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.