The Napoleon of Crime: The Life and Times of Adam Worth, the Real Moriarty
The rumbustious true story of the Victorian master thief who was the model for Conan Doyle’s Moriarty, Sherlock Holmes’ arch-rival. From the bestselling author of ‘Operation Mincemeat’ and ‘Agent Zigzag’.Adam Worth was the greatest master criminal of Victorian times. Abjuring violence, setting himself up as a perfectly respectable gentleman, he became the ringleader for the largest criminal network in the world and the model for Conan Doyle’s evil genius, Moriarty.At the height of his powers, he stole Gainsborough’s famous portrait of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, then the world’s most valuable painting, from its London showroom. The duchess became his constant companion, the symbol and substance of his achievements. At the end of his career, he returned the painting, having gained nothing material from its theft.Worth’s Sherlock Holmes was William Pinkerton, founder of America’s first and greatest detective agency. Their parallel lives form the basis for this extraordinary book, which opens a window on the seedy Victorian underworld, wittily exposing society’s hypocrisy and double standards in a storytelling tour de force.Note that it has not been possible to include the same picture content that appeared in the original print version.
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The Napoleon of Crime
The Life and Times of Adam Worth, the Real Moriarty
Ben Macintyre
William Collins
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
Copyright © Ben Macintyre 1997
Ben Macintyre asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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Source ISBN: 9780006550624
Ebook Edition © JANUARY 2012 ISBN: 9780007383641 Version: 2017-02-20
Table of Contents
A Great Lady Holds a Reception
Pierpont Morgan, the Napoleon of Wall Street
I had come to Los Angeles to cover the latest instalment in the Rodney King case, that grimly defining saga of modern times. But I left the city with a very different tale of cops and robbers.
The white Los Angeles policemen who had been filmed by an amateur cameraman beating up a black motorist were in the dock for a second time, stolidly proclaiming their innocence. It was confidently predicted that the city was on the verge of another riot. One afternoon, when the jury had retired to consider its verdict, I decided to drive out to the suburb of Van Nuys to explore the archives of the Pinkerton’s Detective Agency, thinking I might write an article for The Times about American law enforcement in another, sepia-tinted age, a world away from the thugs on trial downtown, or those in the ghetto who might take to the streets if they escaped justice again.
The Pinkertons. The name itself summoned up hard lawmen with comic facial hair and six-shooters, riding out after the likes of Jesse James, the Reno gang, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Shown into the basement archive by a bored secretary popping bubble gum, I immediately realized there was far more here than could possibly be digested in a year, let alone an afternoon. The rows of cabinets literally overflowed with files, a testament to the painstaking methods of America’s earliest detectives. After an hour or so of random delving, I picked up a bound scrapbook, dated 1902. Leafing through it, I came across this fragment of newsprint:
SUNDAY OREGONIAN, PORTLAND, JULY 27, 1902.
ADAM WORTH, GREATEST THIEF OF MODERN TIMES; STOLE $3,000,000
THIS is the story of Adam Worth.
If a fiction writer could conceive such a story, he might well hesitate to write it for fear of being accused of using the wildly improbable.
The sober, cold, technical judgment passed upon Adam Worth by the greatest thief-hunters of America and Great Britain is that he was the most remarkable, most successful and most dangerous professional criminal ever known to modern times.
Adam Worth, in a life of crime covering almost half a century, looted at least $2,000,000, and most probably as much as $3,000,000.
He cruised through the Mediterranean on a steam yacht with a crew of 20 men, and left a trail of looted cities behind him.
He was caught only once, and then through a blunder by a stupid confederate.
He ruled the shrewdest criminals, and planned deeds for them with craft that bade defiance to the best detective talent in the world.
The police of America and Europe were eager to take him for years, and for years he perpetrated every form of theft – check-forging, swindling, larceny, safe-cracking, diamond robbery, mail robbery, burglary of every degree, ‘hold-ups’ on the road and bank robbery – under their very noses with complete immunity.
There were three redeeming features in the life of this lost human creature.
He worshiped his family and regarded and treated his loved ones as something sacred. His wife never knew that he was a criminal. His children are living in the United States today in complete ignorance of the fact that their father was the master-thief of the civilized world.
