Does crime pay? Those who really know are certain that it does not, but there are a few who doubt. Well, here is the story of a man who stole in all quite £500,000, and who must have averaged close on twenty thousand pounds a year during his active life. We shall see what happened to him.
Satisfied for a while with the second bounty, Adam Worth took part in several of the later battles of the great Civil War. There is no record that he distinguished himself, but, on the other hand, he performed his duties satisfactorily, and participated in the rejoicings which followed the triumph of the North. Along with thousands of others, he was discharged from the army when hostilities ceased, and as one of the men who had fought for his country was assured of remunerative employment. But Adam Worth's ideas of money were too big to be honest, and he quickly drifted into the society of thieves. He turned pickpocket, and achieved some very neat thefts. Then he took part in a robbery from a bank. He directed the operations, and their success confirmed what most of his associates were slowly realizing—that Adam Worth and success went hand in hand. Gradually they began to treat him with respect; afterwards they looked up to him as their leader. New methods were needed, and Worth supplied them.
"It's just as easy to steal a hundred thousand dollars as a tenth of that sum," he said to his criminal associates. "The risk is just as great. We'll, therefore, go out for big money always."
ADAM WORTH
He introduced the system of utilizing the proceeds, or part of them, of one robbery to help to bring off the next. Hitherto the average thief was accustomed to spend his ill-gotten gains in dissipation, and then look about for a way of filling his empty pockets. Adam Worth changed all that. He realized that crime must be capitalized if it was to be successful and to pay large dividends. One robbery, for example, brought in about ten thousand dollars, and he distributed only half of this amongst his followers, the balance being held in reserve for another bank burglary, and the reserve was frequently added to.
Worth's foresight was justified immediately. He had despatched confederates all over the United States to seek out likely banks to rob; and, when one of them reported that the Boyston Bank, in Boston, was just the thing they were looking for, Worth journeyed from New York to inspect. He was delighted with what he saw, for it seemed to him the bank was built purposely for him. With proper care it would be the easiest job of his life, and he saw to it that every care was taken to ensure success.
Next door to the Boyston Bank was a barber's shop. It did a good business, and had Worth not possessed considerable monetary reserves he would never have been able to induce the proprietor to sell out. The crook, however, offered him a generous sum down "on the nail," explaining that he was the representative of a New York company which was going to introduce into Boston a patent bitters which would sweep all other patent bitters out of the market. The money and the explanation were accepted, and within a few days the necessary alterations had been made.
The shop window was packed with bottles—which prevented anyone seeing into the shop—and a wooden partition at the end of the shop effectively screened that part from observation should a stray "customer" appear. One of the gang, dressed as a shop assistant, was always on view during the day, but at night he assisted Adam Worth and two other men to dig a tunnel under the shop and into the bank next door. For a week they worked, taking particular care that no trace of their operations could be seen. The excavated earth was carefully piled up behind the wooden partition and watched as though it was gold. Thousands of Bostonians passed the window of the New Patent Bitters Co. unconscious of the fact that one of the most sensational bank robberies of the century was being carried out, for when the gang had finished their tunnel they entered the vaults of the bank, broke open three safes, and gathered a rich harvest of gold and silver and notes, worth in all close on one million dollars.
The four burglars at once fled to New York, and there they divided the spoils, later scattering when they heard that the Boston police were after them. One of the thieves went to Ireland, another to Canada, Worth and the fourth member of the gang, Bullard, sailed for England to open up a new and sensational chapter in the story of crime.