelry. These hasty, furtive young men and boys took what they could get and showed little disposition to haggle. Also, they never returned to redeem their pledges.
Mrs. Mandelbaum's Special Devices for Dealing with Thieves, and the Secret Trap-Door Escape.
If ever anybody lived in the proverbial "glass house," surely it was "Mother" Mandelbaum—and she knew it. Her establishment was ostensibly a general store and a pawnbroker's office, which she maintained in the front room (B), but Mrs. Mandelbaum also dealt in stolen goods of all kinds and planned robberies with thieves, and often sheltered, protected, and hid thieves in times of trouble.
"Mother" Mandelbaum was never seen in the front room (B), where a clerk was always kept on guard. She kept out of reach behind the window with the steel grating (A). Her false chimney and secret dumb-waiter arrangement was at the point (C). In the room (D) "Mother" Mandelbaum kept two or three employees busy removing stolen jewels from their settings and engraving designs to cover up and hide monograms and identification marks on watches, jewelry, and silverware.
In the room (E) were kept bulky articles and stolen goods, such as fur coats, etc. Here, too, the price tags, factory numbers and other marks were always removed from stolen furs, laces and silks. The room (F) contained beds where thieves were lodged when occasion demanded. The room (H) was a store room, where crates and cases of stolen goods were packed up for shipment to her customers. At the end of the passageway leading to the room (H) was a secret trap door (G). In case of a raid by the police, and if her front and back doors were guarded by detectives, she could use the trap door (G) to let thieves escape down through a hole in the basement wall, which led up into the house next door, which "Mother" Mandelbaum also owned under another name.
The new head of the house encouraged these customers, who were, of course, pickpockets. At first, through ignorance, and later, as a matter of policy, Mrs. Mandelbaum was more liberal in her terms than was customary. Some pawn-brokers would not accept anything from a pickpocket if they knew it. The others took advantage of the pickpocket's peril of the law to drive the hardest possible terms.
It was not long before Mandelbaum's had the lion's share of the pickpocket business. One who disposes of stolen goods is known as a "fence," and Mrs. Mandelbaum soon became one of the most important "fences" for pickpockets in the city.
As the pawn shop grew more and more notorious, the weight of the police grew heavier and heavier on the proprietress. She dealt less liberally with pickpockets than before. She squeezed them to the last notch, but they still remained her customers for she was no harder than the other fences.
In order to meet the ever increasing blackmail of the police, Mrs. Mandelbaum found it necessary to steadily enlarge her business. Carefully she developed a system for scattering her stock so that her New York headquarters never contained a very large stock of stolen goods. She kept men busy melting down gold and silver and disguising jewelry and others ferreting out supposedly honest merchants who were willing to buy her wares and ask no questions.
It must always be borne in mind in these articles that crime cannot be carried on by individuals. It requires an elaborate permanent organization. While the individual operators, from pickpockets to bank burglars, come and go, working from coast to coast, they must be affiliated with some permanent substantial person who is in touch with the police. Such a permanent head was "Mother" Mandelbaum.
The field of usefulness to thieves of the big "fences" like "Mother" Mandelbaum and Grady are infinite. Suppose you are a burglar and last night's labors resulted mostly in jewelry and silverware, you would have neither the time nor the plant to melt down the silver and disguise or unset the stones. "Mother" Mandelbaum would attend to all that for you on about a 75 per cent. commission.
This wonderful woman kept certain persons busy on salary melting down silver. Others worked steadily altering, unsetting, and otherwise disguising jewelry.
What would you do with a stolen watch which bore, deeply engraved on the back, the name and address of its rightful owner? You might melt down the case and get a little something for the works, but "Mother" would do better. She would turn it over to one of her engravers who would rapidly and not inartistically engrave a little scene or decoration on the watch case, completely masking the name and address.
A stolen automobile is the worst kind of a "white elephant" on your hands unless you know where to take it. Every city has its plants where a stolen car is quickly made over, usually into a taxicab, and so well disguised that its former owner may pay for a ride in it without suspicion.
The force of artisans and mechanics employed on the fruits of burglaries and pocket picking is several thousand in a city the size of New York or Chicago.
All burglars and thieves are busy with their own enterprises, and have no time to look after all these matters. Somebody there must be who will organize these first aids to the captured criminals—the "squarers of squealers," the lawyers, the men to provide bail, etc. Such a one was "Mother" Mandelbaum.
Hacks, taxicabs, express wagons, and even moving vans must be readily available. Peddlers are extremely useful. They prowl about wherever they please and act as advance men for the burglars. Keeping peddlers and tramps off your premises is one of the best forms of burglar insurance.
The army of enemies of society must have its general, and I believe that probably the greatest of them all was "Mother" Mandelbaum.