Fredericka Mandelbaum

Fredericka "Marm" Mandelbaum (March 25, 1825 – February 26, 1894) operated as a criminal fence to many of the street gangs and criminals of New York'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, 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 era. With George Leonidas Leslie, she was involved in the 1869 Ocean National Bank robbery and the 1878 Manhattan Savings Institution robbery.

Life and career A typical dinner party hosted by Mandelbaum and her "inner circle".

Mandelbaum was born Friederike Weisner in Kassel, 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 peddlers in Germany before emigrating to the United States in 1850. Expanding her operations, she controlled several gangs of blackmailers and confidence men as well as a school, known as Marm's Grand Street School, to recruit and teach younger criminals how to pickpocket. She was also a top competitor to the Grady Gang.

According to police inspector Thomas Byrnes in his 1886 book Professional Criminals of America, Mandelbaum’s known associates included "burglar" Michael Kurtz (“A Jew. Born in the United States”), "pickpocket" Abraham Greenthall (“Jew, born in Poland”), "pickpocket, sneak, and shoplifter" Mary Hollbrook (“born in Ireland”), and "Pickpocket and Blackmailer" Sophie Levy (or Lyons), often called Mandelbaum’s special protégé. Mandelbaum was reputedly loyal to her criminal associates. Chief of Police George W. Walling wrote, “She attained a reputation as a business woman whose honesty in criminal matters was absolute,” while The New York Times obituary noted: "her success was in a great measure due to her friendship for and her loyalty to the thieves with whom she did business. She never betrayed her clients, and when they got into trouble she procured bail for them and befriended them to the extent of her power". For 30 years, she operated her business with impunity, as Walling highlighted her widespread influence and ingenuity in assisting criminals. Much of what is known about Mandelbaum comes from Walling’s 1887 Recollections of a New York Chief of Police and Sophie Lyons' 1913 memoir Why Crime Does Not Pay, which details Mandelbaum’s operations, including a hidden dumbwaiter for stolen goods.

Arrest In 1884, New York City's new District Attorney Peter B. Olney, described by The New York Times as “an eccentric person who honestly means to do his duty and enforce the laws,” decided to act against Mandelbaum. Instead of relying on the city’s police force, which Mandelbaum had reportedly been bribing for decades, he hired the Pinkerton Detective Agency, led by Robert A. Pinkerton, to conduct a sting operation.

Pinkerton detective Gustav Frank, using the pseudonym Stein, infiltrated her inner circle. He eventually purchased "marked" silks from her. Her arrest in July and subsequent case received extensive coverage from major New York newspapers, intrigued by the downfall of such a notorious criminal. The use of Pinkerton detectives caused some friction between the district attorney’s office and the city’s police inspector. as well as Margalit Fox's book The Talented Mrs. Mandelbaum: The Rise and Fall of an American Organized-Crime Boss, published in 2024.