Adam Worth, Master Criminal 1900

Adam Worth (1844–January 8, 1902) was nicknamed him "the Napoleon of the criminal world". He was a bounty jumper who enlisted in various regiments with assumed names, received his pay, engaged in a bit of action and then deserted.

After the Civil War, he became a pickpocket in New York. He eventually founded his own gang of pickpockets and subsequently began to organize robberies and heists. He was caught stealing the cash box of an Adams Express wagon and sentenced to three years in Sing Sing, escaping a couple of weeks later and resuming his criminal career.

Worth began to work for the prominent fence and criminal organizer Fredericka "Marm" Mandelbaum. With her help he expanded into bank and store robberies around 1866 and eventually began to plan his own heists. In 1869, he helped Marm break safecracker Charley Bullard out of the White Plains Jail through a tunnel.

With Bullard, Worth robbed the vault of the Boylston National Bank in Boston on November 20, 1869, again through a tunnel, this time from a neighboring shop. The bank alerted the Pinkertons who tracked the shipment of trunks Worth and Bullard had used to ship the loot to New York. Worth then decided to move to Europe with Bullard.

Quite the career!!

Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress, from the Pinkerton files.
People in photo include: Adam Worth