Speaker 1: In tonight's classic episode, fellow conspiracy realist Your Boys hit
Speaker 1: the Road, joined with one of our close close friends,
Speaker 1: the host of many shows including Stuffy Missed in History Class,
Speaker 1: Holly Fry.
Speaker 2: Yeah, in the beautiful Saint Mark's Theater in the I
Speaker 2: believe the East Village the Westville is one of the
Speaker 2: villages in New York City talking about some true crime stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's about Hell's kitchen, right, It's like the
Speaker 3: history of the area there in New York and this
Speaker 3: particular person that was kind of scary but mostly a
Speaker 3: super effective fence and a.
Speaker 4: Bit of a historical deep cut.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And also, although I don't believe we get to it
Speaker 1: in this live show. What we love about Hell's kitchen,
Speaker 1: or at least what I love is that it implies
Speaker 1: the idea of other infernal rooms in a house. Where's
Speaker 1: Hell's bathroom? You know what I mean? Does Hell have
Speaker 1: a foyer?
Speaker 4: Hell's boudoirs?
Speaker 3: But it's also like, what does it get in a kitchen?
Speaker 3: It gets hot? So this is the hot part of Hell.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what's Hell's washroom?
Speaker 4: Like?
Speaker 1: Oh boy?
Speaker 4: Uh?
Speaker 1: So we get into everything except for that. In tonight's exploration.
Speaker 5: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 5: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 5: learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 5: production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works.
Speaker 3: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
Speaker 3: my name is not They call me Ben.
Speaker 1: This is our super producer, Paul Mission Control Decan, who
Speaker 1: is with us as always backstage. You are you, You
Speaker 1: are here, and that makes this stuff they don't want
Speaker 1: you to know live at the theater eighty Saint Mark's.
Speaker 3: Oh oh yeah, and it is a very special day
Speaker 3: for me personally. Just really quickly before we get into
Speaker 3: this gentleman seventeen years ago today, a little over that
Speaker 3: I met this girl at the International Thespian Conference and
Speaker 3: we hit it off. We were introduced that day, and
Speaker 3: then ten years ago today I got to become her husband,
Speaker 3: which is kind of cool. And she's here and I
Speaker 3: never get to do the show in front of her.
Speaker 3: So happy anniversary, Diana.
Speaker 1: Yay, Happy anniversary.
Speaker 4: Start the night off on a heartwarming note.
Speaker 1: I love it, And this is a special day. This
Speaker 1: is a special place with so much history. So we
Speaker 1: three said we've got to have a special guest, and
Speaker 1: luckily we found the perfect one. We'd like to introduce you.
Speaker 1: I think we all know and love her, the co
Speaker 1: host of the award winning podcast Stuff You Missed in
Speaker 1: History Class, Holly Fry.
Speaker 6: Holly Holy Oh, you guys are way too sweet, And
Speaker 6: if you would like to just hang out at my
Speaker 6: house and do this every morning when I wake up,
Speaker 6: that would be.
Speaker 3: So.
Speaker 6: As Matt kind of did in a nin er Niner
Speaker 6: way earlier, we did get to see The Kitchen already,
Speaker 6: which is Warner Brother's new film, and as I think
Speaker 6: Scary explained, it follows these amazing women on their incredible
Speaker 6: trajectory through like taking over the crime industry of nineteen
Speaker 6: seventy eight Hell's Kitchen. This, in turn no spoilers because
Speaker 6: we don't want to give any of them away, but
Speaker 6: because it is a story about women in the crime syndicate,
Speaker 6: it inspired this podcast, which is about another story of
Speaker 6: a similar incredibly badass woman who worked her way to
Speaker 6: the top of the organized crime of New York and
Speaker 6: other places. As you'll hear, America's first mob boss was
Speaker 6: a woman.
Speaker 4: You guys, It's true.
Speaker 1: It's true, true, specifically, a woman known as Frederica marm Bandelbaum.
Speaker 1: She was born Frederica Henriette Augusta Weisner in eighteen eighteen
Speaker 1: in a Prussian town called Castle, which is now a
Speaker 1: city in modern day Germany.
Speaker 3: That's right, And we don't know a whole lot about
Speaker 3: Marm's backstory other than you know, her family was Jewish,
Speaker 3: and in eighteen forty eight she married a guy named
Speaker 3: Wulf Israel Mandelbaum nice and Wulf Mandelbaum, and she and
Speaker 3: he were traveling peddlers, and they were subjected to some
Speaker 3: pretty serious persecution and anti Semitism throughout their lives when
Speaker 3: they were there.
Speaker 6: Yeah, Actually traveling peddler was one of the few jobs
Speaker 6: that Jews were allowed to hold at the time. And
Speaker 6: in addition to this discrimination, the Mandelbaums were also really
Speaker 6: driven to a scary place, which is the brink of starvation.
Speaker 6: When the potato blight of the nineteenth or the eighteen
Speaker 6: forties hit Europe, we talk about it a lot in
Speaker 6: context of Ireland, but many countries were deeply impacted, and
Speaker 6: so there was also this political instability that developed in
Speaker 6: Germany in the late eighteen forties when they had their
Speaker 6: own series of revolutions which failed, and these combined factors
Speaker 6: led them to the decision that they had to flee
Speaker 6: Germany and they left in eighteen fifty.
Speaker 7: So both left on the steamship the Baltimore and arrived
Speaker 7: in New York in July of that same year, and
Speaker 7: Fredrika and their infant daughter Berta.
Speaker 6: Yeah nice yeah nail plus.
Speaker 4: Pronunciation guru right here.
Speaker 7: Berta soon followed and they arrived in September via the Erie,
Speaker 7: and Fredrika at the time was twenty three years old,
Speaker 7: which is bonkers to me. I don't know why, because
Speaker 7: I'm thirty five, and I don't feel like I've accomplished
Speaker 7: nearly as much as we're going to describe this woman
Speaker 7: having accomplished at that point in her life. But the
Speaker 7: Mandelbombs traveled in steerage where more than one hundred immigrants
Speaker 7: were packed into these incredibly tight quarters in one of
Speaker 7: three of the ship's lower decks, and there was a
Speaker 7: row of tiny, hay lined bunks that were stacked against
Speaker 7: the wall, and passengers were provided with what was called
Speaker 7: an immigrants kit, which was a horse blanket, a beat
Speaker 7: up tin plate, a knife, a fork in a spoon
Speaker 7: and seasickness was rampant. It was a constant problem, and
Speaker 7: the remedies that folks us things like lime drops and
Speaker 7: yeah it's true, raw onions.
Speaker 4: Were totally useless.
Speaker 7: So personal space and hygiene were entirely non existent, and
Speaker 7: diseases ran rampant on the ship, and many did not
Speaker 7: survive this absurdly perilous journey.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I feel like we should consider like the supplies
Speaker 6: they were given were not nice. So next time you're
Speaker 6: on your international flight and you want to complain about
Speaker 6: your thin blanket, just trust that you're getting luxury.
Speaker 1: By comparison, the happy Titanic moments you see in steerage untrue, right,
Speaker 1: total fantasy, and especially difficult for Marm because Marm was
Speaker 1: almost six feet tall, she was around two hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty pounds. She was an imposing figure who's stuck out
Speaker 1: in a crowd, and she was easy to find. So
Speaker 1: imagine being almost six feet tall and stuck in Asmol
Speaker 1: said these tiny hay line buildings, This serious, seriously dangerous,
Speaker 1: tortuous situation could prove fatal to a lot of people.
Speaker 1: And we will never know exactly what Marm and her
Speaker 1: daughter endured during this journey. But one thing is for certain.
Speaker 1: It was not pretty. It was the opposite. It was ugly,
Speaker 1: and the crowding did not stop at steerage. This is
Speaker 1: one of the worst parts. So they get out of
Speaker 1: the boat and they think, you know, who knows what
Speaker 1: They're dreaming of a big, beautiful city, green vistas and
Speaker 1: so on. But the problem is, by eighteen fifty this city,
Speaker 1: New York was the largest and busiest port in the
Speaker 1: United States. So Frederica, her husband, Wolf and Berta were
Speaker 1: just three roughly two million people who would immigrate to
Speaker 1: the US via New York. We're in the eighteen fifties
Speaker 1: chasing this dream of a better life in a better country, and.
Speaker 3: It was a dream that was tough to catch, especially
Speaker 3: early on. The Mantel Bombs started their lives in New
Speaker 3: York in the lower east side of Manhattan, in an
Speaker 3: area known as Klein deutsch Land or Little Germany, which
Speaker 3: where I believe we're in right now. We're at least
Speaker 3: extremely close to it at this moment. At the time,
Speaker 3: Little Germany was made up of around four hundred blocks,
Speaker 3: and Tompkins Square Park, which is right down the road,
Speaker 3: was at the very center of it. And then over
Speaker 3: the years it expanded pretty significantly, and at one point
Speaker 3: it was I believe I Well, we'll get into it
Speaker 3: a little later. But like a lot of the German
Speaker 3: families who moved into the city around that time, the
Speaker 3: Mandelbombs began their life in New York living with family
Speaker 3: members or friends who would put them up while they
Speaker 3: searched for their own place to start a new life.
Speaker 7: Yeah, and eventually the Mandlums found an apartment, their own
Speaker 7: place on Eighth Street, and it was a stifling, windowless
Speaker 7: room and a surdly run down tenement building. There was
Speaker 7: no heat, there was no indoor plumbing, The bathroom consisted
Speaker 7: of a wooden out house in the alley, and they
Speaker 7: had to carry their own water from like hand pumps,
Speaker 7: and that was the only way they could get access
Speaker 7: to fresh water. And those hand pumps were out in
Speaker 7: the sidewalk.
Speaker 6: So probably a lot like your first apartment, That's what
Speaker 6: I'm guessing. And the thing is life for most immigrants,
Speaker 6: As much as they thought this was going to be
Speaker 6: way easier, it was extraordinarily difficult. The Mandelbaumbs actually lost
Speaker 6: their first child. That was not an uncommon occurrence for families.
Speaker 6: But even so with that tragedy in their history, they
Speaker 6: still ended up kind of doing better than most. They
Speaker 6: had a room to themselves, for example, which seemed incredibly luxurious,
Speaker 6: and a lot of immigrants were actually living transient lives.
Speaker 6: They were sleeping wherever they could, where they could put
Speaker 6: down a bedroll, where someone would let them, they would
Speaker 6: just if they could find a dry place, they would
Speaker 6: make that their bed for the night. They carried literally
Speaker 6: everything they had with them, so I mean, I couldn't
Speaker 6: even carry my Star Wars figures.
Speaker 7: But you've been to the tour of Ellis Island where
Speaker 7: you see, yeah, the luggage room where they confiscate your
Speaker 7: luggage and you get it back.
Speaker 4: We're talking like trunks.
Speaker 7: We're talking like these massive packs that they would carry
Speaker 7: everything they had, and they would absolutely lose a lot
Speaker 7: of these things throughout the course of this experience we're
Speaker 7: talking about.
Speaker 4: They would.
Speaker 6: And part of that was that they were really victimized
Speaker 6: by slum lords who took advantage of people in this
Speaker 6: desperate situation. Who would you charge them way too much
Speaker 6: for not permanent living quarters really tight and often there
Speaker 6: were dozens of people crammed in one room. So then
Speaker 6: if they did not pay, they lost those possessions because
Speaker 6: those slum lords would kick them right out and they
Speaker 6: did not get to take their things with them, So
Speaker 6: at that point they would just be turned out on
Speaker 6: the street. They had no money, they had no possessions,
Speaker 6: just to clothes on their backs, and they were trying
Speaker 6: to start a new life. So survival very quickly became
Speaker 6: the name of the game. And the system was, of
Speaker 6: course corrupt, and the norm for immigrants was discrimination and cruelty.
Speaker 6: We've kind of hit that point repeatedly, and so understandably, Mandelbaum,
Speaker 6: like a lot of immigrants, just decided that she had
Speaker 6: to make her own rules and figure out a way
Speaker 6: to survive and support her family, and that meant turning
Speaker 6: to crime.
Speaker 1: And as it turns out, she was phenomenally good.
Speaker 3: At Oh my goodness, she had a gift.
Speaker 1: No smoke on that one. So Mandelbaum began to lay
Speaker 1: the groundwork for her life as a career criminal while
Speaker 1: she was working as a street peddler. Since she and
Speaker 1: Wolf could not afford a wagon, much less a storefront,
Speaker 1: they set up shop on the streets of Little Germany.
Speaker 1: They were walking in the midst of the crowds, selling
Speaker 1: whatever they could find that they thought anybody might remotely want,
Speaker 1: broken watches, scraps of fabric, not like whole pieces of clothing,
Speaker 1: like scraps of fabric, pieces of rope, stuff like that.
Speaker 1: And the kinds of things they were selling were, as
Speaker 1: you could tell, not in particularly high demand. So try
Speaker 1: as they might, working all day well into the night,
Speaker 1: they could barely afford to feed their children. Something had
Speaker 1: to be done.
Speaker 7: But it was during these early days pedaling on the
Speaker 7: streets of Little Germany that Frederica Mandelbaum began making these
Speaker 7: contacts that would prove to be super important in establishing her,
Speaker 7: ultimately her criminal enterprise. So at the time, there were
Speaker 7: children that would just roam the streets. A lot of times,
Speaker 7: they were homeless, a lot of times they were part
Speaker 7: of families that were transient.
Speaker 4: As well, but they would sell.
Speaker 7: These odds and ends much like that peddler's life, and
Speaker 7: their parents, if they had them, would encourage them to
Speaker 7: make a little more money, to steal, to do petty crimes,
Speaker 7: to become pickpockets and thieves. And Mandelbaum saw this and
Speaker 7: she had like kind of a light bulb moment where
Speaker 7: she was like, Okay, I'm going to capitalize on this.
Speaker 7: She started, literally, like Oliver twist Fagan style, enlisting these
Speaker 7: street urchin children into this grassroots criminal empire. She also
Speaker 7: met thieves and other petty crooks who you know, like
Speaker 7: weren't children, and she started to look into how to
Speaker 7: unload the stolen goods that they had acquired, and.
Speaker 6: This led her to an Aha moment where she realized, Hey,
Speaker 6: there is just as much, if not more money to
Speaker 6: make moving stolen goods than actually doing the stealing, which
Speaker 6: is pretty enterprising. And boyle boy, did she do just that.
Speaker 6: She found her niche and she was spectacular at it.
Speaker 6: So for the Mandelbaum and her family, things really took
Speaker 6: a turn for the better. This happened, ironically, during a
Speaker 6: time that was very difficult for most people because it
Speaker 6: was the Panic of eighteen fifty seven.
Speaker 1: Yeah, not the most encouraging way to describe an event
Speaker 1: in history, right. So at the time Panic of the
Speaker 1: Panic of eighteen fifty seven, we as a country, the
Speaker 1: United States, had more or less overplayed our financial hand.
Speaker 1: We expanded domestic investment and business at a that lagged
Speaker 1: behind the already failing international economy. And it was a
Speaker 1: bubble that let me do a sound effect. It was
Speaker 1: a bubble that popped spectacularly.
Speaker 6: Oh spectacular, Yeah, we'll edit that part.
Speaker 1: So so it's serious, though, I don't want to make
Speaker 1: light of this. Multitudes of banks closed, hundreds of businesses
Speaker 1: failed overnight, and that meant that tens of thousands of
Speaker 1: people woke up one morning without a job and they
Speaker 1: had to figure out something. This was oddly advantageous for
Speaker 1: people who were already living on the other side of
Speaker 1: the law. They were familiar with this sort of informal system.
Speaker 1: The folks with legitimate jobs had to learn this stuff
Speaker 1: very quickly, and they had to go to the streets
Speaker 1: doing the same stuff that Mandelbaum started out doing. However,
Speaker 1: she was in a much better position.
Speaker 4: Oh, how the tables have turned.
Speaker 3: That's right. So Mandelbaum had already established herself as this
Speaker 3: shrewd trader, and she was a ruthless business person, and
Speaker 3: she was just in the perfect position to take full
Speaker 3: advantage of all the woes that the country, in specifically
Speaker 3: New York City, was going through at the time. And
Speaker 3: according to her contemporaries, when she was making a transaction, right,
Speaker 3: she would never buy anything for more than half of
Speaker 3: what it was worth, and she would never sell it
Speaker 3: for less than twice of what she paid. That's pretty
Speaker 3: good if you can actually get away with that over
Speaker 3: the course of a career, right, And she became known
Speaker 3: as one of the best fences in the entire city
Speaker 3: of New York. She was just purchasing stolen stuff from
Speaker 3: all the criminals that are gathering things for her and
Speaker 3: then selling it to legitimate buyers. Now that can be
Speaker 3: anyone from just let's say Holly wanted to get a
Speaker 3: Grido something or other, she had to have one to
Speaker 3: a business, a company that has a storefront that wants
Speaker 3: to have goods to sell there.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: And if you think about this as a proprietor in
Speaker 3: these down times, in a down economy like that, the
Speaker 3: only way to actually keep your business alive is to
Speaker 3: offer the lowest possible prices to customers that you possibly can.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: Then you also have to charge enough to make a
Speaker 3: profit on whatever good you're selling to them. And that
Speaker 3: meant that the stolen goods from Marm's enterprise made business sense.
Speaker 6: And it makes you wonder just how many of Marms
Speaker 6: fell off the wagon. Bits of loot actually ended up
Speaker 6: in legitimate storefronts in New York City at the time.
Speaker 7: Yeah, or how much of that kind of thing is
Speaker 7: actually still happening today right now?
Speaker 1: I mean think about it. Don't think about it.
Speaker 3: Let's not so that was way way back in the
Speaker 3: mid nineteenth century. Now not now at all. Right, We're good,
Speaker 3: everything's good. Marm's network perfectly was straddling the worlds of
Speaker 3: both this crime, the world of crime in the world
Speaker 3: of commerce, and she was connecting the numerous criminal sellers
Speaker 3: to the legitimate and very eager purchasers. Everyone in the
Speaker 3: city at that time is looking for a bargain and
Speaker 3: everything they're doing, and with Marm's business model, everybody was winning.
Speaker 6: Yeah, if you wanted to sell something to someone who
Speaker 6: was not gonna ask a lot of questions, you went
Speaker 6: to Marm. And if you wanted to buy something on
Speaker 6: the cheap, ridiculously cheap, questionably cheap, you went to Marm.
Speaker 6: So soon every street level criminal had either met or
Speaker 6: worked with Frederica mar Mandelbaumen.
Speaker 7: But pretty quickly her network climbed out from just like
Speaker 7: the depths of street level criminals, and she started establishing
Speaker 7: relationships with people like lawyers, police officials, prosecutors, anyone that
Speaker 7: wanted to have a relationship that had something to gain
Speaker 7: from knowing Marm. She was a regular at this place
Speaker 7: called the Eighth Street Thieves Exchange, which was one of
Speaker 7: New York's most active black markets. I heard it described
Speaker 7: as like a Walmart of thievery, kind of and wards,
Speaker 7: by the way, at the time were these numbered voting
Speaker 7: districts in New York that was divided up into and
Speaker 7: that'll come a little bit later. So she was beloved
Speaker 7: as well in the Jewish community, and she often used
Speaker 7: her synagogue, which was she was very active in as.
Speaker 4: A networking site.
Speaker 7: And even the corrupt politicians of Tammany Hall, the political machine,
Speaker 7: were huge fans of Marm because they knew that if
Speaker 7: they played ball with her, that she would help them
Speaker 7: secure the Jewish vote in the thirteenth Ward, which she
Speaker 7: was becoming particularly influential within. So there were folks like
Speaker 7: Tammany Hall's boss Tweed and the particularly corrupt mayor Fernando
Speaker 7: Woods at the time who were regular guests at her
Speaker 7: house at these like souares that she would throw, and
Speaker 7: they absolutely were doing business with her, no question about it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So while she's rubbing shoulders with all of these
Speaker 3: big names in the city, she's also she and all
Speaker 3: the money in her enterprise. They're financing some of the
Speaker 3: city's most spectacular crimes, like the Manhattan Savings Bank robbery, which.
Speaker 1: Could be an episode all its own. It's crazy. Can
Speaker 1: you give us like a little quick and dirty about this?
Speaker 3: Definitely? So in It was eighteen seventy eight when this occurred,
Speaker 3: and this robbery was and still is to this day
Speaker 3: in twenty nineteen, the largest bank robbery of all time
Speaker 3: in terms of real money that was stolen at that time.
Speaker 3: In eighteen seventy eight, over three million dollars in cash,
Speaker 3: money and securities were stolen. Think about that, in eighteen
Speaker 3: seventy eight dollars.
Speaker 4: WHOA.
Speaker 3: So here's the big question. We've kind of gone over
Speaker 3: all this stuff about Fredrika Mandelbaum, but what really makes
Speaker 3: her different? How could she operate a criminal enterprise at
Speaker 3: this scale for such a long time.
Speaker 1: Now, what I love about that is that's that's a
Speaker 1: great question and it actually does have an answer, which
Speaker 1: doesn't always happen when we're talking about history. Right, So,
Speaker 1: marm succeeded in a in an industry that also had
Speaker 1: other players. Right, there were rival fence operations in a
Speaker 1: day to fighting against these groups. She raised four children, right,
Speaker 1: and she was caring for Wolf, her sick husband, and
Speaker 1: suffered from consumption. He was also, sadly to say, not
Speaker 1: respected by either the legal operators like the cops, or
Speaker 1: the illegal people. They all thought that this guy was
Speaker 1: a joke. They actually called him and this was a
Speaker 1: very bad word at the time. They referred to him
Speaker 1: as a non entity.
Speaker 4: Ouch.
Speaker 1: I know, it's brutal, right, And so she was taking
Speaker 1: care of her family pretty much on her own. She
Speaker 1: was also running a legitimate dry goods store. And I
Speaker 1: want to be honest with everyone. I want to clear
Speaker 1: this up really quickly, because when we started working on this,
Speaker 1: I wasn't sure what dry goods meant. I thought it
Speaker 1: was like a bean store.
Speaker 4: Yeah, no question about it.
Speaker 3: I honestly had no idea.
Speaker 6: Either that's such a bless your heart moment, Thank you Holly.
Speaker 7: Holly as our resident haberdasher, or like, yeah, some play tell.
Speaker 6: Us what dry The dry goods were things that were
Speaker 6: non non food necessities, so it could be clothes, hats, tablewars,
Speaker 6: et cetera.
Speaker 1: Gloves.
Speaker 6: Maybe life needs sure. Yeah, and so not beans. I
Speaker 6: want to really stress kids, not dry beans.
Speaker 1: Just go to the grocery store. Yeah, I got it, guys,
Speaker 1: I learned so marm Also, while she was doing all this,
Speaker 1: while she's fighting rivals, raising her family and running of
Speaker 1: actually legitimate business, she built the city's largest fencing operation,
Speaker 1: ran it for more than two decades and still in history,
Speaker 1: in the history of this town, she is the most
Speaker 1: successful fence, even in twenty nineteen. But there's another thing
Speaker 1: that made her different. We've been throwing around the name
Speaker 1: marm Right, it's her nickname, it's a street name. Where
Speaker 1: did it come from?
Speaker 4: Though?
Speaker 6: Okay, so this is a fun story. Here's the deal.
Speaker 6: So she was a ruthless criminal, masterbuind but she was
Speaker 6: also a nurturing lady. I mean, I think there's some
Speaker 6: evidence of that in the fact that she took care
Speaker 6: of a family while running two other businesses, one legitimate
Speaker 6: and one not. She actually took it upon herself to
Speaker 6: mentor young criminals. I mean, that's sweet. And when you
Speaker 6: think about it, she taught them their trade. So she
Speaker 6: called this is the sweetest thing. She called her group
Speaker 6: of criminals, her little chicks and they called her Marm
Speaker 6: in return. So it was a very nurturing and loving
Speaker 6: area kind of situation. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Beginning around the
Speaker 6: time of the Panic of eighteen fifty seven, she started
Speaker 6: just taking various ne'er do wells under her wings. She
Speaker 6: was seeing lots of people who needed help and she
Speaker 6: was like, come to me, I will I will teach you.
Speaker 6: And although she helped criminals of all types pursue careers
Speaker 6: in crime and learn their trade and get really good
Speaker 6: at it, she was really, really, particularly soft hearted and
Speaker 6: fond of working with young women because she felt like
Speaker 6: it saved them from a life as a housekeeper or
Speaker 6: probably other options.
Speaker 1: Which is kind of a framing spin, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. These kids were helping her.
Speaker 6: Right, I mean, I also don't want to clean a house,
Speaker 6: but you know, pickpocketing sounds better. But so chief though
Speaker 6: in her affection, even though she was very nurturing with
Speaker 6: her little chicks, really what it all came down to
Speaker 6: for her were her three surviving children. So Annie, Julius,
Speaker 6: and Sarah were the ones that lived after their first
Speaker 6: child had passed, and Marm was so dedicated to them
Speaker 6: that even in the middle of like an incredibly important
Speaker 6: deal or a meeting. If one of her kids was sick,
Speaker 6: she was like, I'm sorry, this deal can't happen now,
Speaker 6: I'm out. Or even if they just needed her, she
Speaker 6: would completely call off whatever she was doing and run
Speaker 6: to their side.
Speaker 7: So things were really looking up for the Mandel Bombs
Speaker 7: at this point. They absolutely were moving on up out
Speaker 7: of the tenements. And now Marm's home was full of
Speaker 7: dry goods, but they were fancy dry goods. They were
Speaker 7: things like furniture art art is the fanciest of dry
Speaker 7: goods if you ask me, silverware, draperies stolen from some
Speaker 7: of the best homes and businesses and mansions in New
Speaker 7: York City. By eighteen sixty four, she bought a three
Speaker 7: story building at seventy nine Clinton Street on the corner
Speaker 7: of Rivington and Clinton, and the family had their dry
Speaker 7: goods store still at the time, run by Wolf and
Speaker 7: the kids. It was an adorable family affair, but the
Speaker 7: real action was happening in the back rooms where Marm
Speaker 7: headed up this incredibly lucrative fencing operation.
Speaker 4: This isn't fencing.
Speaker 7: Like fencing, it's like moving stolen goods.
Speaker 6: I don't think anybody was kidding.
Speaker 1: So Skyle, I was just clarifying she might have sold fences.
Speaker 4: You don't know, I know how.
Speaker 6: There was somebody here this whole time, going how do
Speaker 6: you make money fencing like this? I'm just looking their
Speaker 6: wallet on the same page, like.
Speaker 1: I see fences everywhere around town. You know what's true.
Speaker 7: And she was always one step ahead of the authority
Speaker 7: in the event that there was a raid or something.
Speaker 4: She even had this thing.
Speaker 7: It was like a chimney with a fake back that
Speaker 7: hid a dumbwaiter. So if the cops were coming, they
Speaker 7: were knocking on the door, she could like load this
Speaker 7: dumbwaiter up in the fake chimney with all the stolen
Speaker 7: goods she had, and lower it down underground and be
Speaker 7: like what I'm operating, This is dry goods exclusively. I
Speaker 7: am a legitimate business person. Leave me the hell Are you.
Speaker 1: A chimney inspector, sir, ye, be on your way exactly,
Speaker 1: show show me your credentials.
Speaker 4: No, it's true.
Speaker 7: So she was pretty crafty.
Speaker 1: There's there's a fantastic book by an author named Jade
Speaker 1: north Conway, and in this book he delineates three three
Speaker 1: principal reasons that mar Mandelbaum was a cut above all
Speaker 1: of the other fencing operations, and in the I think
Speaker 1: they're pretty legitimate, to be honest.
Speaker 3: Well, the first one is, remember she and her family
Speaker 3: there are immigrants from Germany, right, they speak German. But
Speaker 3: she learned to speak English extremely well and pretty quickly,
Speaker 3: and she could function as an interpreter between any other
Speaker 3: immigrants who also spoke German and English. Now this is
Speaker 3: huge because in eighteen seventy and there's an estimated thirty
Speaker 3: percent of all of New York City's inhabitants were either
Speaker 3: German immigrants or their first generation children. So there are
Speaker 3: a lot of people that spoke both English and German
Speaker 3: or just English or just German, right, So a lot
Speaker 3: of her clientele would need this service, and it probably
Speaker 3: also helped put them at ease when she's having a
Speaker 3: transaction with them if she can be functioned as a translator.
Speaker 3: And this is just my speculation, but I think it
Speaker 3: was probably advantageous that she could understand English so well.
Speaker 3: If let's say she's having some kind of trade deal
Speaker 3: with someone who speaks English who maybe doesn't know who
Speaker 3: she is and thinks that, oh well, she probably only
Speaker 3: speaks German, she can understand everything to that person or
Speaker 3: that person and their others.
Speaker 7: Are saying absolutely, gain the upper hand or even like
Speaker 7: overhear deals and you know all that kind of stuff,
Speaker 7: and like totally figure out how to kind of capitalize
Speaker 7: on that language thing for sure.
Speaker 1: And feign ignorance too, right, exactly like, oh, I don't
Speaker 1: know what you're talking about.
Speaker 6: Literally, yeah, Oh, the power to be the only person
Speaker 6: in the room who literally knows what's everything that's going on. Second,
Speaker 6: she had this other skill set, which is sort of
Speaker 6: like a different kind of bilinguality. Right, she knew the
Speaker 6: crime industry, but she also was running a legitimate dry
Speaker 6: goods store, so she knew the products that were available
Speaker 6: and when things came in off the street, she knew
Speaker 6: what fabric was worth, what jewelry was worth, and she
Speaker 6: knew the markets for those products. So she had a
Speaker 6: very intimate understanding of both their prices and the level
Speaker 6: of demand based on the people that have been coming
Speaker 6: to her on the side with potential deals or needs.
Speaker 6: And this allowed her to make lightning quick calculations about
Speaker 6: the value of stolen goods when they were offered to her.
Speaker 1: And third, and perhaps This is the most important heart
Speaker 1: of her operation. Everyone from the judges to the street
Speaker 1: thieves knew that she would never ask any questions. You
Speaker 1: just show up with eighty seven. Hats fine, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. Let's talk turkey. She dealt in plunder
Speaker 1: of all kinds, silk, lace, diamonds, carriages, horses, gold, silver,
Speaker 1: of course, bonds and more. And she could, like you
Speaker 1: were saying, Holly, she could just look at something a
Speaker 1: thief it brought her, and then lightning quickly, she would
Speaker 1: know automatically how much she would pay for it, and
Speaker 1: she would already know where she would sell it, which
Speaker 1: was brilliant. In fact, she was so efficient at this.
Speaker 1: When the Chicago Fire of eighteen seventy one occurred, looting
Speaker 1: was rampant in Chicago. It's pandemonium was chaotic, and a
Speaker 1: lot of the stuff that got looted from a different
Speaker 1: city ended up with her. It went through her hands
Speaker 1: at some point. And although her pursuit of this stuff
Speaker 1: was sophisticated and very well thought out, the actual process
Speaker 1: was really simple. It's sort of like you said earlier, Matt.
Speaker 1: She let's say, for instance, let's go with eighty seven
Speaker 1: stolen fedors. Sure, So somebody comes up eighty seven stolen
Speaker 1: fa doors. Let's say that's like one hundred dollars worth
Speaker 1: of hats. It's like a math problem. We'll just we
Speaker 1: don't know how much of those actually go wear.
Speaker 6: No marmandelbauce values of hat.
Speaker 1: So she would say, okay, this is one hundred dollars.
Speaker 1: If I were actually paying for this legitimately, I will
Speaker 1: give you twenty dollars. That's one fifth of it. And
Speaker 1: the thief would say, okay, yeah, that's fine, I'll just
Speaker 1: go get some more hats tomorrow, and then she would
Speaker 1: resell those goods for sixty dollars. And the police had
Speaker 1: action as well in this process. So the victims of
Speaker 1: theft might approach the police and say, hey, somebody stole
Speaker 1: all my weird hats or whatever, and they would say, well,
Speaker 1: if you make it worth a while, we'll do our
Speaker 1: best to find them.
Speaker 7: Well, and sometimes they would do it too, is just
Speaker 7: go back to marm and like buy another hat, like
Speaker 7: an equivalent hat, and then say hey, here's your hat. Yeah,
Speaker 7: And it was like yeah, it was absolutely subterfuged because
Speaker 7: they were getting paid under the table.
Speaker 1: So from their opinion every from their perspective, rather, everybody
Speaker 1: is winning except you know, the victims.
Speaker 6: Right, except the person whose hats those were originally. What's
Speaker 6: interesting about marm is that even though she became very
Speaker 6: successful and could have easily moved uptown to much fancier digs,
Speaker 6: she chose to stay in Little Germany. However, her empire
Speaker 6: expanded all over the place. It moved throughout New York
Speaker 6: into all the burroughs beyond the Burrows. Eventually she became
Speaker 6: an established force in Trenton and Newark. She courted wealthy,
Speaker 6: legitimate clients as well as Jersey criminals. And then what's
Speaker 6: what's interesting and not really surprising is that her husband
Speaker 6: Bothe died in eighteen seventy five. But because she had
Speaker 6: kind of been running everything, she was able to, you know,
Speaker 6: pretty quickly move on. She didn't have to pause and
Speaker 6: grieve and wonder how she was going to make ends meet.
Speaker 6: She was like, Okay, well, let's keep the business running.
Speaker 6: And by the eighteen eighties she owned several tenement buildings,
Speaker 6: and she also owned warehouses, and she used those warehouses
Speaker 6: to store all of this merchandise, all of the stolen
Speaker 6: goods that she was handling. But what's really cool, cool
Speaker 6: being a relative term, is that this is not all
Speaker 6: she built.
Speaker 4: And I love this part of the story.
Speaker 7: So Mandelbaum allegedly founded an actual school to train up
Speaker 7: young criminals around eighteen seventy.
Speaker 4: She's true.
Speaker 7: She bought a building on the corner of Clinton and
Speaker 7: Grant and transformed it into kind of like an X
Speaker 7: Men school for the gifted or whatever, or a Hogwarts
Speaker 7: type situation, but instead of teaching you know, young mutants
Speaker 7: or wizards or whatever to harness their superpowers, Mandelbaum's Grand
Speaker 7: Street School started off with the finer points of pickpocketry.
Speaker 4: Yeah, pocket tree, here we go.
Speaker 7: I'm liking that, or things like misdirection and yeah, young
Speaker 7: men and women like which is a big deal. Who
Speaker 7: showed promise with the basics were then graduated on to
Speaker 7: more advanced skills, stuff like safe cracking or grand larceny
Speaker 7: or blackmail or con artistry like you do. And the
Speaker 7: professors at this Grand Street School were the best criminals
Speaker 7: in the city because they were already part of Mandelbaum's
Speaker 7: network of crooks. So students who excelled at this school
Speaker 7: were brought into Mandelbaum's inner circle.
Speaker 1: Yeah, definitely a kind of promotion, right, sure, something new.
Speaker 6: I still want to get my PhD in pickpocketology, I know, right,
Speaker 6: I believe excellent use of my time your phdp.
Speaker 1: I guess, are you sure?
Speaker 5: So?
Speaker 3: You know, allegedly this this school was right next to
Speaker 3: the police headquarters. Again, that's allegedly so brazen.
Speaker 4: I love it. I love her so much.
Speaker 1: That plays into the story because the thing about bribery
Speaker 1: and corruption is that there is a threshold. People will
Speaker 1: look the other way for some stuff, but if we
Speaker 1: get to egregious, if we get to blatant, then there's
Speaker 1: a police chief who needs to get reelected, so needs
Speaker 1: a scapegoat. And although details on this details on this
Speaker 1: school are a little bit sketchy at this point, we
Speaker 1: know that it did eventually close when Mandelbaum found out
Speaker 1: that one of the students was the child of a
Speaker 1: police official. This kid was enrolled, and picture Mandelbaumb, you know,
Speaker 1: just wiping her forehead a little bit and thinking the
Speaker 1: heat's getting close, you know. So she didn't want to
Speaker 1: risk the school being exposed. And part of it was
Speaker 1: probably because she had this loyalty to her little chicks too,
Speaker 1: So it operated for about six years and it generated,
Speaker 1: as you said, some of the most gifted criminals in
Speaker 1: New York which makes them, by default, some of the
Speaker 1: most gifted criminals in the country at the time.
Speaker 3: Okay, so we've established here that Fredrikamer Mandelbaum was a
Speaker 3: very important adult in the lives of a whole bunch
Speaker 3: of kids in New York City and young adults. And
Speaker 3: to some, you know, she was the employer, the person
Speaker 3: that you take your goods to and you're gonna get
Speaker 3: a little bit, you're gonna get paid a little bit.
Speaker 3: To others, she's the headmaster at this school where you're
Speaker 3: going every day, and to a lot of them, she
Speaker 3: was also Ma, like we've kind of discussed earlier, and
Speaker 3: we actually have a quote here from marm Mandelbomb.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, she's pretty blunt, and explaining why they gave
Speaker 1: her this nickname, she says, I am Ma because I
Speaker 1: give them what a mother cannot sometimes give money and
Speaker 1: horses and diamonds. And I don't know, I don't know
Speaker 1: how you guys grew.
Speaker 4: Up, right, but I had.
Speaker 1: I had a childhood lacking and at least diamonds and horses.
Speaker 7: You never even had, like horseback riding lessons or like
Speaker 7: wrote a pony or no, but.
Speaker 1: She's giving them their own horses.
Speaker 3: Yeah, diamond rusted diamond. Yes, it's crazy.
Speaker 6: The money actually was coated with diamonds. It was just
Speaker 6: like Christmas at my house growing up.
Speaker 3: So we've talked about some of those professors. They were
Speaker 3: at the schoo. They were some of the best criminals
Speaker 3: in all New York City. A lot of her proteges
Speaker 3: ended up becoming the next generation of best criminals. So
Speaker 3: we've got a few of those here that we'll go over.
Speaker 3: The first one is Sophie Lyons, and again at a
Speaker 3: very young age, she started out working with mar Mandelbaum
Speaker 3: bringing things to her and we actually have a quote
Speaker 3: from Sophie that illustrates the way she felt about marm She.
Speaker 6: Said, quote, I was not quite six years old when
Speaker 6: I stole my first pocket book.
Speaker 3: That's crazy.
Speaker 6: I mean, you gotta start them early. I was very
Speaker 6: happy because I was petted and rewarded. My wretched stepmother
Speaker 6: patted my curly head, gave me a bag of candy
Speaker 6: and said I was a good girl.
Speaker 1: Oo foreshadowing right.
Speaker 3: Okay, So after years and years of stealing and conning,
Speaker 3: Sophie Lyons really did become one of the most notorious
Speaker 3: thieves in all of New York City, and she also
Speaker 3: became extremely notorious as a confidence woman, and she was
Speaker 3: considered by Marm to be one of her allies.
Speaker 7: Right, But as you might have guessed from the wretched
Speaker 7: stepmother line, Lyons eventually turned on Mandelbaum and totally threw
Speaker 7: her under the bus. She actually wrote a tell all
Speaker 7: book called Why Crime Doesn't Pay Now.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Now. Another one of the proteges who was also
Speaker 3: very close with Sophie Lyons was a woman named do
Speaker 3: we decide it was Lena?
Speaker 6: I think it's Lena, Lena.
Speaker 3: Lena Kleinschmidt. And again she's another very prominent criminal that
Speaker 3: came up under Marm's tutelage. And she actually moved to Hackensack,
Speaker 3: New Jersey, and she was posing as the wealthy widow
Speaker 3: of this South American mining tycoon, and she started doing
Speaker 3: the same things that Marm was doing, where she's holding
Speaker 3: these big parties for important officials, only this time it's
Speaker 3: over in Jersey. And she actually got in trouble because
Speaker 3: she was wearing a ring. That's how she got caught.
Speaker 3: She was wearing a ring that was stolen that was
Speaker 3: recognized by one of the important folks at her house.
Speaker 4: So it was a.
Speaker 7: Business model that marm was establishing. This is like what
Speaker 7: she was franchise.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I like the idea that Lena was like the
Speaker 6: original faker of being the prince from Africa that might
Speaker 6: need like and was getting confidence of people that way.
Speaker 6: It's nice and.
Speaker 1: These are just these are just a few of the associates.
Speaker 1: There were others that are very well known in crime
Speaker 1: history today, people like Little Annie Riley Ellen Clegg or
Speaker 1: Margaret Brown who went by the street name Old Mother
Speaker 1: Hubbard Dopes.
Speaker 4: Yes.
Speaker 7: Then we also had a guy named Hermann Stout Stout
Speaker 7: Stout Stout Stout, and he was the only one Marm trusted.
Speaker 7: Stoud was Moundebaum's a most trusted associate and was always
Speaker 7: by her side. He literally is the one who did
Speaker 7: all the heavy lifting and when they did deals, he
Speaker 7: would tote all of the goods to one of her
Speaker 7: many warehouses across town. And she loved him over all
Speaker 7: of her associates for sure.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: She referred to him at different times as her son,
Speaker 1: especially when they were talking to the police. Spoiler alert,
Speaker 1: she doesn't really get away eventually, despite all of her
Speaker 1: precautionary measures. There's a plot twist in New York. New
Speaker 1: officials are elected and they're actually not corrupt. It's weird.
Speaker 1: It's like a Shyamala on twist, you know. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: so they said, all right, we're going to bring this
Speaker 1: whole operation down. And the District Attorney's office was in
Speaker 1: the midst of a cold war with a corrupt police
Speaker 1: force with boss politics. The new mayor, a guy named
Speaker 1: Edward Cooper, wanted to reform the city was very vocal
Speaker 1: about it, and it turned out that many people in
Speaker 1: this fair metropolis agreed. They were like, I would be
Speaker 1: nice if my stuff is stolen to at least get
Speaker 1: it back.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, exactly. But the problem is a domino effect
Speaker 3: ensued with that, at least for marm in her criminal enterprise,
Speaker 3: because without the support of these politicians, she couldn't effectively
Speaker 3: the bribe the officials that she needed to, and without
Speaker 3: those bribes greasing all the wheels to make stuff happen
Speaker 3: and to give her some cover, she couldn't operate out
Speaker 3: in the open anymore.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And what's more, the situation worsens because she could
Speaker 1: also no longer protect her criminal network, the city's worth
Speaker 1: of little chicks. They were once grateful for her patronage,
Speaker 1: and now they began flipping, snitching, testifying against her in court.
Speaker 1: The tide, in short, was turning the da A guy
Speaker 1: named Peter Olney hires the Pinkerton Detective Agency to take
Speaker 1: Marm's operation down once and for all.
Speaker 6: So in eighteen eighty four, members of the Pinkerton Detective Agency,
Speaker 6: which again has its own whole, very rich story and
Speaker 6: still exists today in a certain form, was a private entity,
Speaker 6: which in some ways kind of prevented it from being
Speaker 6: quite so open to the corruption that many public services
Speaker 6: were having issues with. And they did manage to bring
Speaker 6: her rain in New York to an end. So their
Speaker 6: plan was super simple. This is the thing, like the
Speaker 6: criminal masterfind always gets taken down by just the stupidest,
Speaker 6: easiest thing. They got a bolt of silk, they tagged
Speaker 6: it so they knew that one was the stolen one,
Speaker 6: and then they just waited for Marm to buy it,
Speaker 6: which she of course did so then she was caught
Speaker 6: red handed and she went to trial. She was released
Speaker 6: on bail. This was largely thanks to the work of
Speaker 6: how and Humble law firm. She kept them on a
Speaker 6: five thousand dollar a year retainer.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they were like the soul goodman of their dad. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: very breaking bad.
Speaker 6: It was a better call How and Hummel. I would
Speaker 6: actually watch that show. And then, in this rare and
Speaker 6: sort of delightfully pearl clutching statement very out of character
Speaker 6: that she made to the public, Marm vehemently professed her innocence.
Speaker 4: Oh oh, yes, oh this is great. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I keep a dry good store and have for twenty
Speaker 1: years past. I buy and sell dry goods as other
Speaker 1: dry goods people do. Try goods, you say, I have
Speaker 1: never knowingly bought stolen goods, and neither did my son Julius.
Speaker 1: I have never stolen anything in.
Speaker 3: My life, which is probably true.
Speaker 1: I feel that these charges are brought against me in
Speaker 1: spite I have never bribed the police nor had their protection.
Speaker 1: I never needed their protection because I and my son
Speaker 1: are innocent of these charges. So help me. God.
Speaker 7: It's gonna be an amazing juxtaposition to another statement she
Speaker 7: makes a little later in the episode.
Speaker 6: Yeah short, Marm won Best Dramatic Performance in a non
Speaker 6: acting role, but.
Speaker 7: It's really important to We haven't really mentioned this specifically,
Speaker 7: but like her whole like stroke of genius was that
Speaker 7: she never really handled the stolen goods. She just had
Speaker 7: people do it for her. So she probably maybe even
Speaker 7: like was drinking her own kool aid and believed that
Speaker 7: she actually wasn't a criminal, that she was just a
Speaker 7: proprietor was like, you know, facilitating things.
Speaker 6: You know, I'm helping the community.
Speaker 4: I'm helping the community exactly.
Speaker 1: She actually was kind of, Yeah, no one wants to
Speaker 1: be a housekeeper.
Speaker 6: Right right, certainly not me. I did have that job once,
Speaker 6: but that's another story. So rather than surrender in the
Speaker 6: midst of all of this, she decided that she would run,
Speaker 6: and she escaped north to Canada. She established herself with
Speaker 6: over one million dollars worth of stolen diamonds and cold hard.
Speaker 4: Cash slight backtrack.
Speaker 7: It's an amazing story how she actually accomplished this. She
Speaker 7: was under house arrest essentially, or she you know, posted
Speaker 7: that bail that we talked about, and she had a
Speaker 7: housekeeper that she had impersonate her by dressing in her
Speaker 7: classic outfit that she wore, which kind of was like
Speaker 7: a queen Victoria kind of situation with like a feathered
Speaker 7: hat and like a veil, so she was able to
Speaker 7: make trips to her lawyer's office while the Pickertons were
Speaker 7: surveilling her, and she went into the lawyer and then
Speaker 7: the housekeeper came out, and so they tracked the housekeeper
Speaker 7: and then Marm made that Canadian get away, yeah.
Speaker 6: Run for the border. So there in Canada they stayed
Speaker 6: purposely at second rate, inconspicuous places. They went to a
Speaker 6: little hotel near the Grand Trunk Railway station in Hamilton, Canada,
Speaker 6: and they just wanted to stay on the dal. They
Speaker 6: just tried to keep a low profile. But then on
Speaker 6: December ninth of eighteen eighty four, Hamilton police and detectives
Speaker 6: arrested Marm and her two associates, Julius her Son and
Speaker 6: Herman as they were sitting down for breakfast. So they
Speaker 6: were having omelets and handcuffs, and naturally Marm attempted to
Speaker 6: bribe the police because that's that's her jam who worked before.
Speaker 6: Why would we not do it again. But Canadian police
Speaker 6: they don't play. They were not having this.
Speaker 7: The incorruptible Canadians, it's true, And so Marm was arrested
Speaker 7: yet again in Canada, for a possession of four thousand
Speaker 7: dollars worth of stolen diamonds. But what, yeah, I don't know,
Speaker 7: Like what would that translate to in today's money?
Speaker 4: Four thousand dollars in diamonds? It was like a million bucks.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 3: I'm not imagining.
Speaker 4: I'm not a human.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean, yeah, I guess it would be about
Speaker 7: a fistful of diamonds.
Speaker 4: I think we should.
Speaker 1: Agree that loose diamonds are just inherently a sketchy thing.
Speaker 7: It's also absurdly baller. If you're just dealing in loose diamonds,
Speaker 7: you just have them lying around.
Speaker 3: There's a Jeffrey Epstein thing there.
Speaker 4: Let's not get.
Speaker 3: Leave.
Speaker 4: So yeah, she's arrested again.
Speaker 7: But luckily the owner of the diamonds couldn't, like eyeball,
Speaker 7: identify that the diamonds were mine. I don't know how
Speaker 7: how would you like know that they were these were
Speaker 7: my diamonds?
Speaker 6: I like, look at me, like, I just have I
Speaker 6: assume here diamonds I don't believe.
Speaker 4: Okay, that's fair.
Speaker 1: Maybe there was an etching on the bottom, or maybe
Speaker 1: there were a specific weight or specific cut.
Speaker 7: Perhaps, but this guy could not do that thing, so
Speaker 7: the Canadian cops had to let her go as well,
Speaker 7: and the New York DA didn't have jurisdicson so he
Speaker 7: wasn't able to send anyone to the Canadian court to
Speaker 7: fetch her, and marm and her associates once again ran free.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, and she actually ended up with her diamonds.
Speaker 7: Right, she totally did. She retrieved her diamonds, which is
Speaker 7: absurdly ballered the second time around.
Speaker 6: I love the idea of the jail checkout where they
Speaker 6: just hand her up here.
Speaker 4: Can't figure out who they belong to, so they must
Speaker 4: be yours.
Speaker 1: Oh, she did have to pay six hundred and forty bucks.
Speaker 4: It's like the processing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, everybody gets a griving for sure.
Speaker 7: So she used those diamonds and she bought herself a tiny, small,
Speaker 7: very meager, two story house along Hamilton's main Street, and
Speaker 7: by eighteen eighty six she'd opened you guessed it again,
Speaker 7: another dry goods store.
Speaker 4: Oh heavens, I know she's really good at the dry
Speaker 4: goods and uh.
Speaker 1: And it became a family operation, right it totally again.
Speaker 7: Her three children joined her, Annie and Julius permanently, and
Speaker 7: then her married daughter, Sarah, stayed in Hamilton behind for
Speaker 7: a time before returning back to New York with her family.
Speaker 1: And so now we're at this this strange sort of crossroads, right,
Speaker 1: we have to ask ourselves was marm fine after all
Speaker 1: these years on the street and narrow were her queen
Speaker 1: pen days behind her? We're very proud of that phrase.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Endpen's pretty good.
Speaker 1: It depends on what you think. We want to hear
Speaker 1: your opinion on this, on what you think about this
Speaker 1: letter that she sent to her friends in New York
Speaker 1: after she had started her dry goods store in Canada.
Speaker 6: I like how Ben sets this up like there will
Speaker 6: be question marks in your head, but when you hear this,
Speaker 6: there won't. Marm wrote quote, I beg to announce to
Speaker 6: you that I have opened my new emporium, in every
Speaker 6: respect the equal of my late New York establishment. I
Speaker 6: shall be pleased to continue our former pleasant business relations,
Speaker 6: promising not alone to pay the best prices for the
Speaker 6: article which you may have for sale, but also in
Speaker 6: carefully protecting all my customers, no matter at what expense.
Speaker 6: With my present facilities, I am able to dispose of
Speaker 6: all commodities forwarded to me with Dispatch and Security, trusting
Speaker 6: to hear from you soon and assuring you that a
Speaker 6: renewal of past favors will be greatly appreciated. I am
Speaker 6: yours faithfully, f Mandelbaum.
Speaker 7: Can we unpack some of this kind of dated language
Speaker 7: real quick?
Speaker 4: So I'm sorry with that. I don't even know that
Speaker 4: it's dating.
Speaker 6: Well, okay, listen, thinly veiled letter of all times exactly.
Speaker 7: But with my present facilities, I am able to dispose
Speaker 7: of all commodities forwarded to me with Dispatch and Security.
Speaker 7: So I'm going to move your stolen stuff. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 7: going to continue doing what I use you.
Speaker 6: Guys, is still totally cool. I'm just doing it somewhere else.
Speaker 3: If it was written in twenty nineteen, it would have
Speaker 3: just said I'm back at it. See you come get
Speaker 3: me duolo.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it is true. Like Dispatch and Security, I'll
Speaker 1: not only move all your stuff, but I'll move it
Speaker 1: faster than anyone else, and you will not get busted
Speaker 1: as you would if you went to other less reputable
Speaker 1: fencing establishment.
Speaker 4: Exactly.
Speaker 3: There you go. So a gentleman from New Yorker reporter
Speaker 3: headed on up to Canada, just you know, peek in
Speaker 3: the store. See what's going on in there? Now again,
Speaker 3: it's completely legit, he said sarcastically. And this guy reacted
Speaker 3: in a way that can only be described as faint
Speaker 3: surprise when he found that all of the New Canadian
Speaker 3: stores merchandise came from New York City. That's weird. Everything
Speaker 3: was being sold at incredibly almost unbelievably low prices and
Speaker 3: there were absolutely zero identifying labels on any of the merchandise.
Speaker 3: Oh it checks out, basically. So it appeared that marm
Speaker 3: was you know, you'd think she's set up in this
Speaker 3: new place. Whatever she's doing, bribing whoever, she's got a bribe,
Speaker 3: whatever she's doing to continue this business. It seems like
Speaker 3: she was ready to start anew basically a new chapter
Speaker 3: for her. She's going to live life out as all
Speaker 3: the stories would want us to believe, happily ever after.
Speaker 3: But unfortunately it wasn't gonna.
Speaker 4: Work out that way for her.
Speaker 3: This is a little bit sad here. Her daughter Annie
Speaker 3: were talking about how she was up there in Canada
Speaker 3: with her. Well, she went back to new work, as
Speaker 3: we mentioned, and while she was there she got pretty
Speaker 3: sick and she ended up developing pneumonia and then on
Speaker 3: November tenth, eighteen eighty five, her daughter Andie.
Speaker 7: Died, and there was no way that Marm was going
Speaker 7: to not go back and be there, you know, for
Speaker 7: her daughter's burial, and whatever the cost might be, whether
Speaker 7: it was to her livelihood, to her own personal freedom,
Speaker 7: she was going to do whatever it took. Because we
Speaker 7: talked about earlier in the show, her children were her
Speaker 7: first and foremost priority. She was going to be there
Speaker 7: for them, come hell or high water. And so Mom's
Speaker 7: Marm's former home was now owned by a Missus Marks,
Speaker 7: and Marm and her son Julius actually slipped into the
Speaker 7: house and and Marm was overcome by grief and she
Speaker 7: fainted at the time. And she obviously had re established
Speaker 7: some of those old connections and those old friendships because
Speaker 7: she had a group of friends who actually were there
Speaker 7: for her and escorted her out of the house and
Speaker 7: they hid her in a different home across the street
Speaker 7: while she recovered. But while it was clear that giving
Speaker 7: Annie a Christian burial would help kind of like make
Speaker 7: things a little more low key and under the radar,
Speaker 7: Marm insisted that it had to be a traditional Jewish
Speaker 7: service in accordance with her faith, because like you said,
Speaker 7: she was very, very religious, and there was no other
Speaker 7: way that it was going to work for her.
Speaker 6: So Marm's son Julius, tried to do a little disguise work.
Speaker 6: He shaved his hair and beard so that he would
Speaker 6: evade the police. But mar we mentioned, she was a
Speaker 6: very tall woman and very large. She was imposing, so
Speaker 6: you couldn't really costume that situation and make her not
Speaker 6: look like herself. And she was grieving very deeply, so
Speaker 6: she probably wasn't really into the costume idea to begin with.
Speaker 6: And what's really interesting is that her street family, like
Speaker 6: her criminal family, came to her daughter's funeral as well.
Speaker 6: So it was like burglars and bank thieves and pickpockets
Speaker 6: and basically every kind of person she had ever touched
Speaker 6: in her life and in her school, et cetera, and
Speaker 6: they all came out publicly. I mean, everybody at this
Speaker 6: point is taking a big risk, but they wanted to
Speaker 6: pay their respects to her daughter. And afterwards Marm went
Speaker 6: back to Hamilton, Canada. She was not apprehended by police,
Speaker 6: and the Pinkertons also left her alone. And it's unclear
Speaker 6: still if the cops took pity on a grieving mother.
Speaker 6: What we do know for sure is that she did
Speaker 6: return and that there was a police officer even stationed
Speaker 6: at the funeral, and so they knew she was there,
Speaker 6: and reporters were even there to interview her that day,
Speaker 6: so it was not a secret at all. But they
Speaker 6: all just let her leave in peace after the service
Speaker 6: was over.
Speaker 3: And can I make a point to me, this just
Speaker 3: rings true of that sentiment that has occurred, and it's
Speaker 3: occurred in the past several times, and you kind of
Speaker 3: feel it in waves. And I say this as an
Speaker 3: at Lanton, but that idea that we're all New Yorkers
Speaker 3: right of like they know that all of these criminals
Speaker 3: are gathered in this one place, but they also know
Speaker 3: that she and these other people are important in some
Speaker 3: way as a whole, as a community, as a whole,
Speaker 3: right so they just kind of let it slide. And
Speaker 3: I think it speaks to the city in itself.
Speaker 7: There's also like almost like a rules of engagement kind
Speaker 7: of situation where it's like this is not fair game.
Speaker 7: It's like you don't arrest somebody when they're going to church,
Speaker 7: you know, like that's sort of like an unspoken rule
Speaker 7: even between law enforcement and.
Speaker 6: Criminals, it would seem extraordinarily cruel to arrest someone at
Speaker 6: their daughter's funeral.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I have a theory as well that I think
Speaker 1: is pretty plausible. Odds are statistically that police officer at
Speaker 1: some point worked with or for Marm, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean, So he may have been grieving just as much.
Speaker 1: But from that point on, Marm becomes a successful, active
Speaker 1: pillar of the community in Hamilton, Canada. Her shop is legit,
Speaker 1: by which I mean no one officially reported a crime
Speaker 1: that was good enough for her. She regularly attended the
Speaker 1: local synagogue and she began to use that as a
Speaker 1: networking hub. She seems dead set to become a Canadian resident. However,
Speaker 1: that does not mean that New York City has forgotten
Speaker 1: about her. As a matter of fact, quite the opposite.
Speaker 1: She becomes sort of a celebrity icon of her day.
Speaker 1: She's like Elvis Presley, She's like Bigfoot. Everybody has seen
Speaker 1: this lady in New York and they are convinced that
Speaker 1: it's her. But regardless of how many times they see her,
Speaker 1: they describe her and so on, and they're like this
Speaker 1: close to maybe trying to get a picture of her
Speaker 1: or something, they never catch her. It's almost like the
Speaker 1: fame of who she had become had arrested the city
Speaker 1: and people wanted to have their own Marm mandelbound story.
Speaker 1: And eventually she passed away, and at the time her obituaries,
Speaker 1: which were published, made international news, and they were not
Speaker 1: vilifying her. Really, there was even at the even from
Speaker 1: the law enforcement community, there was a sense of begrudging respect.
Speaker 1: They referred to her as old Mother Marm, the Queen
Speaker 1: of Fences. And in February of eighteen ninety four, when
Speaker 1: she passed away, contemporary accounts described her death as due
Speaker 1: to something called Bright's disease. Nowadays we recognize that as
Speaker 1: nephritis or kidney disease, and her body was actually returned
Speaker 1: to New York. However, there was a mystery afoot.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, if you're someone with the influence and intelligence
Speaker 3: of mar Mandelbauman, you wanted to get back to New York,
Speaker 3: maybe you could arrange to have it look like you
Speaker 3: died and then maybe send your body, your body in
Speaker 3: a coffin to New York. Right, But maybe it's just stones.
Speaker 3: Maybe it's actually stolen goods that are in that coffin.
Speaker 4: That'd be pretty cool.
Speaker 3: Who knows.
Speaker 6: And her legend, of course feeds all of these thoughts
Speaker 6: that people were having. They were wondering, was it possible
Speaker 6: that she's still alive and living in Ontario? And was she,
Speaker 6: as some sources claimed, calling herself an entirely new thing,
Speaker 6: reinventing herself as Madame Fuchs and then kind of plotting
Speaker 6: a covert return to the Lower East Side.
Speaker 7: Yeah, but perhaps me the better question is do legends
Speaker 7: ever truly pass away? And to quote the you know,
Speaker 7: the wonderful Neil Young, it's better to burn out than
Speaker 7: to fato. You know, there you go, And that's exactly
Speaker 7: what Mandelbaum did.
Speaker 1: It's a good question because we know that while mar
Speaker 1: may no longer be with us today, her legacy does remain.
Speaker 1: She was the most successful fence. She was the first
Speaker 1: mob boss of this country, and history at its heart
Speaker 1: is a palump sets. You know, whatever occurs or is
Speaker 1: written today will never fully erase the past.
Speaker 3: It's so true. So the next time you're walking around
Speaker 3: in this area, if you just happen to make it
Speaker 3: over here and you walk past seventy nine Clinton Street,
Speaker 3: just take a second, just stand there for a second,
Speaker 3: knowing the history, because there's a pawnshop right there in
Speaker 3: that location. Now, a pawnshop kind of crazy, right, there's
Speaker 3: a sign of big, bold yellow sign with bright red
Speaker 3: letters that says we buy gold, silver, diamonds and any other.
Speaker 4: That part.
Speaker 3: But it does say we do repairs.
Speaker 4: Though of course they do.
Speaker 7: You can also actually find her burial site at the
Speaker 7: Union Field Cemetery at Congregation Rhodath Shalom, which is in
Speaker 7: Queen's today.
Speaker 1: And so maybe we end on some other questions. Was
Speaker 1: Fredrika mar Mandelbaum a criminal? I mean, yes, yes, that
Speaker 1: one's pretty easy to answer. But was she a bad person?
Speaker 1: That depends on who you're asking. And it's also although
Speaker 1: it's tempting to oversimplify people and to put them in
Speaker 1: the box of good or bad, you know, diabolical or saint,
Speaker 1: like it's unfair to them and like any other person,
Speaker 1: marm was much more complex than a pat answer, you know,
Speaker 1: And thank you so much for joining.
Speaker 6: Us, Holly, my great pleasure.
Speaker 1: I have to ask. I know everybody's wondering if you're
Speaker 1: not familiar yet, four fellow history buffs in the audience,
Speaker 1: where can they learn more about stuff you missed? In
Speaker 1: History class.
Speaker 6: We are everywhere on social media as missed in History.
Speaker 6: You can also go to missed Inhistory dot com and
Speaker 6: find all of our episodes of all time going back
Speaker 6: many years, and any of the episodes since Tracy and
Speaker 6: I have been on the show, which has been since
Speaker 6: twenty thirteen. We'll have show notes attached to them. So
Speaker 6: come and visit. We would love to meet you.
Speaker 7: And if you want to check out more stuff they
Speaker 7: don't want you to know, you can do that by
Speaker 7: going to your podcast platform of choice and look up
Speaker 7: stuff that I want you to know.
Speaker 4: You can find us on Instagram and Twitter, and all.
Speaker 7: That stuff is conspiracy stuff, show conspiracy stuff or conspiracy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, one or the other. Just keep it tying. Before
Speaker 4: we wrap up entirely, though, I have a great question.
Speaker 7: One thing I noticed when we were researching this is
Speaker 7: there's not a lot of evidence in the writings and
Speaker 7: the history of Marim Mandelbaum about her being some kind
Speaker 7: of ruthless, murderous person. Now a little violence in her story.
Speaker 3: Well, here's the thing. When you're operating a criminal enterprise
Speaker 3: like that, how how are you going to prove a
Speaker 3: lot of the things that happen in the basements of
Speaker 3: you know, theaters before they get.
Speaker 1: Excavated, right, I mean, good question.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Like, really, how do you prove that stuff unless
Speaker 3: you get caught red handed or somebody leaks down information
Speaker 3: to the authorities or.
Speaker 1: Something like that, or a bribe arrives late.
Speaker 3: Well exactly, how do we really know what was happening
Speaker 3: her enterprise?
Speaker 6: But her AMMO definitely does seem to have been kind
Speaker 6: of more of a killing with kindness, like I will
Speaker 6: win everyone.
Speaker 4: Over, right, because she was a diplomatic.
Speaker 6: I think even the people and the situation with her
Speaker 6: daughter's funeral is even evidence that even the people who
Speaker 6: were positioned against her in terms of the battle of
Speaker 6: legalities still kind of loved her.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you have to. I mean, you have to respect someone,
Speaker 1: even if if you're diametrically opposed, because I'm gonna I'm
Speaker 1: gonna go ahead. And maybe it's speculation, but like you said, Holly,
Speaker 1: everything about her proves that she didn't get her hands
Speaker 1: dirty and she would probably say that murder is bad
Speaker 1: for business when you think about it, right.
Speaker 6: Yeah, again, thank you guys so much for having me.
Speaker 7: Thank you.
Speaker 1: Thanks to Warner Brothers. Please check out the kitchen if
Speaker 1: you'd like to hear more stories about similarly badass women. Right.
Speaker 3: It comes on Friday, August night, and I'm giving thumbs
Speaker 3: up to everybody who's in the.
Speaker 1: Audience, and thanks so much, thanks so much for coming.
Speaker 1: We hope you enjoy the theater. The Gangster Museum is upstairs,
Speaker 1: by the way, if you ever in town and want
Speaker 1: to check that out.
Speaker 4: Yes, you see us soon, Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 3: Stuff they Don't Want You to Know is a production
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