My Favorite Victorian Criminal Was a Bank Robber With a Secret Weapon

The roughly 75 years between the end of the Civil War and the beginning of World War II was a period of drastic evolution in how we think about and solve crimes. From the Civil War bounty jumpers John, Frank, Sim, and William Reno, brothers who realized the best way to rob a train was to wait until the locomotive was moving, to H.H. Holmes, America’s first known serial killer, new classes of criminals were rising, including spies and mobsters. To fight the changing tides, law enforcement created new methods of investigation, including the photo lineup, and in the United States an entirely new government department was created to deal with wanted suspects’ ability to cross state lines with speed and ease.

The social and cultural situation in this period also makes its crimes interesting. The story of the illustrious George Leslie comes right in the middle of the Gilded Age. Later known as “The Gentleman Bank Robber,” Leslie knew the key to robbing from the rich was to blend in. Because, especially in the late 1800s, the rich wanted to believe that they couldn’t be fooled. So if you could become one of the upper class, you could get away with anything.

Before he became known as the king of all bank robbers, the patron saint of burglars was a man born into a respectable family. His father was a brewer in Toledo, Ohio. And while little is known of George Leslie’s early life, it’s safe to say that he grew up wanting little, ready to marry well and live out his days with a top hat in hand.

Leslie’s villain origin story, if you want to call him a villain, truly begins after the Civil War ends. Leslie was engaged to a high-society woman named Sarah Lawrence; he’d also graduated with honors after studying architecture. He should have been on his way toward living a fashionable life among the mid-tier elite. But an old ghost haunted him. Unlike millions of other men throughout the country, Leslie had escaped service in the Civil War through a rich person’s loophole.

Leslie biographer J. North Conway spoke with Slate podcast producer Mike Vuolo in 2016 about Leslie. Conway described how Leslie’s father’s decision to pay $300 to keep Leslie from being drafted to fight in the Civil War made him a pariah in Ohio and beyond when the fighting finally ceased.

“So, at the end of the war, men like Leslie who had paid to get out of military service found themselves the object of scorn and ridicule, and Leslie himself was ostracized by many prominent Cincinnati families and friends and former associates,” Conway said.

Here’s the thing about what Leslie—or rather his father—did: It wasn’t illegal. While not fighting in a war simply because you’re able to buy your way out certainly isn’t a good thing, you really can’t blame the Leslies for not wanting George to die as hundreds of thousands did. The problem isn’t that Leslie and his father took advantage of an opportunity to avoid the war. The problem is that there was a system in place to allow this to begin with. Even in our most tumultuous and desperate time, the powers that be looked around and said, “If you’re rich enough, your life can be spared.”

This was an attitude toward wealth that Leslie would carry with him. While he was punished for buying his way out of service—his fiancée Sarah eventually left him (likely after some meddling from her own father) and married one of the first men to receive the Medal of Honor—the idea that wealth could get you anything persisted.

Shunned in Ohio, Leslie did what many people had done before and have done since—he moved to New York to start over. His parents had died by the end of the 1860s, so he sold all his ties to the state and hopped a train for the Big Apple.

“Practically every burglar and bank robber of note in the United States made New York his principal headquarters during the twenty years which followed the Civil War, but the only one to whom the police were willing to award the palm of genius was George Leonidas Leslie, also known as George Howard and Western George.” So went the New Yorker’s 1927 feature on Leslie. But why? Why go from the easy life of a gentleman to the precarious life of a criminal? According to biographer Conway, in his book King of Heists: The Sensational Bank Robbery of 1878 That Shocked America, the reason was actually quite juvenile.

This was a case of poor little rich boy wants to join the circus. But you can’t just become a criminal overnight. At least, not a successful one.

In an effort to find his greener pastures, Leslie worked to transform himself into a high-society dandy. Having sold his father’s brewery and offloaded his architecture firm, he was in possession of some money and able to start acquiring the trappings of wealth. But many of the things one needs to fit into the best of society are taught, not bought, and Leslie already knew them. His manners were impeccable, his style excellent. He knew how to blend into any social situation. But Leslie was itching to do something more than sip Champagne with the elites. As luck would have it, this was when he met the “Queen of Fences.”

Known as Mother Mandelbaum, Fredericka Mandelbaum was, at the time of her death at 65, reported to have employed dozens of thieves. “There is not a thief of note in the land to whom her name is not as familiar as his own,” the Boston Globe wrote upon her death. Mandelbaum acted as a go-between in the criminal underworld. If you stole something, that was all well and good, but you needed to be able to sell it to get your cash, and it’s not like you could just go to the pawn shop and say “Sir, would you like to buy this obviously stolen item that police are looking for?” That’s where a fence came in. A fence had far-reaching connections to help you offload your filched property. For a fee, of course.

Mandelbaum came to America from Germany in 1859 with her husband. The pair started a dry-goods business and bought several buildings, eventually using the buildings primarily for their dishonest gains. You’d go in the front door and see an unassuming haberdashery, but the back room was loaded with ill-gotten goods, waiting for illegal sale.

When Mr. Mandelbaum died, Fredericka was undeterred, and flourished. In 1894, “she owned several tenements beyond the houses in which her business was conducted, and it is estimated that she was worth fully $1,000,000,” according to the San Francisco Examiner, the equivalent of more than $34 million dollars today. The New York Sun estimated that Mandelbaum “handled between $5,000,000 and $10,000,000 worth of stolen property over the course of her life.” And because she had a legitimate business, Mandelbaum was able to stand out among fences because she always had cash on hand to purchase the stolen goods before turning around and selling them herself. Though some of the finest things, Mandelbaum kept for herself, “in rooms” (as the Sun described them) “elegantly furnished by her clients with furniture and draperies from some of New York’s finest mansions.”

Having the distinction of employing thieves and having New York police officers on her side, due to bribery or blackmail, Mandelbaum was occasionally arrested but mostly lived openly, until 1884 when a tough-on-crime district attorney managed to get enough evidence to charge her with grand larceny and receiving stolen goods. Mandelbaum fled to Canada before trial and lived there until she died in February of 1894.

But before she died, Mother Mandelbaum “had all the pleasures money could buy,” according to the Boston Globe, and she kept her employees safe with “lawyers in her employ who fought their battles for them in the courts of justice, and whenever any of her proteges were in trouble no money was spared, and no trick left untried that could help them.” Mother Mandelbaum also loved to throw lavish parties: “A warm, generous hostess, she held frequent dances and dinners attended by celebrated criminals as well as friendly politicians and cops.” It was at one such party that Mandelbaum and Leslie finally met.

Leslie had been making his way in the city. “He wore the finest suits money could buy. Since coming to New York, he had purchased several frock coats, vests, and trousers from Brooks Brothers, where everyone who was anyone bought their apparel,” wrote William Bryk in a look back at Leslie’s life for the New York Sun in 2004. Not for nothing, Leslie was also tall, dark, and handsome—traits that allowed him to easily ingratiate himself into any company he desired. Leslie had become a regular at the restaurant Delmonico’s, a favorite among the elite, known for its famous Delmonico steak. It was there that he met famed architect John Roebling—builder of the Cincinnati Suspension Bridge in Leslie’s hometown and, at the time, chief engineer of the Brooklyn Bridge. It was also where he met a man that would truly change his life, Jubilee Jim Fisk.

Fisk, a Wall Street speculator, was fabulously wealthy. Owner of the Erie Railway Company, Fall River steamship line, and other companies, he made “corporate looting and corruption” a “fine art.” You see, at this time, there were the street-level criminals—your prostitutes, your pickpockets, your sneak thieves. But there was also a massive run on those in high society who made hoards of money through corrupt and exploitative means. This is, after all, around the time, historian Matthew Josephson later explained, the term “robber baron” was coined.

As game recognizes game, Fisk happened to be an attendee of Mother Mandelbaum’s parties, and he invited Leslie along for a night of fun. The rest is history. Mandelbaum was looking to diversify her own criminal portfolio, including bank robberies. But the old way—blowing up vaults—tended to cost more on the front end than was gained, after her operatives blew up most of whatever was in the vault. Leslie was looking for a criminal enterprise that fit his skill set. Both had found their own ways to live in the balance between high society and the criminal slums. The pair took a liking to one another and turned out to have a very mutually beneficial relationship. Together, the Leavenworth Times wrote in 1894, they made “more money than she made in any other five years during her career.”

Having acquired a reliable fence and ingratiated himself in the upper crust of society. Leslie was ready to start on his true purpose in coming to New York—crime.

In all, Leslie would be an active criminal from 1869 until his death in 1884. During that time, it’s estimated that he played a role in 80 percent of all bank robberies in the United States. Throughout this time, Leslie used his background in architecture to study the blueprints of various banks, uncovering their weak points and using sophisticated tools—some of his own invention—to break into the vaults in a way that didn’t destroy what was inside.

Leslie showed Mandelbaum his skills in June of 1869 with the Ocean National Bank robbery in New York City. In order to pull off the robbery, Leslie wanted to use a device that he’d spent a lot of time perfecting. He called it the “Little Joker”—a small metal wheel with a wire that fit perfectly inside the combination dial of a bank safe. When the safe was then opened, the dial would make notches in the wheel effectively showing the combination of the safe. But there was an obvious catch—you had to get to the vault twice. Once to place the device, and once to remove it.

Leslie became a member of the bank in order to get an idea of the layout and the employees. Mandelbaum secured Leslie a crew—including people like “Jimmy” Hope and “Shag” Draper, whom Leslie would work with again many times in the future. Leslie’s plan was precise, and he even got Mandelbaum to invest in the same safe the bank used so the crew could rehearse multiple times. They rented the empty office space in the basement below the bank. Jonny Irving, who was working as a janitor at the bank, planted the “Little Joker.” Finally, according to Conway in his interview with Slate, the crew broke into the bank on a Saturday (in order to have as much time to complete the job as possible) by drilling through the floor of the bank (or the ceiling of the basement) and ransacking the place. When they were done, the New York Herald reported, they left a mess of tools and goods they couldn’t carry away.

At the end of the day, despite leaving behind hundreds of thousands of dollars in clearinghouse currency—certificates promising payments, sort of like checks—and other certificates, as well as a bag of gold coin, the group made off with around $800,000. As biographer Conway explained on the podcast: “Not a shot’s been fired, not a single person is injured, not a stick of dynamite is used.” All thanks to Leslie’s ingenuity.

Leslie’s methodology of using skill instead of force in bank robberies was becoming a trend—one that scared banks and people who put their money in these supposedly safe institutions. “This robbery,” the New York Times wrote of the Ocean National Bank heist, “and other equally bold and ingenious ones of a late date, have rendered depositors exceedingly nervous as to the description of the vaults, the make of the safes and locks, and the character of the companies with whom they intrust [sic] their funds.” It was a pattern that Leslie would continue with his gang of misfits and Mother Mandelbaum’s frequent investment.

“Probably one-third of their loot was taken from financial institutions in the metropolis,” the New Yorker wrote of Leslie and his associates in 1927, “their largest hauls being the theft of $786,879 from the Ocean National Bank in 1869, and $2,747,000 in cash and securities from the Manhattan Savings Institution … in 1878.”

The gang didn’t just work in New York. They traveled from state to state—anywhere there was a bank that Leslie deemed penetrable. From the Wellsboro Bank of Philadelphia to the Saratoga County Bank of Waterford in New York, Leslie’s gang would travel anywhere on the East Coast for a score.

On Jan. 27, 1876, seven thieves pulled off what would become known as one of the greatest bank robberies in history. Though Leslie would be involved in multiple robberies that bore the moniker of “greatest,” there was no denying that Leslie, along with six other members of his gang—“Shag” Draper, “Red” Leary, “Billy” Connor, James Burns, Thomas Dunlap, and William Scott—pulled off a remarkable feat that would penetrate the minds of citizens and send rumors up and down the streets for years.

Northampton, Massachusetts, was a small city over 150 miles from New York City. According to George Washington Walling in his 1887 memoir of his time on the force, Recollections of a New York Chief of Police, the bank was chosen based on which bank had vaults and safes that were easy to open. In this case, the bank was one where it only took one key bank employee to open the vault. Because very few banks will let you inspect the areas where they keep their money, Leslie and his men needed some help. Someone who was an expert in locks and safes and who had access to them. Enter William D. Edson.

Edson was a traveling agent for Herring & Co., a safe manufacturer, and a man of loose morals looking for easy money. In exchange for a nice share of the takings, Edson pointed the group to Northampton National Bank. “With this much learned, the rest of the task was not difficult to thieves of such broad experiences,” Walling wrote. “Northampton was a small town, and boldness, the burglars thought, would most successfully accomplish their designs.”

While the band was made up of successful safecrackers and bank robbers, their actual methodology was fairly mundane. In the night, the men put on masks and went to the home of the cashier of the bank, Mr. Whittlesey. They caused chaos in the home, waking up Whittlesey, his wife and kids, and their staff, tying everyone up and leaving them behind as they walked Whittlesey to the bank. Once at the bank, they threatened Whittlesey with death until he opened the vaults. Having collected everything they saw, the men then calmly walked Whittlesey back to his home and tied him up with the rest of his family.

In all, Leslie and his crew got away with $1.5 million in money and negotiable securities. The negotiable securities were mostly useless to the thieves, but they still walked away with a hefty sum. Edson was soon arrested, and quickly flipped and named names because he thought he didn’t get as much as he deserved from the robbery. Scott and Dunlap were arrested in Philadelphia on their way to another bank robbery and eventually sentenced to 20 years in prison. In 1877, Draper was arrested, and soon after, Connors was caught as well. The rest of the gang trickled in and out of jail, but Leslie was never arrested, or even formally implicated, for the robbery, likely because he had the incredible benefit of his co-conspirators not turning on him and his high position in society keeping him immune from suspicion.

As Leslie’s skill and star as a burglar rose, he started to rethink his career. Like many lawyers, chefs, doctors, and other professionals before him, Leslie decided to start teaching the skills that had brought him nationwide renown.

“For a stiff fee or a percentage of the gains, with a guarantee, he planned bank and store burglaries all over the United States,” wrote Herbert Asbury for the San Francisco Examiner. While teaching crime may not initially sound as lucrative as actually committing the crimes—or even something that a lot of people would be able to pay for—Leslie is reported to have made $20,000 just to travel to the Pacific Coast to examine the plans for a potential bank robbery. “He was such an expert mechanic and so able a negotiator, that his fame spread wherever first-class criminals associated,” Walling later wrote. “A telegram might summon him to Boston, Philadelphia, New York, or any other large city, simply to ‘look over’ the scheme for a burglary which might be carried out by others.” It was a win-win for the career criminal—he got to keep using his skills, but with far less risk.

Leslie wasn’t the only one who roped in pupils to learn his craft. Mandelbaum allegedly ran a school for boys and girls to learn how to become successful pickpockets and “sneak thieves, with advanced courses in burglary and safecracking and postgraduate work in blackmail and con games,” wrote Bryk for the New York Sun. Where Leslie’s move into teaching could act as a way for him to make money with less risk and effort, Mandelbaum’s courses had the added benefit of adding to her roster of thieves who could bring her stolen goods to fence.

But Leslie’s life still wasn’t without risk, and the greatest risk eventually came not from the crimes he committed, but from the women he took to bed.

Leslie had one more “greatest heist” in his storied career before he met a violent end. On Sunday, Oct. 27, 1878, the Manhattan Bank Building was robbed by a group of men in a similar fashion to the Northampton Bank robbery. The group barged into the second-floor apartment above the bank to head off the bank janitor, Louis Werckle, from hearing anything and notifying the police. The men tied up Werckle and his family, but this time, instead of demanding Werckle open the safe, the men left the terrified family with a guard and went alone to the empty bank and opened the vaults. The men left with $12,764 in cash, $241,000 in coupon bonds, and $2,506,700 in registered bonds.

The robbery had been in the works for three years and orchestrated by Leslie. According to Walling, “In thieves’ slang it was a ‘pudding’; the bank was wealthy, and always kept a large amount of cash and negotiable security on hand; the vault, although apparently impregnable, was easy to enter, and enough police protection from subordinates in the department was assured to render surprise in the commission of the burglary difficult.” Leslie, as well as planning the robbery, was in charge of figuring out a way into the actual vault. Instead of using traditional “wedges, mallets and jimmies,” Walling wrote, Leslie went for a more clever and quiet approach. Leslie got a vault of the same style as the one in the bank to use as practice. After examining the vault, he realized that the combination could be thrown out of gear, and the tumblers of the combination lock could be forced into the right order by drilling a hole “under the indicator, and working the tumblers around with a fine piece of steel inserted in the hole.”

There were several setbacks over the planning period—at one point Leslie managed to actually get into the bank for a test run to see if this method would work on the real vault. It did for a part of it, and he thought success would be his, but although Leslie covered up the hole, he forgot to reset the tumblers, meaning the bank employees could have been tipped off that something was wrong with the safe. Luck was on his side, however, when the bank officers who discovered him decided to ignore the issue and simply let it go. But luck ran out when, during a second attempt at the bank, they realized the dummy lock they had been working with was slightly different from the one at the bank. With their attempts at artistry foiled, the gang decided to use the old-fashioned way of bank robbing, and thus violence and force were used both on the bank janitor and on the vault itself.

Four of Leslie’s gang went into the bank: “Jimmy” Hope, William Kelly, “Abe” Coakley, and “Pete” Emerson, with outside help from John Nugent, a police officer. They had also planted a watchman in the bank, Patrick Shevlin. The case stumped police for months until, in May of 1879, they started to get word of officer Nugent bragging about being involved with the robbery. Shevlin also confessed when confronted, and the rest soon fell as well, except for Leslie. While Walling notes Leslie’s early involvement in the robbery, Leslie wasn’t arrested or really on police radar after the fact. Likely, Leslie was along just for the stealth robbery purposes, and once they decided to tear the vault apart, his involvement wasn’t necessary anymore.

By 1884, Leslie was 40 years old, living in Brooklyn, and married to a woman named Mary Henrietta, née Coath, the daughter of a landlady Leslie once stayed with. They’d married when Mary was 15, and she thought Leslie was an Internal Revenue detective. But this was far from the truth and, within a few years, Mary knew her husband’s true nature. But despite Mary’s willingness to go along with her husband’s criminal life, little did she know that he was betraying her as well.

Unwilling to maintain a semblance of honor among thieves where women were concerned, Leslie was rumored to have taken up with the wives and sisters of several men in his group, including “Shag” Draper’s wife. In his memoirs, Walling wrote: “These liaisons completely changed his mode of life. His proverbial sagacity and prudence deserted him.”

A man’s body, well-dressed from head to toe, was found on June 4, 1878, three miles outside of Yonkers at the foot of Tramp’s Rock. His body was already partly decomposed, having been shot twice. Police would later learn that the body had been taken to that spot five days earlier and that the man was likely nude at the time he was shot and then dressed, given that no blood was on his clothing. They also learned that the body belonged to George Leslie, King of the Bank Robbers.

In the wake of Leslie’s death, the Boston Globe reported that Mrs. Mandelbaum was heartbroken. “When Mrs. Mandelbaum learned that her old favorite was dead, she displayed what was for her an unusual degree of emotion, and exclaimed respectfully, ‘Poor Shorge; he was such a very nais man.’ ” While the murder of George Leslie was never solved, the longstanding theory was that he was murdered by his associates. According to New York Chief of Police Walling:

While Leslie lived high and free, his death was violent, and in the end he received not a rich man’s funeral, but was buried in a $10 plot “that was little better than that given to the city’s paupers.”

Leslie was, in many ways, not only a product of his time but an inevitability. In the Golden Age he inhabited, Leslie made it clear that if you can blend in with the rich, you can rob them blind, in part because everyone was corrupt. Criminals like Leslie and Mother Mandelbaum were able to buy protection and more in those days. When corruption runs wild and those at the top are able to benefit most from it, people will get hurt.

Excerpt adapted from Between Two Wars: A True Crime Collection, by Cheyna Roth. Text courtesy of Ulysses Press.