“The Talented Mrs. Mandelbaum” by Margalit Fox, book review

Mandelbaum and her husband, Wolf, began life in America, as in Germany, as peddlers, living in a series of tenements in Little Germany on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, where streets were not always paved, sanitation was questionable, and disease ravaged families. By this time, the city’s population had swelled to 900,000. Robber barons were at the top of the social pyramid. Materialism was blatant. As the American middle class grew, so too did regulatory organizations. Doctors now had to obtain licenses. Lawyers now had to attend and graduate from real law schools and be recognized by the bar. Police departments for the first time began to codify and enforce codes of conduct for their new forces.

Mrs. Mandelbaum realized that the only way to survive was to peddle her trade, and that in her position she had very few options: being a laundress, maid, or prostitute was not her thing. Her goal was to make real money. “Here, at the intersection of thrift, property, class, and desire, Fredericka Mandelbaum found her calling,” Fox writes. She deftly circumvented rules as she climbed the socioeconomic ladder.

We’ve all heard of the “underworld,” of course, but Fox explains the opposite, the “upper world.” Her book examines how Mrs. Mandelbaum served as a link between these two worlds. Marm (sometimes called “Mother Mandelbaum”) had no interest in being a big shot in the seedy corners of the underworld. She took her place at the head of the table in brightly lit parlors where being a Jewish mother served her well.

By paying the right people, mentoring protégés, and being generous with her network of criminals—she paid expenses, posted bail, and constantly employed defense attorneys—Mandelbaum brought a level of professionalism to her illegal activities. She hosted company picnics and elegant parties. “There was a pleasure, a sense of solidarity and security in being a thief in the Mandelbaum syndicate,” Fox writes. For a time, her best thieves drew a regular salary.

By 1860, Mandelbaum had become a famous figure in New York. For one thing, her physical stature made her impossible to miss. At about six feet tall, Mandelbaum resembled “the product of a congenial liaison between a dumpling and a mountain,” Fox writes. For another, she was generous to her neighbors, philanthropic to her community, and a devoted member of the synagogue. Consequently, she was respected and revered, like the nice lady next door rather than a crime boss. And yet she was both. She was a thief who befriended the mayor, many judges, and police officers. She taught her shoplifters to dress appropriately to blend in with the crowd—whether they were spending an hour at Tiffany & Co. or posing as janitors at the Manhattan Savings Institution. She funded stakeouts and commissioned the manufacture of the best safecrackers imaginable.

As a child, this reviewer once stole a tiny pencil from the stationery store and felt so bad about her crime that she immediately confessed to her mother, who brought her back to apologize, ashamed and tearfully. The audacity of a crime lord like Ms. Mandelbaum blew me away. Fox, a longtime obituary writer for The New York Times and author of three previous books, including “The Confidence Men,” excels in telling a story full of historical detail; one sees the dawn of the modern era in America’s most important city.

Mandelbaum was a skilled manager. She “took great care to ensure that stolen goods were not delivered directly to her store.” Instead, she had them stored in one of the many houses she rented in and around the city. In her building at the corner of Clinton and Rivington Streets, she had a simple dry goods store—the front of the fence—as well as an “obliteration chamber” where workers freed gems from their settings, removed hallmarks from jewelry and silver, stripped maker identifications from bales of silk, and so on. There was a hidden fireplace, a trap door, a hidden living room where Mrs. Mandelbaum could spy on transactions, and a dormitory for thieves. Oh, and yes, the family apartment, where four children somehow grew up.

Mandelbaum, who “dressed simply but expensively, in flowing gowns of black, brown, or dark blue silk, with a sealskin cape over the top,” threw extravagant parties, inviting both the uptown genteel and the rogue elite. New Yorkers longed to be invited to these parties. (In 1991, New York gossip columnist Cindy Adams threw a birthday party for her husband, Borscht Belt comedian Joey Adams. The guest list included Leona Helmsley, Bess Myerson, and Imelda Marcos—all public figures tainted by scandal or crime. Joey Adams famously said, “If you’re impeached, you’re invited.” This was perhaps a less original idea than we thought.) By the mid-1870s, Marm Mandelbaum was the elusive mastermind on many impeachment reformers’ wish lists. But she was “rarely arrested,” and even when she was, her cases rarely went to court.

That changed, however, in 1884, when a man posing as a would-be fence learning at the feet of the master turned out to be a decoy working for the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. Allan Pinkerton, the eponymous founder, had protected President Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War. Unlike the various police agencies, Pinkerton agents had “full power to make arrests.” On July 22, Marm Mandelbaum was arrested by his son, Robert Pinkerton, at the behest of zealous District Attorney Peter B. Olney.

Mandelbaum, now a widow who had recruited her two sons to her business, was on trial in one of those “trials of the century” that Americans experience every year or so. In her case, it was. Her lawyers were as colorful as their client. The firm of Howe & Hummel, “the unofficial bar of the New York underworld,” was known for “bribery, fraud, slander” and worse. Spectators streamed into the courtroom. After weeks of maneuvering in the courtroom, Mandelbaum’s lawyers asked for the case to be transferred to a higher court, and by the time that trial was finally due to begin several months later, Mandelbaum had fled to Canada. The story of her life as a brash and cunning crime boss and her escape and life as a fugitive is grippingly cinematic, and Fox, who will write the screenplay for the film adaptation of this book, captures every detail.

When Fredericka Mandelbaum was buried, “it was later reported that some mourners skillfully picked the pockets of others. Whether they did this as a tribute to their fallen leader or simply out of professional reflex is not known.” A worthy end to a fascinating life story. I can hardly wait for the film.

Lisa Birnbach is a writer and humorist.

The talented Mrs. Mandelbaum

Rise and fall of a mafia boss

Random House. 336 pages. $32