City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects 10-2014 Queen of the Underworld: The Biography of Sophie Lyons (1848-1924) Barbara M. Gray Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/424 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] QUEEN OF THE UNDERWORLD: THE BIOGRAPHY OF SOPHIE LYONS (1848-1924) By BARBARA GRAY A master's thesis submitted to the Graduate Faculty in Liberal Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts, The City University of New York 2014 © 2014 BARBARA GRAY All Rights Reserved ii This manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in Liberal Studies in satisfaction of the thesis requirement for the degree of Master of Arts. Date________________ __________________________________________ Shifra Sharlin, Thesis Advisor Date________________ __________________________________________ Matthew Gold, Executive Officer THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK iii Abstract QUEEN OF THE UNDERWORLD: THE BIOGRAPHY OF SOPHIE LYONS (1848-1924) by Barbara Gray Advisor: Professor Shifra Sharlin Sophie Lyons was a nineteenth-century American pickpocket, blackmailer, con-woman, and bank robber. She was raised in New York City’s underworld, by Jewish immigrant parents who were criminals that trained their children to pick pockets and shoplift. “Pretty Sophie” possessed a rare combination of skill at thievery, intellect, guts and beauty and became the woman Herbert Ashbury described in Gangs of New York as, "the most notorious confidence woman America has ever produced." Newspapers around the world chronicled Sophie’s exploits for more than sixty years, because her life read like a novel. Her mentor was another forgotten woman who held a position of power in the underworld, Fredericka Marm’ Mandelbaum, a Jewish immigrant who became New York’s millionaire “Queen of Fences.” Sophie was married to some of the most notorious burglars in America, escaped from Sing Sing Prison with one of her husbands, wore elaborate disguises, used her sex appeal to steal from wealthy men, invested a fortune in real estate and gave it away. Today Sophie is forgotten, but for a few lines in criminal history narratives. This thesis comprised the first five chapters of a forthcoming biography of Sophie Lyons and examined how she was a creation of the economic and social realities of nineteenth-century New York and the effects of industrialization, immigration, capitalism, poverty and innovation, which were beginning to transform America. This thesis was also written to restore Sophie to her rightful place in criminal history, as a woman who excelled in a man’s profession, achieved power and iv found a voice that enabled her to challenge society’s conventions of womanhood, motherhood and sexuality. Ultimately, she was a resilient and conflicted woman, who always longed for the acceptance of legitimate society and overcame tremendous obstacles to reinvent herself as a philanthropist and advocate for those who had no voice, women, children, African-Americans and prisoners. v Acknowledgements I would like to thank the authors of the principal works that inspired and assisted me in my journey to learn more about Sophie Lyons and the underbelly of nineteenth-century New York City. You cannot write about old New York without reading Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898, by Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace. Similarly, you cannot write about the underworld of old New York without reading Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York by Luc Santé. Professor Timothy J. Gilfoyle’s A Pickpocket’s Tale: The Underworld of Nineteenth-Century New York, and his article "Street-Rats and Gutter-Snipes: Child Pickpockets and Street Culture in New York City, 1850—1900,” provided much insight into the sad lives of child criminals and the socio-economic and cultural turmoil from which they sprang. I learned a lot about the techniques and language of pickpockets from the late David W. Maurer’s, Whiz Mob: A Correlation of the Technical Argot of Pickpockets with Their Behavior Pattern, which I discovered while reading Adam Green’s excellent profile of pickpocket and entertainer Apollo Robbins in The New Yorker, A Pickpocket’s Tale: The Spectacular Thefts of Apollo Robbins. Rona L. Holub’s outstanding dissertation, Fredericka 'Marm' Mandelbaum, 'Queen of Fences': The rise and fall of a female immigrant criminal entrepreneur in Nineteenth-Century New York, gave me a window into the lives of women criminals, and elucidated how poor, Jewish, immigrant women like Marm’ and Sophie could flourish in the underworld in that time and place. Writing a Woman’s Life, by the late Carolyn G. Heilbrun, taught me some new ways to look at writing about women, especially those who sought power and lived atypical lives. I want to thank the people who helped and supported me as I researched and wrote this thesis. Thank you to my advisor in the CUNY Graduate Center’s Master of Arts Liberal Studies Program, Professor Shifra Sharlin, who encouraged and guided me to write the story that I vi wanted to write. Professor Tim Harper and his Narrative Nonfiction Workshop at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, and my workshop colleagues, especially Jere Hester and Diana Robertson, advised and cheered me since the beginning of my journey. Sarah Bartlett, Dean of the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism and Judith Watson, Associate Dean, granted me the time to finish this thesis in the homestretch. Thank you to my fantastic colleagues at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, especially Tinamarie Vella, at the Research Center and our staff, as well as our wonderful CUNY J-School students and alumni. Professor John Matteson, Distinguished Professor of English at John Jay College, encouraged me to keep writing and provided inspiration in the form of his Biography as Genre class at the CUNY Graduate Center, which was the impetus for this thesis. It was through Professor Matteson that I was invited to the first Biography Clinic for first-time biographers, at the Leon Levy Center for Biography in January 2013, where Professor Matteson, Gary Giddons, Director of the Leon Levy Center and biographer Benita Eisler shared practical advice on the art and craft of biography. Thank you to my colleagues at the New York Times, Jack Begg, Alain Delaqueriere, Sheelagh McNeil, Kitty Bennett and Susan Beachy, for your friendship and patience. Most of all, I want to thank my family and friends for your love, support and faith in me. Thank you to my brother James Gray, my sister-in-law Audrey Griffin-Gray, my nephews, Patrick, Martin and Warren Gray, my sister Deborah Hendrickson, niece Heather Eaton, and to my friends Cheryl Fusco and Karin Hayes. I would never have made it through the late nights, jobs, classes and deadlines without both of my friends, Lisa Tradup-Flom and Joseph Fusco, who held my hand, read my work, cheered me on and convinced me that I would succeed. vii Table of Contents ABSTRACT IV ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS VI INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER 1. CASTLE GARDEN 11 CHAPTER 2. CITY OF SWINDLERS 17 CHAPTER 3. “FACTS CONCERNING A REMARKABLE FAMILY” 25 CHAPTER 4. “BEWARE OF PICKPOCKETS!” 30 CHAPTER 5. HOUSE OF REFUGE 38 CONCLUSION 45 BIBLIOGRAPHY 58 viii Introduction I haven’t a great many years to live and I am worth half a million dollars. I want to make amends as far as possible for what I have done in the past. I have lived a straight life for 25 years, and have accumulated much property by legitimate means. But there is something that I crave more than money. Do you know what that is? It is the respect of good people. Maybe I can get some of this by showing that I am not all bad and that I am sincere in my efforts to help others. – Sophie Lyons in her 1913 autobiography, Why Crime Does Not Pay! 1 Sophie Lyons was a nineteenth-century American criminal. A police chief referred to her as, “a thief from the cradle,” because at age eight she was trained to be a pickpocket by her Jewish immigrant parents, (Jake, a fence and Mary, a shoplifter) and raised at the center of the underworld of New York City. She said about her childhood, “I didn’t know it was wrong to steal, no one ever taught me that.” Sophie never went to school and could not read or write until she was twenty-five. Her nickname was “Pretty Sophie” as a child, but her childhood was anything but charmed. She suffered at the hands of her Fagin-like parents, who beat, kicked and burned her with fire irons so she would steal enough pocketbooks every day. Newspapers reported that Sophie, her parents, brothers and sister simultaneously occupied The Tombs jail in Manhattan, all for separate crimes. As a permanent denizen of the Rogues’ Gallery, she went by dozens of aliases and was monitored by the Pinkerton Detective Agency most of her life. In her teenage years Sophie joined the “sisterhood” of criminals mentored by Marm’ Mandelbaum, the “Queen of Fences.” The cohort included, shoplifter and con artist Black Lena Kleinschmidt and Little Annie Reilly, a con woman who would pose as a child’s nurse and then rob the family’s valuables. Marm’ was an Austrian-Jewish immigrant, and a self-made millionaire, who ruled an empire in stolen goods. Marm’ once said, referring to one of Black Lena’s scams that, “it takes brains to be a real lady.” Marm’ liked “the company of women who engaged in work besides 1 keeping house and the respect and affection that she expressed for her ‘sisterhood’ of ‘female crooks, … [showed that] she was a woman who judged intelligence in a woman as an important quality to be used wisely and profitably … she expected excellence and desired camaraderie with men and women alike.” Marm’s influence was pivotal to Sophie’s later success.