May 2, 2012 • 29 mins
When Adam Worth stole a portrait of the Duchess of Devonshire, he fell in love with the painting. But a botched theft in Belgium landed him in prison, where the story of his life reached Arthur Conan Doyle and inspired the character of Professor Moriarty.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from works
dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Sara
Downey and I'm Deblin and Charkerboarding And when we left
off last time. The German Jewish immigrant Adam Worth had
died in the American Civil War, supposedly and gone on
(00:24):
to become a successful criminal mastermind, and had over time
accumulated all the trappings of an upper class British lifestyle
as Henry Judson Raymond manif leisure, including the nice clothes,
the posh accent, the yacht you know, really everything. But
after a disastrous eighteen seventy four forgery attempt in Constantinople,
(00:46):
Worth found himself safe but without a gang, and broke
from trying to buy their freedom. To add to his woes,
his longtime love and the mother of his children, Kittie Flynn,
had left for America, and his best friend, piano Charlie Bullard,
Kitty's estranged husband, had been arrested for a robbery committed
years earlier. Worth did eventually rebound from this, though The
(01:09):
Pinkerton's called him quote the most remarkable, most successful, and
most dangerous professional criminal known to modern times, and he
of course eventually inspired Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's character Professor Moriarty,
the arch nemesis of Sherlott Holmes, but at this point
in his career he was down and out and heartbroken
to boot. Then, as if things couldn't get worse, in
(01:30):
eighteen seventy six, Worth's criminally incompetent younger brother arrives in
town looking for work. So John Worth shared his older
brother's criminal tendencies, but none of his talents that we've
already learned from Pinkerton's Detective Agency's pamphlet on Worth Life,
which is an excellent source of information on him. By
(01:50):
the way, Worth quote never forsook a friend or accomplice,
and for him, that of course meant putting his brother
to work on easy jobs with a lot out of supervision,
very strict instructions, you know, so he wouldn't mess it up.
John Worth, though, really couldn't manage even the most straightforward job,
and found himself arrested in Paris were trying to pass
(02:12):
counterfeit notes. John Sure, the Chief Inspector of Scotland Yard,
the guy who had been hunting Adam Worth without success
for years, jumped on this, he had the younger were
extraditeed into England and charged him with forger, you know,
hoping to sort of lure out the older brother while
the younger one was in jail, and Adam Worth did,
in fact, in the meantime set about trying to get
(02:34):
his brother out of jail, though he didn't just come
out in the open. He was a little sneakier about it.
Though by this time it was tough because though he
had enough cash on hand for bail, the law at
the time stipulated that the bondsman must be a gentleman
of good reputation. So where was Worth going to find
someone willing to post bond and put his reputation on
the line for a guy who was just obviously going
(02:55):
to jump bail and high tail it back to the
States immediately. So in late May Worth is pondering this
very problem when he goes by some art galleries on
Old Bond Street, and one of them, Agnew and Company,
was staging an exhibition and crowds and carriages were all
gathered on the street. Just days before, the gallery had
bought a gains for a portrait of Georgeiane, a Duchess
(03:18):
of Devonshire at auction, paying the highest amount ever paid
for an English painting. It's the equivalent of about six
hundred thousand dollars today. So when Worth went in to
see this famous work of art, he was struck by
an idea. If he stole the picture, he could force
its owner, Thomas Agnew, to postpond for his younger brother
(03:38):
in exchange for a return of the painting, so basically
ransoming the painting in the form of a bond instead
of just straight cash or something like that. So pretty
soon after he gets this idea, he goes back to
the gallery with two accomplices and Worth had himself hoisted
to the second floor window allege Pride open the window
(03:59):
with a crowbar, cut the portrait from its frame very carefully,
you know. They police realized later that whoever did it
barely damage the painting at all, and then rolled it
all up, taking care not to crack the surface. Of course,
with this high price that the painting had just sold for,
the theft created a sensation, and it was partly because
(04:20):
it wasn't the first time the painting had gone missing. Yeah,
Gainsborough painted Georgiana, previous podcast subject known for her political action,
her trend setting, and her affair with Charles Gray. He
had painted her several times during her life, but this
particular Georgiana, with her trademark broad brimmed hat and feathers
sometimes called a Gainsborough hat and a suggestive pound, is
(04:42):
quite different from the other ones. According to Ben McEntire's
biography of Worth, the Napoleon of Crime, The Life and
Times of Adam Worth, Master Thief, which we mentioned in
the previous podcast, the painting first disappeared right around the
time Georgiana got pregnant by Gray, about seventeen ninety two
or so. Then about fifty years after that, it mysteriously
(05:03):
popped up in the home of a retired school mistress
who had chopped off for Georgana's legs so that the
painting would fit over her fireplace. An art dealer learned
that this woman might have some rare paintings, and um
swung By decided he wanted to buy it, purchased the
painting off the woman, and then sold it to his
(05:23):
friend When Ellis. When Ellis died, he left his entire
impressive art collection to the National Gallery, which kept the
old school stuff and put the more modern items, including
the gains for up at auction. So today it may
be hard for some people to imagine a painting causing
quite such a stir, but women began imitating Georgana's hats.
(05:45):
Art critics debated about whether it was really a gain Sbura,
and people wondered whether the sitter was actually the other
Duchess of Devonshire, and that's the Duke's second wife who
had lived with him in Georgiana for years. In Managois. Yeah,
people were suggesting all of this and saying, oh, maybe
Agney paid too much because it's not really a Gainsbrow,
or it's not really georg Jane. Somebody were not as
(06:06):
interested in So it was a big public hullabaloo, and
Worth stuffed only added to that sensation. McEntyre sites one
newspaper's tongue in cheek suggestion that the thief had promoted
both art and history by stealing the work. Quote, he
was an apostle of culture. So that's a pretty funny
way to look at it, and I'm sure that's not
(06:27):
how Agney saw it after losing his valuable investment. But
fortunately Worth had never intended to sell the painting because
the attention would have made it impossible with everybody talking
about the theft and George, Jana and Gainsborough. But his
reason for stealing it vanished anyway because John Worth lawyer
had secured his release and big brother Adam quickly packed
(06:50):
John up, sent him home and had him promise, don't
come back here and don't get into crime again, because
they're not very good at it. So what do you
do with a painting like this that you've stolen and
you certainly can't fell, and you certainly can't display. I
mean probably a lot of art thieves would unfortunately have
destroyed such an incriminating item. But fortunately for for us
(07:12):
in the world, Worth instead fell in love with his
painting and lovingly took care of it. When he was
at home, he kept it stored flat under his mattress
between boards. When on the move, he carried it and
especially made false bottomed trunk so that his lady was
always on his arm, so to speak. But the attachment
wasn't without cost. Worth wound up blackmailed by his two
(07:35):
accomplices in the theft, though neither could really do much
about it since they didn't know where the painting was.
When Worth moved back to New York City to escape
the increased surveillance of John Shore. He did attempt to
sell the work back to Agnew Corresponding through secret advertisements
in the London Times, but the half hearted negotiations actually
(07:55):
fell through when Worth refused to go to London to
deliver the painting and the dealers refused to send a
representative to the States. Well, and it really kind of
seemed at this point like Worth wanted to keep the
painting for himself, and but that just really did become
even more important for him when his flesh and blood
love Kitty Flynn, who had talked about a lot in
the last podcast, divorce Bullard and married Juan Pedro Terry,
(08:19):
who was an extraordinarily rich half Irish son of a
sugar planter. And you know, with this marriage and her
all her new money and her society cachet, she became
a New York society matron who would travel with her husband,
spend excessively, amuse herself with some kind of frivolous lawsuits,
(08:40):
really kind of assuming the position she had tried to
attain her entire life. So for Worth, it was definitely
time for new pastures. It was time to get something
else going, but he couldn't get it going right away.
He couldn't form a new trustworthy gang for one thing,
and his nemesis Max shan burned crimes kept being mistaken
as his own. In eight he decided to go to
(09:02):
Cape Town, South Africa, quote partly on business, partly for pleasure.
He bought a hunting coat for his duchess. I mean,
that's just it's pretty weird, taking it to another level.
I mean it's one thing to travel around with her everywhere,
but he bought her a nice coat, started buying her clothes,
wrapped her up and left. Expecting the diamond fields would
(09:22):
make a great target for him. So in order to
move around South Africa without attracting suspicion, he got into
the Ostrich feather business, which was really booming at the time,
coincidentally because of Georgiana and her big hat trend with
big feathers, you know, it had really caught on with
the ladies of the era, and so Worth pretended like
(09:44):
he was in the Ostrich feather business and he'd go
out to visit Ostrich farms and visit agents feather agents,
and this gave him kind of a past to move
around the country without people taking notice. Of course, he
was really studying the path of diamonds from mind to coast,
how the rough gems got out of the mind, how
they travel in armed coaches and reach outbound ships just
(10:09):
as the ships were about to sail. So these diamond
heavy boats didn't have to linger too long. So Worth,
with accomplished Charlie king In another recruit, decided that a
hold up would be the way to go. Here sounds
like a bad plan for Worth, though, whose motto was
quote a man with brains has no right to carry firearms.
There was always away in a better way by the
(10:31):
quick exercise of the brain. He of course ended up
being shot at and had to abandon the attempt, and
the next plan was more of a master criminal style
did more Worth style. So working alone this time, Worth
spent months studying the convoys of coaches and realized that
if the slightest thing went wrong on the trip, the
diamond shipment would miss the boat. When this happened, the
(10:53):
stones would be locked up in the Port Elizabeth post office.
So Worth made friends with the assistant postmass, eventually copying
his keys in wax. From there he delayed a shipment
by cutting a ferry rope and robbed the post office
of five hundred thousand dollars worth of diamonds. So here
he is. He's back in the game, and big diamond
(11:14):
back in the game. So in the last episode we
talked about or It's double identity as the respectable, comfortable
Henry Raymond. But with all of this new diamond wealth,
Worth or Raymond rather re established himself in London and
put on even more of a gentlemanly show than he
had before. He bought a coastal house in Brighton, he
(11:36):
purchased land for hunting. He'd take these elaborate trips to
Monte Carlo and Gamble. He grew a bush here, more
impressive mustache, and put on a little bit of weight.
And he got married to his wife, whose name is
unfortunately unknown, was the daughter of a gentlewoman widow who
Worth had lodged with at one point, and um he
(11:56):
sort of took on the widow's children as his wards
and hated them, and then ended up marrying the eldest daughter. Mr.
And Mrs Worth had a sunborn in eight eight and
a daughter born in eight Although the really strange thing
about all of this is that Worth kept his criminal
life completely secret from them. I mean a real contrast
to his relationship with Kitty, where she was very much
(12:19):
part of heart of the plane what he was doing.
Mrs Worth didn't know who her husband was at all.
But Worth didn't flat out retire. Even Shinburne said of him, quote,
Raymond loved his work for its own sake, and although
he lived in luxury and style, applied his energies to
the last and organizing crimes. He did make a concession
to married life though. It was a time to move
(12:41):
his lady friend Georgiana out of the house. Worth crossed
the Atlantic with his false bottom trunk and store the
Duchess in a Brooklyn warehouse. He had a pretty close
call along the way to He was actually stopped by
police in Canada who found diamonds and undeclared cash on
his person, but they did not find the That would
have been quite a fine. So on every trip Worth
(13:03):
would make after this to the States over the next
six years or so, he would always move the painting
to a new storage facility, you know, really taking a
lot of trouble to make sure it was secret and
nobody knew he had it. The eighties were clearly worth heyday,
but the first step in his ultimate downfall happened as
(13:25):
early as eighteen eighty four. Bullard, his old best friend,
was out of jail, very sick by this point and
really not so great at crime anymore. He was no
longer the ace burglar that he used to be. Bullard, though,
was still looking for work, so he teamed up with
shin Burn to stage heist in Liege, Belgium. The two
(13:46):
of them got busted in the middle of the crime.
It was really poorly carried out, and Worth took it
upon himself to try to help out his friend Bullard,
you know, get him out of prison like the Constantinople incident.
Though it was not easy, and ultimately the best Worth
could do is get messages to Bullard, get him some
extra food, um, just trying to make his old friend
(14:07):
a little more comfortable. Finally, though, after Bullard was in
prison for seven years, shouldn't burn too, of course, but
Worth didn't much care about him being there. After Bullard
was there for seven years, Worth decided that he really
needed to make some kind of last ditch attempt to
get his buddy out, you know, maybe even breaking out
of prison, because Bullard was clearly by this point dying.
(14:30):
By the time Worth got to Liege, Bullard was already dead,
but for some reason, Worth decided to stage a reckless
crime while he was in town, robbing one of the
vans that brought money into the city. Along with two accomplices,
Worth planned the high Swell but got greedy while at
emptying the van's lock box of money and packages. His
lookouts fled and he was spotted by a railway employee
(14:52):
and was chased down by the police. Once caught, he
tried to bluff his way out as Edward grow but
police found cards id to find him as Henry Raymond.
He thoroughly confused them with stories about being a German mechanic,
being a former thief but one who hadn't stolen in
two years, being a diamond salesman. But he finally messed
(15:13):
up when he said, quote, if you knew the truth,
I would be put away in prison for eternity. Okay,
So that set off the morning for the authority. This
guy who's already told them a million different stories and
given them two different names. Um, so clearly this prisoner
was somebody, but they didn't know who he was, and
there was even some suspicion that he might be a
(15:35):
spy because, unfortunately for Worth, some of those packages he
had grabbed up from the van happened to contain state papers. Whoops,
you know, a little more heat than he was anticipating.
So still, though the authority's information on him was overall
pretty sketchy, and Worth thought that he might be able
to get off easy until Max shin Burned, his old nemesis,
(15:56):
and of course, still in the local jail, wrote a
that are spilling the beans completely pretty much listed everything
Worth had ever done since the Civil War. Actually a
little more than that, because he kind of made him
out to be a really nasty criminal, you know, one
who betrayed his friends, not really sticking much to worth
real personality. All of the international authorities in the know
(16:19):
about Adam Worth, Henry Raymond and the career of this
man who was obviously one person backed up the tail
to accept notably remember this one the Pinkerton's who didn't
have anything to say about this, these allegations from Max Shinburn,
even though arguably they knew the most about Worth than anyone,
(16:40):
or more about him than anyone. Still. Worth story became
international news, and he began receiving coded messages from his
friends around the world. They would message him as comedian
or Edward Grow. That's the best one, Edward Grow. That
must have really confused the people in the prisons he
had blamed to be Edward Grow exactly. Also ter boys,
(17:00):
who turned out to be the now widowed Kitty, offering
encouragement and even money. His lawyer advised him to confess
to the liege robbery but deny all the other crimes,
but it didn't work. After his March trial, Worth was
found guilty and sentenced to seven years of solitary confinement
with hard labor at the Prison de louvan. So prison
(17:23):
was particularly bad for Worth because Shinburne was still there,
and shinburn had been there for a very long time
and had gotten quite powerful and actually consequently, Worth did
not learn of Shinburne's treachery until he was in jail.
When he found out, he was understandably quite upset. Also,
Worth's family fell apart while he was in prison. We
(17:45):
mentioned that he hadn't told his wife, his kids didn't
know what his real job was. Mrs Raymond learned about
her husband's true identity in the newspaper and just completely
flipped out. Johnny Curtain, who was the associate Worth had
asked with looking out from Mrs Raymond and the kids,
came to her aid, but unfortunately he came comforting her
(18:06):
with laudanum and alcohol and ultimately seduced her and then
stole everything she had the yacht, uh sold off the
houses and pocketed the money from that and then just disappeared.
So Mrs Raymond, you know, now completely abandoned, not sure
what her life is really about, and broke wound up
in an asylum, and the two kids were sent off
(18:28):
to Brooklyn to live with John Worth, who had kept
his promise and had stayed out of criminal activities. And
John Worth's wife also just some other sad things happened
while he was in prison. It was a really dark
period for where marm Mandelbaum, who we mentioned in the
previous podcast, who had given Worth kind of his first break,
(18:48):
she died. Kitty also died at only forty one years
of age, and news officially broke that the famous missing
Duchess might be in Worth's control. Worth's great secret. How
did that get out. Well, we're about to talk about that.
It's actually that story published in the Palmell Gazette only
months after Worth went to jail that likely influenced Arthur
Conan Doyle's creation of Professor Moriarty. Worth had been duped
(19:12):
by a freelance reporter posing as a solicitor into discussing
the Duchess. Their conversation was published as an interviewer confession
of sorts and was reprinted in countless periodicals with a
heavy dose of skepticism about whether it was true or not.
Worth battled back by granting a real exclusive interview, playing
the whole thing off as a joke. He had just
(19:33):
wanted to kind of green up the reporter by spinning tales,
and it sounded good enough for fiction that whether this
story was true or not, because by December, Professor Moriarty
debuted and died in the final problem of course, you know,
if you're familiar with the character, he's not a complete
(19:54):
match for his real life counterpart Moriarty. It's tall and thin,
he's eat creepy, you know, he's stages murders, that sort
of thing. Whereas, of course, as we know, Worth did
not like violence. Um, and some inspiration probably came from
a few other sources. You know, Conan Doyle wasn't relying exclusively. Unworth.
(20:15):
McIntyre suggests Conan Doyle's friend Major General Drayson Friedrich Nietzsche
and the crooks George Moriarty and Jonathan Wilde may have
been inspirations. But in a conversation with Dr Gray Chandler Briggs,
Conan Doyle did cite Worth as his inspiration. And it's
pretty obvious too if you read the character. There's some
clear parallels between them. But moving back to the main
(20:38):
the real life guy in Or was released early from
prison for good behavior. He was fifty three years old
by this point. He was broke. He was really sick.
He hadn't had good medical care in prison, but he
still was in possession of the Duchess. He hadn't given
that Trump card up and he was hoping that maybe
(20:58):
it would help him reclaim his kids. So he said
about negotiating a return of the painting. But instead of
inquiring directly with ag Knew, as he had the last
go round, Worth instead brought in an intermediary named Patrick
Sheety to seek out William Pinkerton to be the main
go between, and you can really see a lot of
Pinkerton's public image, you know, the the face he put
(21:22):
out to the world and his agency's pamphlet on Worth
that we've mentioned a few times now, But McIntyre's book
also hints at kind of a more complicated detective, especially
later in life. Pinkerton took a lot of real genuine
interest in the men he had hunted or put into jail.
He almost got along with them better than he did
with people on his side of the law. So Worth
(21:44):
in Pinkerton had met a way before this, way back
in the American bar days in Paris. But Worth had
infinitely more respect for him than he had for guys
like John Shore of Scotland Yard or for other agencies.
I mean, partly because they were clearly the only people
who really knew anything about him, and he felt like
the Pinkerton's had helped him out a little bit when
(22:04):
he was in trouble in Belgium. He especially respected the
Pinkerton's strange silence during his Belgian arrest after some bluffing
on both sides, I mean, William Pinkerton, he didn't want
to seem like he was doing anything shady to Scotland Yard,
in particular the criminal and the detective. They opened up talks.
Worth actually visited pinkerton Chicago office January twelve and basically
(22:27):
told his whole story. He told Pinkerton quote, now I
am placing myself entirely in your hands. I have never
done it with a human being before, but I have
implicit confidence in your word that you and yours will
not take advantage of what I say. They talked all
day and into the night, and they met the next
day and the day after that, and they of course
(22:47):
discussed the Duchess. Worth told Pinkerton that he was sick
and that the lady should return home, but they also
discussed his career and his life and just kind of
talking about everything Worth had done. And as soon as
this epic interview was over, Pinkerton wrote the entire thing down.
This is, I mean pretty apparently the basis for the
(23:07):
pamphlet that we've been discussing. And then and maybe like
the cutest thing that could happen, he arranged for a
fox terrier puppy to be sent to Worth kids, kind
of almost to cement this trusting relationship they were going
to have together so still, though, even though Worth trusted
Pinkerton and vice versa, negotiations really did take a long time.
(23:30):
The Duchess wasn't returned until nineteen o one, when Seymoreland Agnew,
who was Sir William Agnew's son, took a ship to
the United States and collected it. And it's unknown how
much exactly he paid. But the really strange thing about
the delivery is that while Worth turned the painting over,
you know, he kept hit side of the deal, he
(23:51):
didn't entirely give it up because he was almost certainly
a passenger aboard Agnew's ship back to England in heavy disguise.
I think that's a little bit it creepy. I don't know.
He had ideas about taking it back and decided that
it would be better to have his kids than the painting.
At this point, well, it was almost like he just
didn't want to be separated from it. He needed to
(24:13):
at least go back home with her. J pre pomp,
Morgan bought the picture from the Agnew family, beating out
Senator William Clark of Montana, who was huge at Clark's
father We Talked Together podcast subject. Morgan didn't display the
painting outside of his home, and after his death his
children kept it. When his last grandchild died in it
was taken from her New York City apartment and auctioned
(24:34):
at Southby's, London, where it was purchased by none other
than the Duke of Devonshire. So it really did finally
go home after all of those years away, what seventeen
nine two or something like that until timee So with
some of that money though, from the painting's return, Worth
was able to buy off his sister in law, who
was sort of holding his kid's hostage almost by this point,
(24:56):
in order to get some money out of him. Um
the kid moved to England to live with their father.
They lived in London together for a short time, with
Worth and Pinkerton, of course still corresponding regularly. On January
nine two, actually, just a few days after Morgan had
taken the Duchess back to New York City, Worth died
(25:17):
at fifty six years of age. His teenage son, Harry
Raymond Jr. That's, you know, obviously a completely made up name,
moved back to America with his sister and then Pinkerton.
I mean that relationship that Worth forged with him at
the end really did pay off for his kids because
Pinkerton helped arrange work for the boy. He secretly passed
along the proceeds from the agency's pamphlet on Worth to
(25:41):
the two kids, and eventually he even gave worth son
a job with the detective firm. So there you go.
You know, Adam Worth Junior essentially working for the Pinkerton
an interesting twist. Conan Doyle also revisited the character Moriarty,
setting the Valley of Fear before the Final Problem so
that he could focus on Sherlock's nemesis again. According to
(26:02):
the Economist, people still reenact the death battle from the
Final Problem, and as we mentioned in the first part
of this podcast, it looks like Moriarty will play a
major part in the new Sherlock Holmes reboot. Definitely. I
mean we've only seen the first season, but he was
suggested pretty heavily that last episode throughout and then at
the end it was it was pretty clear that's going
(26:23):
to be in it, So I guess um listeners in
England don't don't spoil season two for us. But um
worth legacy, of course, isn't just the skull headed psycho
character of Moriarty, though, because in nineteen thirty nine T. S.
Elliott included a very Moriarty like character called the Mystery
(26:43):
Cat in his Old Possums Book of Practical Cats, which
coincidentally was the inspiration for the musical Cats. I mean,
I just think this is like the most hilarious outcome
for for a guy like Adam Worth. That's one connection
I would not make. I think I'm really going to
have to pick up a copy now two of Old
Possum's Book of Practical Cats. But we have one somewhere. Well,
(27:04):
do you have to bring it to work and let
me borrow because it looks pretty funny. I'll do that. Well,
this is all we have for the Saga of Adam Worth.
But I'm so glad that we did it. We've had
so many requests for it ever since, as you mentioned,
ever since we did the Sherlock Holmes episode. Um. And
it's one that you can't find a ton of articles on, strangely,
(27:27):
and it really a lot of it is based on
that biography or the Pinkerton pamphlet, which has kind of
a strange twisted view of the story because Pinkerton is
a law man, you know, he's got to put that
face forward for everybody. It's got to be like, this
is a bad criminal and we need to talk about
him that way. But he clearly cared for Worth too,
and sort of brushes over certain aspects of his life. Well,
(27:51):
I think both through McIntyre's biography and through that, we
got to see a little bit of the human side
of Worth two. It wasn't all just crime, and that's
definitely so I love doing these literary inspiration episodes. So
if any of you have more suggestions for those, you know,
people real life biographies who inspired the creation of some
(28:14):
literary character, I'd love to hear some of those. You
could email us at History Podcast at Discovery dot com,
or you could post on our Facebook or our Twitter
account at mist in History. And if you want to
learn a little bit more about some of the topics
we talked about today, like art theft, for example, we
(28:35):
have an article on our website called how could someone
Steal a Painting from a museum? And you can find
that by checking out our home page at www dot
house stuff works dot com. Be sure to check out
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has a rise. Download it today on iTunes, e
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from works
dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Sara
Downey and I'm Deblin and Charkerboarding And when we left
off last time. The German Jewish immigrant Adam Worth had
died in the American Civil War, supposedly and gone on
(00:24):
to become a successful criminal mastermind, and had over time
accumulated all the trappings of an upper class British lifestyle
as Henry Judson Raymond manif leisure, including the nice clothes,
the posh accent, the yacht you know, really everything. But
after a disastrous eighteen seventy four forgery attempt in Constantinople,
(00:46):
Worth found himself safe but without a gang, and broke
from trying to buy their freedom. To add to his woes,
his longtime love and the mother of his children, Kittie Flynn,
had left for America, and his best friend, piano Charlie Bullard,
Kitty's estranged husband, had been arrested for a robbery committed
years earlier. Worth did eventually rebound from this, though The
(01:09):
Pinkerton's called him quote the most remarkable, most successful, and
most dangerous professional criminal known to modern times, and he
of course eventually inspired Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's character Professor Moriarty,
the arch nemesis of Sherlott Holmes, but at this point
in his career he was down and out and heartbroken
to boot. Then, as if things couldn't get worse, in
(01:30):
eighteen seventy six, Worth's criminally incompetent younger brother arrives in
town looking for work. So John Worth shared his older
brother's criminal tendencies, but none of his talents that we've
already learned from Pinkerton's Detective Agency's pamphlet on Worth Life,
which is an excellent source of information on him. By
(01:50):
the way, Worth quote never forsook a friend or accomplice,
and for him, that of course meant putting his brother
to work on easy jobs with a lot out of supervision,
very strict instructions, you know, so he wouldn't mess it up.
John Worth, though, really couldn't manage even the most straightforward job,
and found himself arrested in Paris were trying to pass
(02:12):
counterfeit notes. John Sure, the Chief Inspector of Scotland Yard,
the guy who had been hunting Adam Worth without success
for years, jumped on this, he had the younger were
extraditeed into England and charged him with forger, you know,
hoping to sort of lure out the older brother while
the younger one was in jail, and Adam Worth did,
in fact, in the meantime set about trying to get
(02:34):
his brother out of jail, though he didn't just come
out in the open. He was a little sneakier about it.
Though by this time it was tough because though he
had enough cash on hand for bail, the law at
the time stipulated that the bondsman must be a gentleman
of good reputation. So where was Worth going to find
someone willing to post bond and put his reputation on
the line for a guy who was just obviously going
(02:55):
to jump bail and high tail it back to the
States immediately. So in late May Worth is pondering this
very problem when he goes by some art galleries on
Old Bond Street, and one of them, Agnew and Company,
was staging an exhibition and crowds and carriages were all
gathered on the street. Just days before, the gallery had
bought a gains for a portrait of Georgeiane, a Duchess
(03:18):
of Devonshire at auction, paying the highest amount ever paid
for an English painting. It's the equivalent of about six
hundred thousand dollars today. So when Worth went in to
see this famous work of art, he was struck by
an idea. If he stole the picture, he could force
its owner, Thomas Agnew, to postpond for his younger brother
(03:38):
in exchange for a return of the painting, so basically
ransoming the painting in the form of a bond instead
of just straight cash or something like that. So pretty
soon after he gets this idea, he goes back to
the gallery with two accomplices and Worth had himself hoisted
to the second floor window allege Pride open the window
(03:59):
with a crowbar, cut the portrait from its frame very carefully,
you know. They police realized later that whoever did it
barely damage the painting at all, and then rolled it
all up, taking care not to crack the surface. Of course,
with this high price that the painting had just sold for,
the theft created a sensation, and it was partly because
(04:20):
it wasn't the first time the painting had gone missing. Yeah,
Gainsborough painted Georgiana, previous podcast subject known for her political action,
her trend setting, and her affair with Charles Gray. He
had painted her several times during her life, but this
particular Georgiana, with her trademark broad brimmed hat and feathers
sometimes called a Gainsborough hat and a suggestive pound, is
(04:42):
quite different from the other ones. According to Ben McEntire's
biography of Worth, the Napoleon of Crime, The Life and
Times of Adam Worth, Master Thief, which we mentioned in
the previous podcast, the painting first disappeared right around the
time Georgiana got pregnant by Gray, about seventeen ninety two
or so. Then about fifty years after that, it mysteriously
(05:03):
popped up in the home of a retired school mistress
who had chopped off for Georgana's legs so that the
painting would fit over her fireplace. An art dealer learned
that this woman might have some rare paintings, and um
swung By decided he wanted to buy it, purchased the
painting off the woman, and then sold it to his
(05:23):
friend When Ellis. When Ellis died, he left his entire
impressive art collection to the National Gallery, which kept the
old school stuff and put the more modern items, including
the gains for up at auction. So today it may
be hard for some people to imagine a painting causing
quite such a stir, but women began imitating Georgana's hats.
(05:45):
Art critics debated about whether it was really a gain Sbura,
and people wondered whether the sitter was actually the other
Duchess of Devonshire, and that's the Duke's second wife who
had lived with him in Georgiana for years. In Managois. Yeah,
people were suggesting all of this and saying, oh, maybe
Agney paid too much because it's not really a Gainsbrow,
or it's not really georg Jane. Somebody were not as
(06:06):
interested in So it was a big public hullabaloo, and
Worth stuffed only added to that sensation. McEntyre sites one
newspaper's tongue in cheek suggestion that the thief had promoted
both art and history by stealing the work. Quote, he
was an apostle of culture. So that's a pretty funny
way to look at it, and I'm sure that's not
(06:27):
how Agney saw it after losing his valuable investment. But
fortunately Worth had never intended to sell the painting because
the attention would have made it impossible with everybody talking
about the theft and George, Jana and Gainsborough. But his
reason for stealing it vanished anyway because John Worth lawyer
had secured his release and big brother Adam quickly packed
(06:50):
John up, sent him home and had him promise, don't
come back here and don't get into crime again, because
they're not very good at it. So what do you
do with a painting like this that you've stolen and
you certainly can't fell, and you certainly can't display. I
mean probably a lot of art thieves would unfortunately have
destroyed such an incriminating item. But fortunately for for us
(07:12):
in the world, Worth instead fell in love with his
painting and lovingly took care of it. When he was
at home, he kept it stored flat under his mattress
between boards. When on the move, he carried it and
especially made false bottomed trunk so that his lady was
always on his arm, so to speak. But the attachment
wasn't without cost. Worth wound up blackmailed by his two
(07:35):
accomplices in the theft, though neither could really do much
about it since they didn't know where the painting was.
When Worth moved back to New York City to escape
the increased surveillance of John Shore. He did attempt to
sell the work back to Agnew Corresponding through secret advertisements
in the London Times, but the half hearted negotiations actually
(07:55):
fell through when Worth refused to go to London to
deliver the painting and the dealers refused to send a
representative to the States. Well, and it really kind of
seemed at this point like Worth wanted to keep the
painting for himself, and but that just really did become
even more important for him when his flesh and blood
love Kitty Flynn, who had talked about a lot in
the last podcast, divorce Bullard and married Juan Pedro Terry,
(08:19):
who was an extraordinarily rich half Irish son of a
sugar planter. And you know, with this marriage and her
all her new money and her society cachet, she became
a New York society matron who would travel with her husband,
spend excessively, amuse herself with some kind of frivolous lawsuits,
(08:40):
really kind of assuming the position she had tried to
attain her entire life. So for Worth, it was definitely
time for new pastures. It was time to get something
else going, but he couldn't get it going right away.
He couldn't form a new trustworthy gang for one thing,
and his nemesis Max shan burned crimes kept being mistaken
as his own. In eight he decided to go to
(09:02):
Cape Town, South Africa, quote partly on business, partly for pleasure.
He bought a hunting coat for his duchess. I mean,
that's just it's pretty weird, taking it to another level.
I mean it's one thing to travel around with her everywhere,
but he bought her a nice coat, started buying her clothes,
wrapped her up and left. Expecting the diamond fields would
(09:22):
make a great target for him. So in order to
move around South Africa without attracting suspicion, he got into
the Ostrich feather business, which was really booming at the time,
coincidentally because of Georgiana and her big hat trend with
big feathers, you know, it had really caught on with
the ladies of the era, and so Worth pretended like
(09:44):
he was in the Ostrich feather business and he'd go
out to visit Ostrich farms and visit agents feather agents,
and this gave him kind of a past to move
around the country without people taking notice. Of course, he
was really studying the path of diamonds from mind to coast,
how the rough gems got out of the mind, how
they travel in armed coaches and reach outbound ships just
(10:09):
as the ships were about to sail. So these diamond
heavy boats didn't have to linger too long. So Worth,
with accomplished Charlie king In another recruit, decided that a
hold up would be the way to go. Here sounds
like a bad plan for Worth, though, whose motto was
quote a man with brains has no right to carry firearms.
There was always away in a better way by the
(10:31):
quick exercise of the brain. He of course ended up
being shot at and had to abandon the attempt, and
the next plan was more of a master criminal style
did more Worth style. So working alone this time, Worth
spent months studying the convoys of coaches and realized that
if the slightest thing went wrong on the trip, the
diamond shipment would miss the boat. When this happened, the
(10:53):
stones would be locked up in the Port Elizabeth post office.
So Worth made friends with the assistant postmass, eventually copying
his keys in wax. From there he delayed a shipment
by cutting a ferry rope and robbed the post office
of five hundred thousand dollars worth of diamonds. So here
he is. He's back in the game, and big diamond
(11:14):
back in the game. So in the last episode we
talked about or It's double identity as the respectable, comfortable
Henry Raymond. But with all of this new diamond wealth,
Worth or Raymond rather re established himself in London and
put on even more of a gentlemanly show than he
had before. He bought a coastal house in Brighton, he
(11:36):
purchased land for hunting. He'd take these elaborate trips to
Monte Carlo and Gamble. He grew a bush here, more
impressive mustache, and put on a little bit of weight.
And he got married to his wife, whose name is
unfortunately unknown, was the daughter of a gentlewoman widow who
Worth had lodged with at one point, and um he
(11:56):
sort of took on the widow's children as his wards
and hated them, and then ended up marrying the eldest daughter. Mr.
And Mrs Worth had a sunborn in eight eight and
a daughter born in eight Although the really strange thing
about all of this is that Worth kept his criminal
life completely secret from them. I mean a real contrast
to his relationship with Kitty, where she was very much
(12:19):
part of heart of the plane what he was doing.
Mrs Worth didn't know who her husband was at all.
But Worth didn't flat out retire. Even Shinburne said of him, quote,
Raymond loved his work for its own sake, and although
he lived in luxury and style, applied his energies to
the last and organizing crimes. He did make a concession
to married life though. It was a time to move
(12:41):
his lady friend Georgiana out of the house. Worth crossed
the Atlantic with his false bottom trunk and store the
Duchess in a Brooklyn warehouse. He had a pretty close
call along the way to He was actually stopped by
police in Canada who found diamonds and undeclared cash on
his person, but they did not find the That would
have been quite a fine. So on every trip Worth
(13:03):
would make after this to the States over the next
six years or so, he would always move the painting
to a new storage facility, you know, really taking a
lot of trouble to make sure it was secret and
nobody knew he had it. The eighties were clearly worth heyday,
but the first step in his ultimate downfall happened as
(13:25):
early as eighteen eighty four. Bullard, his old best friend,
was out of jail, very sick by this point and
really not so great at crime anymore. He was no
longer the ace burglar that he used to be. Bullard, though,
was still looking for work, so he teamed up with
shin Burn to stage heist in Liege, Belgium. The two
(13:46):
of them got busted in the middle of the crime.
It was really poorly carried out, and Worth took it
upon himself to try to help out his friend Bullard,
you know, get him out of prison like the Constantinople incident.
Though it was not easy, and ultimately the best Worth
could do is get messages to Bullard, get him some
extra food, um, just trying to make his old friend
(14:07):
a little more comfortable. Finally, though, after Bullard was in
prison for seven years, shouldn't burn too, of course, but
Worth didn't much care about him being there. After Bullard
was there for seven years, Worth decided that he really
needed to make some kind of last ditch attempt to
get his buddy out, you know, maybe even breaking out
of prison, because Bullard was clearly by this point dying.
(14:30):
By the time Worth got to Liege, Bullard was already dead,
but for some reason, Worth decided to stage a reckless
crime while he was in town, robbing one of the
vans that brought money into the city. Along with two accomplices,
Worth planned the high Swell but got greedy while at
emptying the van's lock box of money and packages. His
lookouts fled and he was spotted by a railway employee
(14:52):
and was chased down by the police. Once caught, he
tried to bluff his way out as Edward grow but
police found cards id to find him as Henry Raymond.
He thoroughly confused them with stories about being a German mechanic,
being a former thief but one who hadn't stolen in
two years, being a diamond salesman. But he finally messed
(15:13):
up when he said, quote, if you knew the truth,
I would be put away in prison for eternity. Okay,
So that set off the morning for the authority. This
guy who's already told them a million different stories and
given them two different names. Um, so clearly this prisoner
was somebody, but they didn't know who he was, and
there was even some suspicion that he might be a
(15:35):
spy because, unfortunately for Worth, some of those packages he
had grabbed up from the van happened to contain state papers. Whoops,
you know, a little more heat than he was anticipating.
So still, though the authority's information on him was overall
pretty sketchy, and Worth thought that he might be able
to get off easy until Max shin Burned, his old nemesis,
(15:56):
and of course, still in the local jail, wrote a
that are spilling the beans completely pretty much listed everything
Worth had ever done since the Civil War. Actually a
little more than that, because he kind of made him
out to be a really nasty criminal, you know, one
who betrayed his friends, not really sticking much to worth
real personality. All of the international authorities in the know
(16:19):
about Adam Worth, Henry Raymond and the career of this
man who was obviously one person backed up the tail
to accept notably remember this one the Pinkerton's who didn't
have anything to say about this, these allegations from Max Shinburn,
even though arguably they knew the most about Worth than anyone,
(16:40):
or more about him than anyone. Still. Worth story became
international news, and he began receiving coded messages from his
friends around the world. They would message him as comedian
or Edward Grow. That's the best one, Edward Grow. That
must have really confused the people in the prisons he
had blamed to be Edward Grow exactly. Also ter boys,
(17:00):
who turned out to be the now widowed Kitty, offering
encouragement and even money. His lawyer advised him to confess
to the liege robbery but deny all the other crimes,
but it didn't work. After his March trial, Worth was
found guilty and sentenced to seven years of solitary confinement
with hard labor at the Prison de louvan. So prison
(17:23):
was particularly bad for Worth because Shinburne was still there,
and shinburn had been there for a very long time
and had gotten quite powerful and actually consequently, Worth did
not learn of Shinburne's treachery until he was in jail.
When he found out, he was understandably quite upset. Also,
Worth's family fell apart while he was in prison. We
(17:45):
mentioned that he hadn't told his wife, his kids didn't
know what his real job was. Mrs Raymond learned about
her husband's true identity in the newspaper and just completely
flipped out. Johnny Curtain, who was the associate Worth had
asked with looking out from Mrs Raymond and the kids,
came to her aid, but unfortunately he came comforting her
(18:06):
with laudanum and alcohol and ultimately seduced her and then
stole everything she had the yacht, uh sold off the
houses and pocketed the money from that and then just disappeared.
So Mrs Raymond, you know, now completely abandoned, not sure
what her life is really about, and broke wound up
in an asylum, and the two kids were sent off
(18:28):
to Brooklyn to live with John Worth, who had kept
his promise and had stayed out of criminal activities. And
John Worth's wife also just some other sad things happened
while he was in prison. It was a really dark
period for where marm Mandelbaum, who we mentioned in the
previous podcast, who had given Worth kind of his first break,
(18:48):
she died. Kitty also died at only forty one years
of age, and news officially broke that the famous missing
Duchess might be in Worth's control. Worth's great secret. How
did that get out. Well, we're about to talk about that.
It's actually that story published in the Palmell Gazette only
months after Worth went to jail that likely influenced Arthur
Conan Doyle's creation of Professor Moriarty. Worth had been duped
(19:12):
by a freelance reporter posing as a solicitor into discussing
the Duchess. Their conversation was published as an interviewer confession
of sorts and was reprinted in countless periodicals with a
heavy dose of skepticism about whether it was true or not.
Worth battled back by granting a real exclusive interview, playing
the whole thing off as a joke. He had just
(19:33):
wanted to kind of green up the reporter by spinning tales,
and it sounded good enough for fiction that whether this
story was true or not, because by December, Professor Moriarty
debuted and died in the final problem of course, you know,
if you're familiar with the character, he's not a complete
(19:54):
match for his real life counterpart Moriarty. It's tall and thin,
he's eat creepy, you know, he's stages murders, that sort
of thing. Whereas, of course, as we know, Worth did
not like violence. Um, and some inspiration probably came from
a few other sources. You know, Conan Doyle wasn't relying exclusively. Unworth.
(20:15):
McIntyre suggests Conan Doyle's friend Major General Drayson Friedrich Nietzsche
and the crooks George Moriarty and Jonathan Wilde may have
been inspirations. But in a conversation with Dr Gray Chandler Briggs,
Conan Doyle did cite Worth as his inspiration. And it's
pretty obvious too if you read the character. There's some
clear parallels between them. But moving back to the main
(20:38):
the real life guy in Or was released early from
prison for good behavior. He was fifty three years old
by this point. He was broke. He was really sick.
He hadn't had good medical care in prison, but he
still was in possession of the Duchess. He hadn't given
that Trump card up and he was hoping that maybe
(20:58):
it would help him reclaim his kids. So he said
about negotiating a return of the painting. But instead of
inquiring directly with ag Knew, as he had the last
go round, Worth instead brought in an intermediary named Patrick
Sheety to seek out William Pinkerton to be the main
go between, and you can really see a lot of
Pinkerton's public image, you know, the the face he put
(21:22):
out to the world and his agency's pamphlet on Worth
that we've mentioned a few times now, But McIntyre's book
also hints at kind of a more complicated detective, especially
later in life. Pinkerton took a lot of real genuine
interest in the men he had hunted or put into jail.
He almost got along with them better than he did
with people on his side of the law. So Worth
(21:44):
in Pinkerton had met a way before this, way back
in the American bar days in Paris. But Worth had
infinitely more respect for him than he had for guys
like John Shore of Scotland Yard or for other agencies.
I mean, partly because they were clearly the only people
who really knew anything about him, and he felt like
the Pinkerton's had helped him out a little bit when
(22:04):
he was in trouble in Belgium. He especially respected the
Pinkerton's strange silence during his Belgian arrest after some bluffing
on both sides, I mean, William Pinkerton, he didn't want
to seem like he was doing anything shady to Scotland Yard,
in particular the criminal and the detective. They opened up talks.
Worth actually visited pinkerton Chicago office January twelve and basically
(22:27):
told his whole story. He told Pinkerton quote, now I
am placing myself entirely in your hands. I have never
done it with a human being before, but I have
implicit confidence in your word that you and yours will
not take advantage of what I say. They talked all
day and into the night, and they met the next
day and the day after that, and they of course
(22:47):
discussed the Duchess. Worth told Pinkerton that he was sick
and that the lady should return home, but they also
discussed his career and his life and just kind of
talking about everything Worth had done. And as soon as
this epic interview was over, Pinkerton wrote the entire thing down.
This is, I mean pretty apparently the basis for the
(23:07):
pamphlet that we've been discussing. And then and maybe like
the cutest thing that could happen, he arranged for a
fox terrier puppy to be sent to Worth kids, kind
of almost to cement this trusting relationship they were going
to have together so still, though, even though Worth trusted
Pinkerton and vice versa, negotiations really did take a long time.
(23:30):
The Duchess wasn't returned until nineteen o one, when Seymoreland Agnew,
who was Sir William Agnew's son, took a ship to
the United States and collected it. And it's unknown how
much exactly he paid. But the really strange thing about
the delivery is that while Worth turned the painting over,
you know, he kept hit side of the deal, he
(23:51):
didn't entirely give it up because he was almost certainly
a passenger aboard Agnew's ship back to England in heavy disguise.
I think that's a little bit it creepy. I don't know.
He had ideas about taking it back and decided that
it would be better to have his kids than the painting.
At this point, well, it was almost like he just
didn't want to be separated from it. He needed to
(24:13):
at least go back home with her. J pre pomp,
Morgan bought the picture from the Agnew family, beating out
Senator William Clark of Montana, who was huge at Clark's
father We Talked Together podcast subject. Morgan didn't display the
painting outside of his home, and after his death his
children kept it. When his last grandchild died in it
was taken from her New York City apartment and auctioned
(24:34):
at Southby's, London, where it was purchased by none other
than the Duke of Devonshire. So it really did finally
go home after all of those years away, what seventeen
nine two or something like that until timee So with
some of that money though, from the painting's return, Worth
was able to buy off his sister in law, who
was sort of holding his kid's hostage almost by this point,
(24:56):
in order to get some money out of him. Um
the kid moved to England to live with their father.
They lived in London together for a short time, with
Worth and Pinkerton, of course still corresponding regularly. On January
nine two, actually, just a few days after Morgan had
taken the Duchess back to New York City, Worth died
(25:17):
at fifty six years of age. His teenage son, Harry
Raymond Jr. That's, you know, obviously a completely made up name,
moved back to America with his sister and then Pinkerton.
I mean that relationship that Worth forged with him at
the end really did pay off for his kids because
Pinkerton helped arrange work for the boy. He secretly passed
along the proceeds from the agency's pamphlet on Worth to
(25:41):
the two kids, and eventually he even gave worth son
a job with the detective firm. So there you go.
You know, Adam Worth Junior essentially working for the Pinkerton
an interesting twist. Conan Doyle also revisited the character Moriarty,
setting the Valley of Fear before the Final Problem so
that he could focus on Sherlock's nemesis again. According to
(26:02):
the Economist, people still reenact the death battle from the
Final Problem, and as we mentioned in the first part
of this podcast, it looks like Moriarty will play a
major part in the new Sherlock Holmes reboot. Definitely. I
mean we've only seen the first season, but he was
suggested pretty heavily that last episode throughout and then at
the end it was it was pretty clear that's going
(26:23):
to be in it, So I guess um listeners in
England don't don't spoil season two for us. But um
worth legacy, of course, isn't just the skull headed psycho
character of Moriarty, though, because in nineteen thirty nine T. S.
Elliott included a very Moriarty like character called the Mystery
(26:43):
Cat in his Old Possums Book of Practical Cats, which
coincidentally was the inspiration for the musical Cats. I mean,
I just think this is like the most hilarious outcome
for for a guy like Adam Worth. That's one connection
I would not make. I think I'm really going to
have to pick up a copy now two of Old
Possum's Book of Practical Cats. But we have one somewhere. Well,
(27:04):
do you have to bring it to work and let
me borrow because it looks pretty funny. I'll do that. Well,
this is all we have for the Saga of Adam Worth.
But I'm so glad that we did it. We've had
so many requests for it ever since, as you mentioned,
ever since we did the Sherlock Holmes episode. Um. And
it's one that you can't find a ton of articles on, strangely,
(27:27):
and it really a lot of it is based on
that biography or the Pinkerton pamphlet, which has kind of
a strange twisted view of the story because Pinkerton is
a law man, you know, he's got to put that
face forward for everybody. It's got to be like, this
is a bad criminal and we need to talk about
him that way. But he clearly cared for Worth too,
and sort of brushes over certain aspects of his life. Well,
(27:51):
I think both through McIntyre's biography and through that, we
got to see a little bit of the human side
of Worth two. It wasn't all just crime, and that's
definitely so I love doing these literary inspiration episodes. So
if any of you have more suggestions for those, you know,
people real life biographies who inspired the creation of some
(28:14):
literary character, I'd love to hear some of those. You
could email us at History Podcast at Discovery dot com,
or you could post on our Facebook or our Twitter
account at mist in History. And if you want to
learn a little bit more about some of the topics
we talked about today, like art theft, for example, we
(28:35):
have an article on our website called how could someone
Steal a Painting from a museum? And you can find
that by checking out our home page at www dot
house stuff works dot com. Be sure to check out
our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join how
Stuff Work staff as we explore the most promising and
perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. The House, Stuff Works, iPhone up
(28:59):
has a rise. Download it today on iTunes, e
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