The Talented Mrs. Mandelbaum: The Rise and Fall of an American Organized-Crime Boss
By Margalit Fox (Random House)

No, the “talented” Fredericka Mandelbaum was not a performer or entertainer. Rather, this imposing (6-foot, 300-pound) owner of a storefront on Manhattan’s Lower East Side in the post-Civil War years was the doyenne of a multifaceted, sharply diversified criminal enterprise that has never quite been duplicated.

In the hands of Margalit Fox, a former editor and reporter at The New York Times,  “Marm” Mandelbaum, as she was known by all, emerges larger than life as a polished business-woman—New York’s first female crime figure—plying an illegal retail business selling stolen merchandise at bargain prices. In other words, a fence.

In her extensively researched book, Fox examines Marm’s career in great detail, from her early forays as a seller of contraband to congenial neighbors to her generous philanthropy and devotion to her synagogue. She was a member of the upper echelons of New York City society in the Gilded Age, when rogues, power brokers and Tammany Hall fixers actively pursued careers in questionable activities.

She befriended—and bribed—elected officials as well as many police officers. She taught her coteries of shoplifters how to dress to blend in with a crowd, whether impersonating a janitor or pretending to shop at a jewelry store.

In addition to providing shelter in her house for members of her gang, she had warehouses all over the country to contain the silks, diamonds, engravings and government securities and bonds that came through her hands.

Over a 30-year career, this German-born Jewish woman enjoyed a career in Manhattan’s Kleindeutschland (Little Germany) neighborhood, bringing a level of professionalism to her moneymaking efforts and carefully evading the clutches of the police and those who sought to subvert her efforts.

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EVENT: One Book, One Hadassah Live With Margalit Fox

Join us on Sunday, January 26 at 3:30 PM ET for a special in-person and livestreamed event as acclaimed author and journalist Margalit Fox talks with Hadassah Magazine Executive Editor Lisa Hostein about her captivating book, The Talented Mrs. Mandelbaum, that resurrects a little-known figure: a Jewish woman who reigned as one of New York City’s most notorious underworld criminal leaders during the Gilded Age. 

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Her life in the United States started as a rather typical immigrant story. In 1850, as an impoverished 24-year-old, she traveled to New York via steerage and worked as a peddler on the streets of the Lower East Side. So did her husband, the father of their four children. Just 30 years later, as much as $10 million worth of purloined luxury goods ($300 million in today’s money) had passed through Marm’s “modest” dry goods store. She prevailed, Fox writes, despite being “marginalized three times over: immigrant, woman and Jew.”

To function among the hoi polloi, Marm gave elaborate, legendary picnics and dinner parties. Invitations to her soirées were highly prized by criminals and law enforcement alike. Although she lived above the dry goods store, she often wore voluminous silk gowns and festooned herself with diamonds—earrings, necklaces, brooches, bracelets and rings. It was estimated that she sometimes wore $40,000 worth of jewels a day—about $1.3 million now.

Her crime enterprise came to a storied end when she was arrested at the behest of a zealous district attorney.

At her funeral, there was, perhaps, an appropriate homage to her extraordinary life. “It was reported afterward,” Fox writes,  that “some mourners picked the pockets of others. Whether they did so in tribute to their fallen leader or simply from occupational reflex is unrecorded.”

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Stewart Kampel was a longtime editor at The New York Times.