Girl Gangs of Old New York: Marm Mandelbaum and the Underworld Women of the Gilded Age
In mid-19th century Manhattan, the Five Points neighborhood had gained international infamy as a crowded, disease-ridden, crime-infested slum. Here and in other desperate quarters of a rapidly growing New York, gangs ruled the streets and not all of their most fearsome members were men. Amid the bustling markets and back-alley saloons, a new breed of criminal emerged: women who could pick pockets as deftly as any man, con the gullible with a disarming smile, or even brawl in gang fights with claws and teeth. They formed the “girl gangs” of old New York – networks of female pickpockets, burglars, swindlers, and street fighters whose exploits became the stuff of legend. From the “lady battlers” of Five Points to the criminal “queen” who reigned over a citywide theft ring, these women defied Victorian expectations and left their mark on Gotham’s underworld.
Let us explore the rise of New York’s 19th-century girl gangs, focusing on the infamous Fredericka “Marm” Mandelbaum and her coterie of female crooks, set against the backdrop of a booming city that seemed to breed crime at every turn.
A City of Immigrants and Outlaws: New York’s 19th-Century Upheaval
The explosive expansion of New York City after 1820 created the perfect breeding ground for gang culture. In 1800, Manhattan was a modest port city; by 1890 it swelled to over 1.7 million residents amid relentless immigration and industrialization
Awash with impoverished Irish, German, Italian, and Jewish immigrants, the young city’s neighborhoods split along ethnic lines and overflowed with overcrowding and poverty. This turbulent urban stew of “overcrowding, poverty, protectionism and identity” bound together residents of each block and tenement. And as ever in turbulent times, those living in society’s margins were quick to spot “business” opportunities in vice and crime.
Gangs in the Slums: Nowhere was this more evident than in the notorious Five Points slum of Lower Manhattan, often called “the world’s most notorious slum.” Centered around a former pond turned landfill, Five Points festered with tenements and rum houses. By the 1850s, it teemed with “violent crime, unemployment, prostitution, gambling” and disease. The area became the cradle of New York’s early gang culture. Famed gangs like the Bowery Boys and the Dead Rabbits battled in the streets, and the lore of Five Points included women warriors too. One ferocious female fighter of the 1840s was the legend of Hell-Cat Maggie, described as an “angular vixen” who filed her teeth to points and fitted her fingers with brass claws, then leapt into gang brawls biting and scratching men twice her size. Though Hell-Cat Maggie’s actual existence is debated (her exploits were vividly chronicled by a 1920s crime writer who favored sensational tales, there is no doubt that real women in the slums learned to hold their own. Female gang members served as lookouts, thieves, and occasional combatants. The lore speaks of Gallus Mag, a towering female saloon bouncer in the 1870s Bowery who would literally bite the ears off unruly drunks and keep the grisly trophies in a jar. Her contemporary Sadie the Goat was said to be a river pirate who head-butted male victims in the stomach so her crew could rob them. Such stories — whether myth or truth — reflected the startling presence of “dangerous dames” in a world that polite society imagined to be run by rough men alone.
Socio-Economic Pressures: The rise of these gangs (and the women among them) was rooted in harsh socio-economic conditions. New York’s growth brought extreme wealth for a few and desperate poverty for many. The Lower East Side in the late 19th century became the most densely populated place on earth, a polyglot patchwork where tens of thousands of recent immigrants crowded into ramshackle tenement. By the 1880s, about 40% of New York City’s population was foreign-born, many living in squalid conditions a stone’s throw from wealthy districts. In these jam-packed neighborhoods, honest employment was scarce and often paying mere pennies. Young women had limited respectable job opportunities – perhaps as seamstresses, domestics, or factory girls – often earning too little to survive. It is little surprise that some turned to “professional” crime: shoplifting from upscale stores, picking pockets in marketplaces, running confidence scams, or luring unwary marks into alleyways to be fleeced by accomplices. New York was a thief’s paradise in the mid-to-late 19th century, and women were among its most deft predators. An infamous handful would even band together into a loose sisterhood of crime, organized under the tutelage of a formidable leader. By the 1860s, the center of gravity for female crime in New York had shifted to the criminal empire of one woman in particular – a woman who would earn the title “Queen of Thieves.”
Marm Mandelbaum: The “Mother of Crooks” and Her Empire of Thieves
In an era dominated by male crime bosses, Fredericka “Marm” Mandelbaum rose to underworld preeminence as New York City’s original “Mother of Crooks.” German-born and stout in stature, Mandelbaum cut an unlikely figure on the streets of the Lower East Side – often clad in fine silks and a plumed hat, appearing every bit a respectable shopkeeper. Indeed, she operated a dry goods store at Clinton and Rivington Streets as her legitimate front.
Behind the façade, however, Marm Mandelbaum spent over 30 years (c. 1860–1890) as the city’s most successful and notorious “fence,” a receiver and seller of stolen goods
Her establishment was the hub of a sprawling criminal network of pickpockets, burglars, shoplifters and con artists. So entwined was she with New York’s underworld that even the press joked her 1894 funeral was attended by pickpockets working the crowd, and whispered that the wily Marm might have faked her own death to escape justice
The “Mother” of an Underworld Family: Mandelbaum earned the nickname “Mother” for good reason. She was regarded as a maternal patron to hundreds of thieves – “a sort of maternal figure to the city’s vast underworld of confidence men and women, pickpockets, shoplifters, [and] burglars”. Operating out of her Clinton Street shop, she would buy the thieves’ plunder (from silk bolts to jewelry to silverware), pay bail and legal fees for those who got caught, and even host lavish dinners for her criminal protégés. By the 1870s, Marm’s enterprise had become a one-stop criminal clearinghouse. She financed and planned major heists (including, it is said, bank robberies), coached pickpockets on which shops to target, and taught street kids the art of theft. Contemporaries compared her to Dickens’s fictional Fagin – Mother Mandelbaum would “transform street urchins into artful dodgers, honing their pickpocketry and perfecting their petty thieving skills,” much like Fagin’s gang of child thieves. In fact, Marm reputedly started a school for young pickpockets to train the next generation of crooks. Under her tutelage, countless impoverished youth found a perverse form of apprenticeship and “charity”: Marm took in destitute children and taught them to steal rather than starve.
By the mid-1880s, Marm Mandelbaum’s name was known to every thief and detective in America. Her criminal empire extended well beyond New York. According to the Pinkerton Detective Agency, she had connections with “traveling gangs of professional thieves” nationwide and received stolen goods from as far as St. Louis, Montreal, and Mexico. When a big burglary happened in another city, police suspected that the loot would end up in Mother Mandelbaum’s hands. Chief of Police George Walling later marveled that “if a silk robbery occurred in St. Louis, and the criminals were known as ‘belonging to Marm Baum,’ she always had the first choice of the swag”. Such was her reach that Marm virtually ran a franchised thieves’ guild across North America.
Crime and Camaraderie: Part of Mandelbaum’s success lay in the tight-knit, even familial loyalty she cultivated. She was shrewd but remarkably loyal to her “children” in crime. Even the NYPD Police Chief admitted that “her honesty in criminal matters was absolute… her success was due in great measure to her friendship for and loyalty to the thieves with whom she did business. She never betrayed her clients, and when they got into trouble she procured bail for them”. In return, her followers were fiercely devoted. Mandelbaum’s network of criminals was a microcosm of the polyglot city itself – including Irish pickpockets, Jewish con men, German burglars, Italian sneak thieves, even some corrupt politicians in her pocket. At any given time, Marm’s “inner circle” of master thieves could be found mingling in her backroom or enjoying her hospitality.
Marm was a mentor and often a dinner hostess to her “congregation of A-lister female gangsters.” She regularly threw extravagant dinner parties at which her most trusted thieves – women and men – socialized and strategized over fine food and drink. Around her dining table, one might find pickpocket queens, gentlemen burglars, crooked lawyers, and corrupt officials all toasting Mother Mandelbaum. These events became legendary in underworld lore. In one illustration from the period, Marm sits at the head of a long table, presiding over a banquet of fashionably dressed rogues. At such gatherings, the conversation no doubt centered on recent “professional” successes – a jewel theft pulled off, a profitable con, a narrow escape from the police – as this “family” of criminals bonded in celebration of their illicit craft.
The Female Felons in Marm’s Network
Mandelbaum’s operation was remarkable not just for her leadership but for the many women criminals she empowered and employed. She paid special attention to female crooks, recruiting and training them in an era when women had few other avenues to earn a good living. Under Marm’s wing, a generation of female pickpockets and swindlers rose to infamy. Her entourage of female felons read like a rogues’ gallery of Gilded Age crime:
Sophie Lyons (1848–1924) – Perhaps Marm’s most famous protégée, Sophie was known as one of the “most notorious female thieves… and confidence women” of the 19th century. A Jewish-German immigrant like Marm, she was taught to steal as a toddler and had been arrested for pickpocketing by age 12. Sophie became an unparalleled pickpocket and con artist, blessed with acting skills so convincing that “even when caught by her victim, she could counterfeit every shade of emotion to persuade them to release her”. She married into a family of criminals (her second husband was Ned Lyons, the “King of Bank Robbers”) and the pair robbed banks and shops from New York to Detroit and Montreal. Sophie was a chameleon; in one case, she talked her way out of arrest by feigning kleptomania to a skeptical store detective. After multiple prison stints (and even a daring escape from Sing Sing in 1872 with her husband’s aid), Sophie later turned her life around – using her ill-gotten wealth to help rehabilitate juvenile delinquents and authoring an autobiography, Why Crime Does Not Pay (1913). But in her prime, Sophie Lyons was a criminal celebrity, working closely with Marm and spreading her exploits across the continent.
“Little Annie” Reilly (b. 1844) – A cunning Irish emigrant, Little Annie was celebrated in her day as “the cleverest woman in her line in America.” Petite, charming, and fluent in multiple languages, Annie used her apparent youth and domestic skills to pull off audacious heists. She often found work as a maid or nanny in wealthy homes, only to gain the trust of the household and then rob them blind of jewelry and valuables. One contemporary account describes her method: she would dote on the children to ingratiate herself with the lady of the house, then disappear one night with a fortune in jewels – sometimes $5,000 worth, a huge sum then. As part of Marm’s inner circle, Little Annie frequented the dinner parties and likely shared tips of her trade with the group. She was arrested and imprisoned multiple times in the 1870s for grand larceny, but each time resumed her lucrative cons upon release. By 1886, Inspector Thomas Byrnes noted that Annie Reilly had “stolen more property in the last 15 years than any other female thief in the United States.”
“Black Lena” Kleinschmidt (1835–1886) – Another of Marm’s close allies, Lena was a German-born thief and notorious confidence woman known for elaborate shoplifting capers. She earned the moniker “Black Lena” for her dark hair and perhaps dark deeds. Lena often teamed up with Christine “Kid Glove Rosey” Mayer, so nicknamed because she always wore elegant gloves while stealing. In one famous episode, Black Lena and Kid Glove Rosey were caught trying to steal a large quantity of expensive silk from a Manhattan dry-goods store – a favorite target since silk bolts fetched high prices. Both women were arrested in that attempt; Rosey was convicted and sent to prison for five years. Lena, however, managed to get out and continue her scams. She even had the audacity to reinvent herself in New Jersey high society, hosting fancy dinners in the style of her mentor Marm while posing as a wealthy widow of a mining tycoon. Of course, she was still quietly selling stolen jewels and fabrics on the side. Black Lena’s career finally ended behind bars, but she remains one of the era’s colorful lady crooks.
Eliza “Big Mary” Wallace – Also known by aliases like Boston Mary or Mary Anderson, Eliza Wallace was another career criminal under Marm’s tutelage. She specialized in stealing high-value silks and was arrested so often that she accumulated charges in multiple cities simultaneously. Big Mary would serve a prison term at Sing Sing for shoplifting, then jump bail on another charge and vanish for a time. At one point in 1869 she was a fugitive wanted on over half a dozen indictments in Philadelphia while still awaiting trial in New York – a testament to how difficult it was for 19th-century law enforcement to keep track of an itinerant female thief. Like many of Marm’s crew, she treated crime as a profession: a cycle of theft, arrest, bail, and back to theft.
These women, along with countless lesser-known pickpockets and “fence” operators, made up Mandelbaum’s army of thieves. They were competitive and ambitious, yet bound by loyalty to their benefactress and by the precarious position of being women in a male-dominated underworld. In a time when middle-class women were expected to be demure and domestic, Marm’s gang defied every norm – they earned respect (and fear) through bold criminal enterprise. The press of the day alternated between scandalized fascination and begrudging admiration for these “queens of the New York crime world.” As one modern historian notes, “these women navigated the labyrinth of societal constraints and male-dominated spheres of crime, establishing themselves as formidable leaders and pioneers in their illicit endeavors”. Their stories are a tapestry of ambition, defiance, and survival, offering a glimpse into a shadowy corner of the Gilded Age where a woman could be as notorious as any man.
Cops, Courts, and Crackdowns: Law Enforcement’s Response
The rise of female-led criminal rings posed new challenges – and prompted new tactics – for 19th-century law enforcement in New York. At first, the idea of women as dangerous professional criminals clashed with Victorian attitudes that saw females as the “gentler sex.” Police and courts were often hesitant to believe that a woman could mastermind felonies or commit violent acts. In some cases, female suspects took advantage of this bias: Sophie Lyons’ famed kleptomania ploy in 1880, when she convinced a store detective her shoplifting was an uncontrollable medical affliction, exemplifies how a quick-witted woman could manipulate male law officers conditioned to think women weren’t true criminals. Judges, too, sometimes gave lighter sentences to women, assuming they were coerced by men or afflicted by feminine frailty. However, as bold thieves like Little Annie Reilly and Black Lena kept reoffending, the authorities grew wise. By the 1870s and 1880s, New York City’s police were actively tracking the notorious female crooks nearly as doggedly as their male counterparts.
One pivotal figure in cracking down on organized crime (of both sexes) was Inspector Thomas Byrnes, head of NYPD detectives in the 1880s. Byrnes pioneered advanced detective methods, including the creation of the Rogues’ Gallery – a collection of photographs of known criminals used for identification.
Among the mugshots pinned to his office walls were those of Marm Mandelbaum’s crew, male and female alike. A surviving page of Byrnes’s book Professional Criminals of America (1886), for instance, shows the dour portrait of Mary Hollbrook (one of Marm’s shoplifters) alongside her male colleagues. This early mugshot system and Byrnes’s detailed profiles of criminals signaled that the police were treating thievery as a professional enterprise to be met with professional policing. Byrnes also instituted the infamous “Third Degree” interrogation tactics and the “Mulberry Street Morning Parade,” where newly arrested crooks (including women) were marched before veteran detectives for potential recognition. These efforts made it harder for repeat offenders to hide behind new aliases – even the cleverest confidence woman could be unmasked if her photo was on file.
The Pinkerton Infiltration: Yet, for years Marm Mandelbaum herself proved virtually untouchable. Rumors swirled that she had half the police force on her payroll and the other half duped by her respectable front. It ultimately took outside intervention to bring her down. In 1884, New York’s District Attorney, frustrated by failed attempts to nail Marm, hired the Pinkerton National Detective Agency to assist. The Pinkertons deployed an undercover agent, Gustav Frank, who cleverly insinuated himself into Marm’s inner circle by posing as a shady silk merchant. Over months he gained her trust and made several deals, eventually selling her “marked” (traceable) bolts of silk. With evidence in hand, the trap was sprung. In July 1884, police (likely guided by Pinkerton intel) raided Mandelbaum’s shop and arrested Mother Mandelbaum at last, discovering the marked silks among her hidden stock. The city’s press had a field day – after decades of legend, the criminal godmother was caught. Newspapers expressed astonishment that this middle-aged woman who had “evaded the authorities for so long was finally coming to justice.” Marm’s arrest was so sensational it even sparked a feud between the NYPD and the District Attorney over the use of private detectives on their turf.
Mandelbaum, however, was not so easily caged. At the time of her arrest she already had on retainer the equally infamous lawyers Howe and Hummel, known for defending New York’s worst criminals. Out on an unprecedented $10,000 bail (an enormous sum in those days), Marm simply skipped town. In December 1884, as her lawyer stood in court awaiting her appearance, Mrs. Fredericka Mandelbaum was nowhere to be found. By the next day it was reported that Marm had fled to Canada, beyond the reach of U.S. extradition. There she lived out her remaining years peacefully in Ontario, thumbing her nose at New York’s justice system (though she reportedly missed the city, saying “I should have faced the music”). Marm’s great escape exposed a gap in law enforcement – at the time, no extradition treaty existed between the U.S. and Canada to haul her back. Partly in response to such fiascos, pressure mounted in subsequent years for international agreements to close that loophole. It was a humbling lesson for New York authorities: this “Mother of Crooks” had outsmarted them to the very end.
For other female felons in Marm’s gang, the outcomes varied. Some, like Kid Glove Rosey and Little Annie, served their prison terms and eventually faded from notoriety. Others like Sophie Lyons leveraged their underworld fame into later careers as reformers or advisers. The high-profile exploits of these women did influence certain policy discussions in the Gilded Age city. Urban reformers pointed to the likes of Marm’s child pickpockets as evidence of the need for social interventions. In 1875 New York founded the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Children, partly to rescue kids from criminal exploitation. Mission houses and charities opened to reform wayward girls who might otherwise fall under the sway of a Mandelbaum. Even the women’s prison movement gained momentum: by 1874, the Women’s Prison Association had established a home to rehabilitate female convicts in New York, and in 1887 the city opened a separate workhouse for women. Policing also adapted in small ways – female matrons were hired at police stations to search and guard female prisoners (a role created mid-century) and later on, the first women detectives (such as Isabella Goodwin in 1910) would focus on catching lady swindlers. In short, the notoriety of these criminal women challenged the city to modernize aspects of law enforcement and to address the social ills feeding into female crime.
Legacy: Infamous Women and the Making of Urban Myth
By the turn of the 20th century, the era of Marm Mandelbaum and the girl gangs was drawing to a close, but their legend was just beginning. Journalists and memoirists kept their stories alive in popular imagination. Herbert Asbury’s 1928 book Gangs of New York (though riddled with embellishments) ensured that characters like Hell-Cat Maggie, Sadie the Goat, and Gallus Mag became part of New York City folklore. Meanwhile, historians began to recognize Marm Mandelbaum as perhaps the country’s first female mob boss. She has since been dubbed the “Godmother of Gotham Crime,” a woman who predated and in some ways prefigured later crime matriarchs in American cities. Her successful career in crime also complicates the narrative of women’s roles in the 19th century – highlighting that some women found unconventional paths to power and wealth, even if illegally.
In retrospect, the 19th-century girl gangs of New York underscore a broader story about women’s agency. These female criminals operated in a world that gave them few legitimate chances to wield influence, so they seized it in the underworld instead. Their activities inadvertently spurred changes: they forced the legal system to grapple (often clumsily) with women who didn’t fit the era’s gender norms, and they inspired early calls for social reform to prevent girls from turning to crime. Though we rightly condemn their thievery and violence, one cannot deny the audacity and organization it took for women like Marm Mandelbaum to thrive in New York’s cutthroat underbelly. They left behind a legacy intertwined with the city’s history – part cautionary tale, part legend of “bad girls” who refused to be overlooked. As one writer aptly put it, their tales “serve not only as historical curiosities but as enduring reminders of the resilience and ingenuity of women who dared to carve their own paths, regardless of the legality of their pursuits.”
In the end, the girl gangs of old New York are as much a story about the city as about crime. They flourished in Gilded Age Gotham, a place of staggering contrasts – where opulence sat cheek-by-jowl with abject poverty, and where a determined woman with a predatory eye could become an underworld queen. Their saga adds a flavorful chapter to New York City’s lore: one of masked ladies and midnight thieves, of a “Mother” to the motherless who turned street kids into pickpockets, and of lawmen gradually learning that the fairer sex could be just as felonious as any Bowery Boy. It’s a history at once gritty and fascinating – a reminder that the Big Apple’s core has always had a few bad girls in it.
References
Susan Johnson – “The Extraordinary ‘Mother’ Mandelbaum.” Museum of the City of New York (May 2, 2018)
Cécile Paul – “Girl Gangs of New York and the Godmother of Gotham Crime.” MessyNessyChic (Feb 20, 2024)
“Hell-Cat Maggie – Lower Manhattan Historical Association.” (Jan 31, 2023)
Ephemeral New York – “Girl gangsters of 19th century Manhattan.” (Dec 2, 2009)
Dave Roos – “Meet Hell-Cat Maggie, the Mythical Dame of the Dead Rabbits Gang.” HowStuffWorks (Dec 16, 2020)
Sophie Lyons – Wikipedia: “Biography of Sophie Lyons.” (accessed Feb 2025)
Nicole’s Newsletter – “Female Criminals in 19th Century New York.” (Feb 10, 2017)
Five Points, Manhattan – Wikipedia: “Five Points gained international notoriety as a crime-infested slum…” (accessed Feb 2025)
Thomas Byrnes – Professional Criminals of America (1886) – profiles of criminals like “Little Annie” & Mary Holbrook