SHE WENT THAT-A-WAY
“Thank God we are rid of the villain!”
—District Attorney Peter B. Olney, December 5, 1884
The newspapers were not kind to Mandelbaum when she appeared in court. According to a January 1884 New York Times article, she was described as “a gross woman, a German Jewess, with heavy, almost masculine features, restless black eyes, and a dark, unhealthy looking complexion. Her stout figure was incased in a rich sealskin cloak, below which appeared the folds of a silk dress. On her big hands were brown kid gloves and in her lap a handbag rested. There were diamonds in her ears, and her collar was confined by a pin set thick with pearls. On her head rested a black bonnet trimmed with beads and bright colored feathers.”
It did not matter what Mandelbaum looked like; there was no doubt that despite her capture by Pinkerton detectives and the subsequent hearing before Judge Murray, Mandelbaum still had friends in high places from whom she might solicit help. Murray had his worries about what she and her lawyers might do to get out of the charges, who she might call some favor from and when. Murray proceeded cautiously, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
The hearing to determine whether there was enough evidence for the case to be transferred to the Court of General Sessions which would hear the felony charges against Mandelbaum, her son, and Stoude, took two full days. Howe’s defense tactics were a wonder to behold. First he tried to position his client as a victim in an ongoing battle between the district attorney’s office and the police, a ruse that seemed to work perfectly when the two departments engaged each other in a battle of name-calling in the newspapers. His second move was to call into question the reliability and character of the prosecution’s chief witness, Pinkerton detective Gustav Frank. In the Roosevelt Committee’s report in 1884, the report that District Attorney Olney had used against the Board of Police Commissioners, Frank had been named. According to the report, Frank had been instrumental as an undercover agent in bringing down several of the gambling establishments in the city. New York police therefore knew of Frank long before his undercover work on the Mandelbaum case. Frank’s citation in the report was made even more interesting when William Howe’s next line of defense was to personally discredit the Pinkerton agent.
According to The New York Times, Frank was dressed conservatively when he was called to the stand. “He wore a very glossy black suit, white tie and a jaundiced-looking countenance. In his mouth was a gumdrop which apparently declined to melt as he chewed it so persistently that Mr. Howe scowled,” The New York Times reported.
Howe began his questioning. “Please tell us everything that was said to you by the prisoner Stoude on each of the occasions you visited Mrs. Mandelbaum.”
Assistant District Attorney Gove jumped to his feet and protested Howe’s line of questioning. It wasn’t Frank who was on trial. Little did Gove suspect that, in fact, it was exactly Howe’s intention to put Frank’s character on trial.
“I have a right to test this man on everything that has happened to him from his cradle up to the present moment,” Howe blustered. He again asked the question of Frank. This time Gove sat passively by.
Frank testified that Stoude had told him that Mrs. Mandelbaum would not do business with just anyone who came along. He was asked whether Stoude ever mentioned anything about stolen goods. Frank testified he hadn’t.
“Go on, tell us everything, if it takes you a year,” Howe said goading the witness.
Murray interrupted him. “Were these conversations always in regard to stolen goods?” he asked of Frank.
Howe fumed. “That’s a very leading question,” he protested. “And one which I would not allow the District Attorney to ask.”
Frank continued with his testimony. He told the court that he had purchased some silk from Mandelbaum after she got to know him and seemed comfortable with him. He said that it had been Stoude who delivered the silk to him.
At this point, Howe motioned to have Stoude released since by Frank’s own testimony all Stoude did was deliver goods and never once spoke of any of the goods Frank purchased as being stolen. Hence Stoude obviously knew nothing about where the silk came from and was merely a delivery man, according to Howe.
Gove protested saying that Stoude had worked for Mandelbaum for over a dozen years and therefore had to know what kind of criminal activity she was engaged in.
“Law is just like laudanum. It is far more easy to use it as a quack than applying it as a physician and I say that my friend is giving you a dose of quackery,” Howe said waving his arm dramatically at the assistant district attorney. “Do you decide this case upon inference? Please let me have justice,” he shouted at Gove.
“The case is here and shall be treated legally,” Murray countered. “It has been shown that Stoude was the confidential man of Mrs. Mandelbaum and his relations to the business have been explained. The whole thing appears to me strong and so strong that it would be absurd to discharge him.”
The examination of Frank continued. He testified that when he had purchased the silk from Mrs. Mandelbaum, she had told him not to dispose of it in the city. She told him it was because that’s where the silk had come from. Howe asked Frank whether he had ever been connected to any of the gambling dens in the city as a detective. Frank testified that he had. Howe asked if he had ever received any money directly from any of them.
“Not a cent,” Frank testified.
“Who paid you then?” Howe asked.
“Pinkerton,” Frank said.
Howe feigned astonishment. “You mean you were employed by the gambling institution and received no payment from them?” But before Frank has a chance to answer, Howe fired another question at him. “Was Mr. Pinkerton the only person to whom you made a statement of what you did at Mrs. Mandelbaum’s store?” he asked.
“Mr. Pinkerton and his Superintendent,” Frank said.
“Did you ever go to the District Attorney’s office?”
“No, sir,” Frank said.
The questioning was fast and pointed. Howe asked where Frank had written his affidavits for the case against Mandelbaum. “Was it in Mr. Gove’s office?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Frank sputtered. “I can ask him if you like.”
“Was Judge Murray there?”
“Yes,” Murray chimed in.
Howe went for the jugular. “Were you ever told that it was necessary to get Mrs. Mandelbaum arrested in order that Inspector Byrnes and the Police Commissioners might be attacked?” Howe asked.
Gove jumped to his feet again objecting vehemently to Howe’s line of questioning.
This didn’t deter Howe. He continued to grill Frank. “Did the DA’s office tell you there was a feud with Inspector Byrnes? Did you ever see any of the municipal police at Mrs. Mandelbaum’s?”
Frank refused to answer.
The district attorney protested even louder.
“This slander upon the Police Department is unfounded,” Howe said calmly in the face of Gove’s temper tantrum.
“Well, upon my soul,” a frustrated Gove blurted out.
“Upon your soul,” Howe said contemptuously. “Don’t be indecent.” He was through with Frank for the time being. He called the four merchants whose silk had been identified previously as having been stolen. He questioned them again. He wasn’t able to elicit any new facts regarding the merchandise, but still he pressed on. Each time the witnesses were unable to positively identify the silk belonging to them, but they also contended they were fairly certain they had been stolen from their stores. Howe motioned to have the charges against Mandelbaum dismissed. If they couldn’t identify their own merchandise, how on earth could Mandelbaum know it was stolen if they didn’t?
Each time Howe motioned for dismissal, Murray turned him down. “I should like to add that I am getting tired of those repeated queries. Are we to have fair play? It is getting monotonous,” Murray said after dismissing Howe’s final motion to dismiss.
“Well, I don’t mean any disrespect to you,” Howe said, smiling at the judge. “I am getting weary myself.”
Following Howe’s last motion to dismiss all charges against his clients and each motion summarily overruled by Murray, the judge gaveled the hearing closed. He had, he explained, taken all the testimony under advisement and was convinced that there was enough evidence for the case to go to trial in the Court of General Sessions. Mandelbaum, her son Julius, and Herman Stoude were charged with seven counts of second degree grand larceny and one of receiving stolen goods. The trial would be scheduled without delay.
MRS. MANDELBAUM’S CASE JUSTICE MOVING ON ITS COURSE SOMEWHAT SLOWLY THE PRISONERS’ DISCHARGE REFUSED—LIVELY SPARRING BETWEEN COUNSEL
[Mandelbaum] with the ferocious bunch of ostrich feathers in her bonnet, betook herself into the holy sanctity of the Harlem Police Court where she was at once recognized . . . The woman was greeted by her smiling counsel, Messrs. Howe & Hummel, who scintillated in the court room and talked in vulgar parlance . . . Assistant District Attorney Leroy S. Gove, in a shabby genteel suit of clothes, represented the intangible crowd, thirsting for justice, known as “the people.”
—The New York Times, July 29, 1884
On August 14, Murray issued the official indictment papers charging all three defendants with grand larceny in the second degree and receiving stolen goods. Mandelbaum’s case was placed on the docket and scheduled to be heard in the Court of General Sessions on September 22, 1884. Yet William Howe wasn’t done with Gustav Frank. Howe filed a motion to have Frank’s character investigated and suggested that a commission be appointed to examine a letter purportedly received from the Crown Prosecutor of Rhenish, Prussia, Frank’s hometown, that implied that Frank was a fugitive from justice. According to Howe he had received a letter on September 6 from the prosecutor that was written in German and that according to Howe’s translation, Frank had absconded from Germany fifteen years ago and was wanted in connection with both bankruptcy and forgery charges. According to Howe’s translation, the German prosecutor wrote: “On the telegraphic message of the 19th of this month (August) I have the honor to inform you that the present prosecuting Attorney acted against Gustav Frank since 1867 without accomplishing anything. The present Directors of the Police also made inquiries concerning Frank which were fruitless.” The message was cryptic at best. The court wasn’t about to let Howe’s translation go untested and had the letter translated by two German speaking translators. Their translation of the letter was very different than Howe’s: “I have the honor to answer your communication by telegraph of the 19th of this month, that there were no documents to be found in the office of the District Attorney of this city against Gustav Frank since 1837. Also an inquiry at the Police Direction of this city about Frank was without result.”
Howe’s contention from the beginning was that any testimony Frank had given regarding Mandelbaum was tainted by the fact that Frank himself was a criminal at large. No one was buying it. Still, Howe persevered. He submitted an affidavit to the court that claimed Frank was in business in Croch, near Cleves, in Germany until 1865. He went bankrupt, failed to pay his debtors, and became a forger. Howe claimed that a proclamation for his arrest had been issued and was still outstanding. Howe demanded that a special commission travel to Germany to interview firsthand the German prosecutor and police regarding Frank’s criminal charges. In Howe’s opinion to the court, Frank was unworthy of belief as the principal witness against his client.
Frank, of course, disputed every part of Howe’s accusation. According to Frank, he had never been in business in Croch, Germany, and had in fact never heard of the place. The charges must be against another man with the same name. He testified to the court that he left Cologne in July 1863, when he was twenty-three years old and came to America. In 1864, he enlisted with the Fourth Massachusetts Regiment where he served during the war. After his discharge he said he’d been working for the Pinkerton Detective Agency. The Pinkerton Agency also filed an affidavit with the court claiming that Frank had been working for them since 1865. He left the agency for a time but returned in 1881 and had been working as a detective ever since. His character and honesty were unimpeachable according to the Pinkertons.
The district attorney’s office filed a motion opposing Howe’s call for a special commission claiming that Mandelbaum’s case did not hinge solely on the testimony of Frank. The court ruled against Howe’s motion.
IS DETECTIVE FRANK ON TRIAL? MOTHER MANDELBAUM’S COUNSEL TRYING TO PROVE HIM A FORGER
In the Court of General Sessions yesterday counsel for Mme. Frederika Mandelbaum, the notorious “fence’ was heard on a motion that a commission be appointed to take testimony as to the character of Detective Gustav Frank, the Pinkerton detective whose testimony secured Mother Mandelbaum’s indictment.
—The New York Times, September 16, 1884
When the Frank ploy didn’t work, Howe switched to another tactic—delay. Howe argued that the case should be heard in another court, the Court of Oyer and Terminer. The court was made up of a Supreme Court Justice and two or more judges of the Court of Common Pleas with jurisdiction to hear all felony cases including those punishable by life imprisonment or death. Howe’s motion to remove the case to Court of Oyer and Terminer was pure rubbish as far as District Attorney Olney was concerned. The only reason Howe wanted a change of venues was to delay the case in the hopes that several of the witnesses against Mandelbaum might change their minds. Luckily for William Howe his motion to move the case was heard by Judge Charles Donahue, a more sympathetic judge. In actuality, Donahue was more than sympathetic. He was beholden to Mandelbaum and was later investigated by the New York City Bar Association and censured for his conduct in a variety of criminal cases, including Mandelbaum’s. A new trial date was set for December 2, 1884.
As far as Olney was concerned it was only a delay. He had Mandelbaum right where he wanted her, and she wasn’t going to wiggle out of the charges no matter what legal maneuvers her legal counsel made. He had fourteen witnesses ready to testify against her, including Gustav Frank’s damning testimony. But William Howe still had several tricks up his copious sleeve. The indictment against Mandelbaum, Julius, and Stoude had two felony charges on it: grand larceny and receiving stolen goods. The law required that only one charge be issued in any one indictment. Olney was out maneuvered again. He had to withdraw the original indictment and reissue it this time with separate indictments for each of the charges as the law required. It was another setback for Olney, but the biggest one of all was just around the corner.
“Mother” Mandelbaum’s big and little lawyers applied to Judge Donohue in Supreme Court Chambers yesterday for an order removing her case from the Court of General Sessions to the Court of Oyer and Terminer and for the continuance of an order staying her trail in the former court . . . District Attorney Olney opposed the motions arguing that the application for removal was tantamount to saying that the Court of General Sessions, presided over by Recorder Smyth, was not competent to try an ordinary case of grand larceny in the second degree.
—The New York Times, September 20, 1884
Despite all of Howe’s legal maneuverings, District Attorney Olney believed steadfastly that he had Mandelbaum right where he wanted her and that a conviction would strike a blow not only on the criminal underworld but bring to light the incompetent and corrupt police department shenanigans. Even though Mandelbaum’s lawyers did their utmost to get the charges against her dropped, all they managed to accomplish was to get the case continued. Mandelbaum was out on bail awaiting trial, as were her son Julius and Herman Stoude. During this time Pinkerton detectives were on around-the-clock surveillance of Mandelbaum’s home. They had set up stakeouts around her Clinton and Rivington Streets shop, keeping tabs on her every move. Mandelbaum kept a low profile. She met several times at her attorney’s office, taking a carriage from her home to Howe and Hummel’s lavish offices at 89 Center Street to discuss the upcoming case and to make some real estate transactions that would later come under legal scrutiny. Pinkerton detectives followed her there and everywhere she went. Two or three detectives were not far from her sight at any one time. Mandelbaum was well aware that her every move was being followed, and she made elaborate gestures to keep the detectives aware of her various jaunts. Coming out of her home, dressed in black as she usually was, with her small feathered hat perched on the top of her large head, made her an easily recognizable target. She meant to have it that way. With her enormous girth and feathered hat, she was easy to spot. She never just slipped into her waiting carriage when she made her trips to the law offices. She would circle the carriage to give the watching detectives a good look at her, and then she would ask for the footman’s help in getting into the carriage. Sometimes she would wave as the carriage rode away. If there was a game of cat and mouse going on, little did the Pinkerton detectives surmise that it was they who were the mice.
It became clear to Mandelbaum that despite all the legal wrangling by her lawyers and the calling in of every political favor she was owed, nothing could be done to stop the case from going to court in December. As the trial date neared, she made a decision about her future—and it didn’t include spending time in a jail cell. There was no way she was about to let anyone take away everything she had struggled so hard to achieve—the wealth, the power, the lifestyle she had become accustomed to. So, subsequently, this “no way” became “a-way.”
On December 2, 1884, the day the trial was scheduled to begin, District Attorney Olney sauntered into the courtroom bursting with determination and armed with enough evidence and testimony to finally put an end to Mandelbaum’s reign as “Queen among Thieves.” Her attorneys were present in the courtroom but Mandelbaum, Julius, and Stoude were not. Howe filed a motion to once again postpone the case. Olney immediately and vehemently objected. Howe argued that there were still details in the case that he needed time to clarify. Olney argued that Howe had been given enough time during the many delays to prepare for the case. Howe promised that everything he needed to have worked out would be taken care of in a matter of days. The judge granted Howe’s motion to continue the case, but only to December 4, and held that there would be no further continuances. Howe assured him there would be no need to delay the case after December 4. The judge adjourned the matter until the new date. Howe was exponentially pleased with himself and the delay. Olney was left fuming.
THE CASE OF MRS. MANDELBAUM
District Attorney Olney came into the Court of Oyer and Terminer with 14 witnesses yesterday morning prepared to terminate the professional career of Frederika Mandelbaum, the eminent “fence,” with the assistance of seven indictments and two Assistant District Attorneys. Frederika, however, was not in the court to be terminated and her counsel secured an adjournment of her case until tomorrow morning. Mr. Olney strenuously opposed the adjournment . . .
—The New York Times, December 3, 1884
On December 4, 1884, the morning the trial was to begin, the Court of Oyer and Terminer was packed with reporters, police, merchants, a slew of known and unknown criminals, and the just plain curious, all of them come to witness the proceedings. It was standing room only. People jostled for front row seats. The beaming district attorney sat at the prosecution table flanked by his fourteen witnesses and assistants including Robert Pinkerton and Gustav Frank. No one more than District Attorney Olney could wait to get the case that would finally end the career of New York City’s most notorious fence underway. Judge Barrett, the presiding justice, adorned in his best dark robes, took the bench. “All rise,” the clerk of courts bellowed loudly above the din, silencing the noisy crowd with his familiar “Hear yea. Hear yea.” When the clerk ordered that everyone in the courtroom be seated, it became glaringly apparent that everyone was there except one very important person—Marm Mandelbaum. Julius and Stoude were also not seated at the defense table. Heads began to spin around the courtroom looking for the errant defendants. A buzz hummed through the crowd. At exactly 11 o’clock, the clerk called the names of the defendants—Fredericka Mandelbaum, Julius Mandelbaum, and Herman Stoude. There was no response. The buzz in the courtroom grew louder. The judge banged his gavel. Again the names of the defendants were called and again there was no response. The names of the defendants were called a third and final time.
William Howe, seated at the defense table and dressed in his finest attire—a dove grey waistcoat, striped trousers, gold vest studded with diamonds, billowing purple bow tie, and matching handkerchief flowing from the breast pocket of his coat—did not appear disturbed. His partner, the dour Abe Hummel, dressed in his usual charcoal grey suit and dark tie, sat in the chair beside Howe and quietly hummed what sounded like a show tune. When the clerk of courts had called Mandelbaum’s name for the third and last time, Howe slowly lumbered to his feet and facing the bench, calmly told the court, in an almost singsong voice, “If your honor please, my clients are not in court. They were each notified to be at my office at 10 o’clock this morning, but they did not come, and are not here now.”
Pandemonium broke out in the courtroom. Several people cheered.
“The District Attorney must, in the words of Shakespeare, ‘have the due and forfeit of his bond.’ Mrs. Mandelbaum is not here,” Howe advised the court.
District Attorney Olney’s jaw dropped. He was momentarily speechless. He looked at Robert Pinkerton quizzically. Pinkerton looked as dismayed and confused as Olney. His detectives had been shadowing Mandelbaum and the other defendants day and night. They had last reported to him that yesterday she made a visit to Howe’s Center Street offices by carriage where she stayed for a time and then returned to her home where she remained for the evening. She had not been reported seen that morning.
Olney tried to recover his composure. He jumped to his feet. “I move, your honor, that the bonds of the defendants be forfeited, and a bench warrant be issued for the defendants,” he said.
Judge Barrett slammed his gavel accepting Olney’s motion, and the clerk of courts ordered that all bail be forfeited in the case. But this would be easier said than done. Not only had Mandelbaum fled, but she had seen to it that the bail money that had been put up for her, Julius, and Stoude could not be claimed by the district attorney’s office. She had arranged to have the deed to the two properties that had been put up as bail legally transferred first to her daughter and then summarily back to relatives of the various bondsmen. She had done so for all of the bail money, which meant that the property put up by various bondsmen could no longer be attached. No property, no bail money. This included the bail posted by several citizens including
John Briggs who posted bail for Julius Mandelbaum in the amount of $5,000, using his house at 105 West Twenty-Fifth Street as collateral, and Conrad Petri, who had posted bail using his property at 421 East Houston Street as collateral. Mandelbaum had outsmarted Olney’s office yet again.
“Like the defendants, the bail had vanished.”
—Cait Murphy, Scoundrels in Law, 2010
William Howe, still standing before the bench and in no apparent hurry to leave the limelight said, “I believe Mrs. Mandelbaum acted upon Mark Twain’s theory that absence of body is often better than presence of mind.” Neither the judge nor District Attorney Olney were amused; still it didn’t dampen Howe or Hummel’s apparent joy. Abe Hummel mused admiringly, “Ah, Fredericka the Great.”
When questioned, Howe said he had no idea where his clients had gone and even if he did, he wasn’t about to divulge it. Finding them was up to the district attorney’s office and of course the illustrious Pinkerton detectives, he said winking at a flummoxed Robert Pinkerton. Howe was questioned by a reporter about his fees. Hadn’t Mandelbaum’s escape cost him, too? William Howe rocked back on the heels of his well-shined and expensive shoes, looked up at the ceiling, and began to whistle. Sticking his hands deep into the pockets of his trousers he tossed the coins in his pockets dramatically and said no more. Later he explained to reporters that his firm always secured fees in advance up to and including the cost of an appeal.
“If our client is hanged before the appeal is made, he will never need the money, and we might as well have it,” Howe said. “We look very far ahead—much farther, I would remark, than the District Attorney.”
Mandelbaum, Julius, and Stoude were gone and nowhere to be found, at least not in New York City. A flurry of legal activity had transpired on the day before the trial in the offices of Howe & Hummel, much of it real estate transfers. Not only did Mandelbaum see to it that none of the property put up as collateral as bail could be taken by the authorities, she did the same for her own real estate holdings, deeding them over to her daughters. The only real question left was how did she do all this given the fact that she had been under constant surveillance by Pinkerton detectives? The answer lay in the cat and mouse game she had been perpetuating on the detectives all along.
MRS. MANDELBAUM MISSING THE NOTORIOUS RECEIVER FLIES FROM THE CITY NEITHER HERSELF, HER SON, OR HER CLERK TO BE FOUND—TRANSFERS OF PROPERTY BY THEIR BONDSMEN AND THE WOMAN HERSELF
Judge Barrett was in his seat at 11 o’clock yesterday prepared to listen to Mrs. Mandelbaum’s trial. District Attorney Olney sat, sternly imposing, just in front of the judicial seat. He stroked his black mustache with anything but a gentle hand. He was evidently resolved to put an end to Mrs. Mandelbaum, professionally speaking . . . Mr. Howe was plumbly serene and ponderously gracious . . . “I have been told,” he [Olney] said to Judge Barrett, “that they have left the city and fled the state.”
—The New York Times, December 5, 1884
Olney tried to put on his best show despite the escape of Mandelbaum. “I suspected it,” he said. “As I said in court, though it was not absolutely necessary for her to be present last Tuesday, it was strange that she could not be, and I called attention to that,” he said. “Since then—in fact before that time—I took steps to have the matter looked into . . . It seems to me that if there can be any doubt as to the guilt of the woman, this performance must satisfy anybody. Flight is evidence of guilt and could be used against her as such. I thought all along that she could never face trial . . .” Olney told reporters that he had Mandelbaum’s house watched continuously. “They have gone to Canada, that refuge for the oppressed—without doubt,” he said. “Thank God we are rid of the villain!” he proclaimed, almost triumphantly despite the situation. “The number of criminals from this country who visit Canada is simply shocking. The old girl was so awfully cocky. She had been in business so long that she positively thought it was improper for us to arrest her,” Olney opined.
Howe remained his bemused self. He told reporters he had been greatly delighted when he learned that Judge Barrett would be hearing the case in the Court of Oyer and Terminer. “There was no judge there before whom I would sooner have argued than Judge Barrett,” Howe gushed enthusiastically. When asked by reporters if he could account for the disappearance of Mandelbaum and the others, he said that she had been to his offices on the Friday before to make certain arrangements and go over the case. When asked what arrangements, Howe blathered on, ignoring the pointed question. It was obvious to everyone that the arrangements had to do with securing her bondsmen’s bail and her own properties in the city. “I think her absence is to be accounted for by impulsive mania. She was the victim of it and skipped on the spur of the moment,” he said, winking at his partner Abe Hummel. Hummel laughed heartily.
Attention turned immediately to Robert Pinkerton. It had been his detectives who had been assigned to shadow Mandelbaum. How could she have slipped through his fingers, he was asked? “I had no right to touch Mrs. Mandelbaum. She was on bail. She could go wherever she pleased and it had nothing to do with me. Until she had forfeited her bonds, not a soul had a right to touch her,” Pinkerton told reporters in an effort to evade the question. He claimed that when his men had been watching her house on Friday, she must have already made her escape. “The neighbors are all friends of hers and think a great deal of her so they wouldn’t help us out,” he said. According to Pinkerton, despite her disappearance, “it is a victory enough to have got rid of her and we ought to be thankful for the redemption.”
Reporters raced from the courthouse to Mandelbaum’s store. They were met there by one of Mandelbaum’s daughters who let a crowd of them inside. She stood behind the counter.
“If smartness be written on any face it was indelibly traced upon the countenance of Fredericka’s daughter. Her features were sharp and her manners sharper,” wrote a Times reporter.
“What do you know about your mother?” she was questioned.
“Nothing,” she said. “Nothing. Nothing,” she repeated, as if she liked the sound of it. “Don’t come to me for information. You’ll get none,” she said.
“Have you no idea when your mother left?” she was asked.
“I know nothing,” she said.
“Could you not guess at her whereabouts?” another reporter asked.
“I tell you I know nothing,” she said calmly.
“The detectives are worrying themselves terribly,” she was told.
“Let them worry,” she laughed. “Let them go on worrying, poor things. That’s what they’ve got to do. I’m very glad to have seen you. Come again when you have time. I shall be delighted,” she said finally dismissing them all. She showed the reporters out of the shop closing the door tightly behind her after they had left.
The police have at last been too powerful for the district Attorney and his private detectives. That, at least, will be the explanation generally accepted of the escape of “Mother Mandelbaum.”
It is a pity that Mr. OLNEY should not have been able to complete his excellent work in this case by securing the conviction and imprisonment of the woman who for so many years has been at the centre of the organization of crime in New York.
—The New York Times, December 5, 1884
Mandelbaum’s escape from the authorities, despite being shadowed by Pinkerton detectives day and night, was another testament to her cunning. On the Friday before the trial was to begin, she closed the trap on the cat and mouse game she had been playing with Pinkerton detectives who were following her. As she usually did, she came out of her house, dressed all in black, the feather plumes on her small hat bobbing in front of her face. She waved to the detectives, who by now had come to acknowledge their cover had been blown, and climbed into the carriage with the help of the footman and rode off. The detectives followed close behind. They followed her to her lawyers’ office at 89 Centre Street. She exited the carriage and went inside. She had made several trips to visit her lawyers during the time she was out on bail and there was nothing unusual about it. She stayed for a time, came back out, waved and was helped back into the carriage that took her directly home. It was always the same and the Pinkerton detectives had gotten used to the routine.
This day was no different. They waited outside of her lawyers’ office until she exited. Only this time, it hadn’t been Marm Mandelbaum who exited the law offices. It was a maid who worked for Mandelbaum dressed like Mandelbaum in a black dress and long cape and dark gloves. The plumes from her tiny hat had for a time concealed her face. Still, she waved and climbed into the carriage and the detectives, thinking it was Mandelbaum, followed the imposter’s carriage back to her home. After it was determined that the coast was clear, the real Mandelbaum exited the law offices and boarded a waiting carriage, making a clean getaway. The carriage took her to New Rochelle where she boarded a train to Chatham Four Corners, New York. There she boarded another train bound for Canada. She arrived in Toronto sometime on December 5, 1884. Her son Julius and Herman Stoude met her there. They all escaped, leaving the Pinkerton detectives in the lurch.
MRS. MANDELBAUM IN CANADA
TORONTO, Dec. 5. —On Wednesday morning there arrived by the Great Western Railway from the Suspension Bridge a woman of fine stature, weighing about 200 pounds and handsomely attired in a rich sealskin cloak and cape. A young man supposed to be her son accompanied her. The two refused all offers of the hotel agents and calling a hack immediately drove away . . . “Well if they’re in Canada,” said Mr. Olney, when spoken to about this matter, “the detectives tell me that since I first prosecuted the woman she has done no illicit trade and absolutely stopped her stolen goods transactions. I think we effectively floored the old girl and broke her business up into fragments.”
—The New York Times, December 6, 1884
The how of Mandelbaum’s escape was clear—she had outsmarted the Pinkerton detectives using a decoy, but the why of it all would always remain a mystery. For a woman of Mandelbaum’s wealth and power who had operated openly for some twenty-five years and who had established deep roots in both the legitimate and illegitimate communities to pull up stakes and flee to Canada remained puzzling. Being a shrewd businesswoman, perhaps she came to the conclusion that her heyday was behind her and that no matter how many tricks her legal counsel tried to pull she would not escape conviction. Clearly if she thought she could, she would have stayed, but the tides had turned against her and all the legal and political wrangling in the world couldn’t save her.
According to Rona Holub, “She [Mandelbaum] decided her only recourse was escape, a painful decision to say the least. Her Lower East Side, Kleindeutschland was home . . . The Lower East Side had been her business partner, providing an environment in which she used her skills and intelligence to unearth great riches. Here, she raised her family, lost her husband, made friends and created a life of abundance for herself, her family, and associates.”
Mandelbaum held the neighborhood close to her heart. Once she decided to flee she had put into a place an elaborate plan to secret her son and Stoude out of the country and secure her properties and those of her bondsmen from the authorities by transferring their ownership and raise as much capital as she could. Altogether it was estimated that Mandelbaum escaped with approximately $1 million in cash and jewelry. She had been wise enough to realize that her days were numbered in New York City, not just because of the efforts of the tireless prosecutor, District Attorney Peter Olney, and the detective work of the Pinkertons, but because the social, cultural, and political tides had turned against her. William Howe had not been far off the mark when he claimed his client was caught in the middle of a battle between two opposing forces—the district attorney’s office and the police. But it was not just the two law enforcement entities that were at odds; it was the entire political system with reformers battling for the control of city government and the old guard struggling to hold on. Boss Tweed was dead and gone and although the Tammany Hall politicians still had some control over patronage and construction throughout the city, it was in a constant state of flux.
Edward Cooper, the only son of New York City industrialist Peter Cooper, had been elected Mayor in 1879. Cooper, a Democrat, established his political credentials via the brief, reform-minded political organization Irving Hall that fought to make a clean sweep of political corruption in the city at the hands of the tainted Tammany Hall crowd. His tenure as mayor was followed by the 1881 election of another reform-minded mayor, William Russell Grace, who battled the Tammany Hall Ring relentlessly. And in 1883, Franklin Edson, a vehemently anti–Tammany Hall Democrat, was elected mayor and continued the battle against political corruption.
Mandelbaum’s vast network of crime had flourished under the corruption of Tammany Hall and the likes of Fernando Wood and Boss Tweed. They had a particular and favorable understanding about her business, as long, of course, as they received a piece of the action. It had a political domino effect on her criminal enterprise. Without the support of corrupt politicians, she lost her ability to bribe police and judges. And without their support, she could no longer afford the luxury of operating her lucrative business openly and without fear of prosecution. Peter Olney’s pursuit of her was a clear enough indication that the political tides had turned against her. A rising and more organized attack on crime in the city beset her ability to buy her way out of trouble as she always had been able to do in the past.
And there were far-reaching economic reasons to put Mandelbaum out of business as well. Many high-end dry goods wholesale merchants wanted her out of business because she was able to undercut them by offering goods at greatly reduced prices. She was diminishing their profits and if truth be told, circumventing the established capitalist protocol. There was nothing wrong with making a profit, but they thought it should be a legitimate one, or at least a profit at the expense of the buyer, not the seller. Other retail establishments wanted her gone because her vast network of shoplifters was costing them huge sums of money each year—another of Mandelbaum’s blows against the established capitalistic, profit-making system. While she was in business, it was estimated that stores were losing between 5 and 10 percent of their potential profits each year from Mandelbaum’s shoplifting enterprises.
And there was another reason. When once she could depend on the loyalty of her many cohorts because she was able to provide them with protection from prosecution, she now found herself in the position where some of her oldest partners in crime—“Sheeney Mike” Kurtz, Jimmy Hoey and his wife, Mollie, among them—were now testifying against her. If her own “little chicks” were turning against her, what hope was there?
Political reformers and law enforcement officials like Olney knew she was well-connected to the city’s police department and judiciary, and city officials and had used bribes at every level to secure favors. It no doubt crossed their minds that if they could bring Mandelbaum down, they could bring down the hundreds of other city officials that she had infected with her bribes. Mandelbaum’s escape from justice not only deprived the reformers of their biggest catch ever, it ended any dreams they ever had of tracing Mandelbaum’s bribery back to police officers, judges, and politicians. Mandelbaum’s arrest and conviction would have also given the city’s reformers a three-for-one trophy. Mandelbaum was a criminal, she was a woman succeeding in a male-dominated world, and she was a Jewish immigrant from the lower class—everything the white, male, Protestant, bourgeois class despised. Although District Attorney Olney’s plan had not succeeded as much as he had hoped, he had in essence, put the successful fence out of business in New York City. Even though she had escaped prosecution by fleeing the city, the effect was the same—she was out of business once and for all.