Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Sara Downey and I'm Deblin and Charkerboarding And when we left off last time. The German Jewish immigrant Adam Worth had died in the American Civil War, supposedly and gone on to become a successful criminal mastermind, and had over time accumulated all the trappings of an upper class British lifestyle as Henry Judson Raymond manif leisure, including the nice clothes, the posh accent, the yacht you know, really everything. But after a disastrous eighteen seventy four forgery attempt in Constantinople, Worth found himself safe but without a gang, and broke from trying to buy their freedom. To add to his woes, his longtime love and the mother of his children, Kittie Flynn, had left for America, and his best friend, piano Charlie Bullard, Kitty's estranged husband, had been arrested for a robbery committed years earlier. Worth did eventually rebound from this, though The Pinkerton's called him quote the most remarkable, most successful, and most dangerous professional criminal known to modern times, and he of course eventually inspired Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's character Professor Moriarty, the arch nemesis of Sherlott Holmes, but at this point in his career he was down and out and heartbroken to boot. Then, as if things couldn't get worse, in eighteen seventy six, Worth's criminally incompetent younger brother arrives in town looking for work. So John Worth shared his older brother's criminal tendencies, but none of his talents that we've already learned from Pinkerton's Detective Agency's pamphlet on Worth Life, which is an excellent source of information on him. By the way, Worth quote never forsook a friend or accomplice, and for him, that of course meant putting his brother to work on easy jobs with a lot out of supervision, very strict instructions, you know, so he wouldn't mess it up. John Worth, though, really couldn't manage even the most straightforward job, and found himself arrested in Paris were trying to pass counterfeit notes. John Sure, the Chief Inspector of Scotland Yard, the guy who had been hunting Adam Worth without success for years, jumped on this, he had the younger were extraditeed into England and charged him with forger, you know, hoping to sort of lure out the older brother while the younger one was in jail, and Adam Worth did, in fact, in the meantime set about trying to get his brother out of jail, though he didn't just come out in the open. He was a little sneakier about it. Though by this time it was tough because though he had enough cash on hand for bail, the law at the time stipulated that the bondsman must be a gentleman of good reputation. So where was Worth going to find someone willing to post bond and put his reputation on the line for a guy who was just obviously going to jump bail and high tail it back to the States immediately. So in late May Worth is pondering this very problem when he goes by some art galleries on Old Bond Street, and one of them, Agnew and Company, was staging an exhibition and crowds and carriages were all gathered on the street. Just days before, the gallery had bought a gains for a portrait of Georgeiane, a Duchess of Devonshire at auction, paying the highest amount ever paid for an English painting. It's the equivalent of about six hundred thousand dollars today. So when Worth went in to see this famous work of art, he was struck by an idea. If he stole the picture, he could force its owner, Thomas Agnew, to postpond for his younger brother in exchange for a return of the painting, so basically ransoming the painting in the form of a bond instead of just straight cash or something like that. So pretty soon after he gets this idea, he goes back to the gallery with two accomplices and Worth had himself hoisted to the second floor window allege Pride open the window with a crowbar, cut the portrait from its frame very carefully, you know. They police realized later that whoever did it barely damage the painting at all, and then rolled it all up, taking care not to crack the surface. Of course, with this high price that the painting had just sold for, the theft created a sensation, and it was partly because it wasn't the first time the painting had gone missing. Yeah, Gainsborough painted Georgiana, previous podcast subject known for her political action, her trend setting, and her affair with Charles Gray. He had painted her several times during her life, but this particular Georgiana, with her trademark broad brimmed hat and feathers sometimes called a Gainsborough hat and a suggestive pound, is quite different from the other ones. According to Ben McEntire's biography of Worth, the Napoleon of Crime, The Life and Times of Adam Worth, Master Thief, which we mentioned in the previous podcast, the painting first disappeared right around the time Georgiana got pregnant by Gray, about seventeen ninety two or so. Then about fifty years after that, it mysteriously popped up in the home of a retired school mistress who had chopped off for Georgana's legs so that the painting would fit over her fireplace. An art dealer learned that this woman might have some rare paintings, and um swung By decided he wanted to buy it, purchased the painting off the woman, and then sold it to his friend When Ellis. When Ellis died, he left his entire impressive art collection to the National Gallery, which kept the old school stuff and put the more modern items, including the gains for up at auction. So today it may be hard for some people to imagine a painting causing quite such a stir, but women began imitating Georgana's hats. Art critics debated about whether it was really a gain Sbura, and people wondered whether the sitter was actually the other Duchess of Devonshire, and that's the Duke's second wife who had lived with him in Georgiana for years. In Managois. Yeah, people were suggesting all of this and saying, oh, maybe Agney paid too much because it's not really a Gainsbrow, or it's not really georg Jane. Somebody were not as interested in So it was a big public hullabaloo, and Worth stuffed only added to that sensation. McEntyre sites one newspaper's tongue in cheek suggestion that the thief had promoted both art and history by stealing the work. Quote, he was an apostle of culture. So that's a pretty funny way to look at it, and I'm sure that's not how Agney saw it after losing his valuable investment. But fortunately Worth had never intended to sell the painting because the attention would have made it impossible with everybody talking about the theft and George, Jana and Gainsborough. But his reason for stealing it vanished anyway because John Worth lawyer had secured his release and big brother Adam quickly packed John up, sent him home and had him promise, don't come back here and don't get into crime again, because they're not very good at it. So what do you do with a painting like this that you've stolen and you certainly can't fell, and you certainly can't display. I mean probably a lot of art thieves would unfortunately have destroyed such an incriminating item. But fortunately for for us in the world, Worth instead fell in love with his painting and lovingly took care of it. When he was at home, he kept it stored flat under his mattress between boards. When on the move, he carried it and especially made false bottomed trunk so that his lady was always on his arm, so to speak. But the attachment wasn't without cost. Worth wound up blackmailed by his two accomplices in the theft, though neither could really do much about it since they didn't know where the painting was. When Worth moved back to New York City to escape the increased surveillance of John Shore. He did attempt to sell the work back to Agnew Corresponding through secret advertisements in the London Times, but the half hearted negotiations actually fell through when Worth refused to go to London to deliver the painting and the dealers refused to send a representative to the States. Well, and it really kind of seemed at this point like Worth wanted to keep the painting for himself, and but that just really did become even more important for him when his flesh and blood love Kitty Flynn, who had talked about a lot in the last podcast, divorce Bullard and married Juan Pedro Terry, who was an extraordinarily rich half Irish son of a sugar planter. And you know, with this marriage and her all her new money and her society cachet, she became a New York society matron who would travel with her husband, spend excessively, amuse herself with some kind of frivolous lawsuits, really kind of assuming the position she had tried to attain her entire life. So for Worth, it was definitely time for new pastures. It was time to get something else going, but he couldn't get it going right away. He couldn't form a new trustworthy gang for one thing, and his nemesis Max shan burned crimes kept being mistaken as his own. In eight he decided to go to Cape Town, South Africa, quote partly on business, partly for pleasure. He bought a hunting coat for his duchess. I mean, that's just it's pretty weird, taking it to another level. I mean it's one thing to travel around with her everywhere, but he bought her a nice coat, started buying her clothes, wrapped her up and left. Expecting the diamond fields would make a great target for him. So in order to move around South Africa without attracting suspicion, he got into the Ostrich feather business, which was really booming at the time, coincidentally because of Georgiana and her big hat trend with big feathers, you know, it had really caught on with the ladies of the era, and so Worth pretended like he was in the Ostrich feather business and he'd go out to visit Ostrich farms and visit agents feather agents, and this gave him kind of a past to move around the country without people taking notice. Of course, he was really studying the path of diamonds from mind to coast, how the rough gems got out of the mind, how they travel in armed coaches and reach outbound ships just as the ships were about to sail. So these diamond heavy boats didn't have to linger too long. So Worth, with accomplished Charlie king In another recruit, decided that a hold up would be the way to go. Here sounds like a bad plan for Worth, though, whose motto was quote a man with brains has no right to carry firearms. There was always away in a better way by the quick exercise of the brain. He of course ended up being shot at and had to abandon the attempt, and the next plan was more of a master criminal style did more Worth style. So working alone this time, Worth spent months studying the convoys of coaches and realized that if the slightest thing went wrong on the trip, the diamond shipment would miss the boat. When this happened, the stones would be locked up in the Port Elizabeth post office. So Worth made friends with the assistant postmass, eventually copying his keys in wax. From there he delayed a shipment by cutting a ferry rope and robbed the post office of five hundred thousand dollars worth of diamonds. So here he is. He's back in the game, and big diamond back in the game. So in the last episode we talked about or It's double identity as the respectable, comfortable Henry Raymond. But with all of this new diamond wealth, Worth or Raymond rather re established himself in London and put on even more of a gentlemanly show than he had before. He bought a coastal house in Brighton, he purchased land for hunting. He'd take these elaborate trips to Monte Carlo and Gamble. He grew a bush here, more impressive mustache, and put on a little bit of weight. And he got married to his wife, whose name is unfortunately unknown, was the daughter of a gentlewoman widow who Worth had lodged with at one point, and um he sort of took on the widow's children as his wards and hated them, and then ended up marrying the eldest daughter. Mr. And Mrs Worth had a sunborn in eight eight and a daughter born in eight Although the really strange thing about all of this is that Worth kept his criminal life completely secret from them. I mean a real contrast to his relationship with Kitty, where she was very much part of heart of the plane what he was doing. Mrs Worth didn't know who her husband was at all. But Worth didn't flat out retire. Even Shinburne said of him, quote, Raymond loved his work for its own sake, and although he lived in luxury and style, applied his energies to the last and organizing crimes. He did make a concession to married life though. It was a time to move his lady friend Georgiana out of the house. Worth crossed the Atlantic with his false bottom trunk and store the Duchess in a Brooklyn warehouse. He had a pretty close call along the way to He was actually stopped by police in Canada who found diamonds and undeclared cash on his person, but they did not find the That would have been quite a fine. So on every trip Worth would make after this to the States over the next six years or so, he would always move the painting to a new storage facility, you know, really taking a lot of trouble to make sure it was secret and nobody knew he had it. The eighties were clearly worth heyday, but the first step in his ultimate downfall happened as early as eighteen eighty four. Bullard, his old best friend, was out of jail, very sick by this point and really not so great at crime anymore. He was no longer the ace burglar that he used to be. Bullard, though, was still looking for work, so he teamed up with shin Burn to stage heist in Liege, Belgium. The two of them got busted in the middle of the crime. It was really poorly carried out, and Worth took it upon himself to try to help out his friend Bullard, you know, get him out of prison like the Constantinople incident. Though it was not easy, and ultimately the best Worth could do is get messages to Bullard, get him some extra food, um, just trying to make his old friend a little more comfortable. Finally, though, after Bullard was in prison for seven years, shouldn't burn too, of course, but Worth didn't much care about him being there. After Bullard was there for seven years, Worth decided that he really needed to make some kind of last ditch attempt to get his buddy out, you know, maybe even breaking out of prison, because Bullard was clearly by this point dying. By the time Worth got to Liege, Bullard was already dead, but for some reason, Worth decided to stage a reckless crime while he was in town, robbing one of the vans that brought money into the city. Along with two accomplices, Worth planned the high Swell but got greedy while at emptying the van's lock box of money and packages. His lookouts fled and he was spotted by a railway employee and was chased down by the police. Once caught, he tried to bluff his way out as Edward grow but police found cards id to find him as Henry Raymond. He thoroughly confused them with stories about being a German mechanic, being a former thief but one who hadn't stolen in two years, being a diamond salesman. But he finally messed up when he said, quote, if you knew the truth, I would be put away in prison for eternity. Okay, So that set off the morning for the authority. This guy who's already told them a million different stories and given them two different names. Um, so clearly this prisoner was somebody, but they didn't know who he was, and there was even some suspicion that he might be a spy because, unfortunately for Worth, some of those packages he had grabbed up from the van happened to contain state papers. Whoops, you know, a little more heat than he was anticipating. So still, though the authority's information on him was overall pretty sketchy, and Worth thought that he might be able to get off easy until Max shin Burned, his old nemesis, and of course, still in the local jail, wrote a that are spilling the beans completely pretty much listed everything Worth had ever done since the Civil War. Actually a little more than that, because he kind of made him out to be a really nasty criminal, you know, one who betrayed his friends, not really sticking much to worth real personality. All of the international authorities in the know about Adam Worth, Henry Raymond and the career of this man who was obviously one person backed up the tail to accept notably remember this one the Pinkerton's who didn't have anything to say about this, these allegations from Max Shinburn, even though arguably they knew the most about Worth than anyone, or more about him than anyone. Still. Worth story became international news, and he began receiving coded messages from his friends around the world. They would message him as comedian or Edward Grow. That's the best one, Edward Grow. That must have really confused the people in the prisons he had blamed to be Edward Grow exactly. Also ter boys, who turned out to be the now widowed Kitty, offering encouragement and even money. His lawyer advised him to confess to the liege robbery but deny all the other crimes, but it didn't work. After his March trial, Worth was found guilty and sentenced to seven years of solitary confinement with hard labor at the Prison de louvan. So prison was particularly bad for Worth because Shinburne was still there, and shinburn had been there for a very long time and had gotten quite powerful and actually consequently, Worth did not learn of Shinburne's treachery until he was in jail. When he found out, he was understandably quite upset. Also, Worth's family fell apart while he was in prison. We mentioned that he hadn't told his wife, his kids didn't know what his real job was. Mrs Raymond learned about her husband's true identity in the newspaper and just completely flipped out. Johnny Curtain, who was the associate Worth had asked with looking out from Mrs Raymond and the kids, came to her aid, but unfortunately he came comforting her with laudanum and alcohol and ultimately seduced her and then stole everything she had the yacht, uh sold off the houses and pocketed the money from that and then just disappeared. So Mrs Raymond, you know, now completely abandoned, not sure what her life is really about, and broke wound up in an asylum, and the two kids were sent off to Brooklyn to live with John Worth, who had kept his promise and had stayed out of criminal activities. And John Worth's wife also just some other sad things happened while he was in prison. It was a really dark period for where marm Mandelbaum, who we mentioned in the previous podcast, who had given Worth kind of his first break, she died. Kitty also died at only forty one years of age, and news officially broke that the famous missing Duchess might be in Worth's control. Worth's great secret. How did that get out. Well, we're about to talk about that. It's actually that story published in the Palmell Gazette only months after Worth went to jail that likely influenced Arthur Conan Doyle's creation of Professor Moriarty. Worth had been duped by a freelance reporter posing as a solicitor into discussing the Duchess. Their conversation was published as an interviewer confession of sorts and was reprinted in countless periodicals with a heavy dose of skepticism about whether it was true or not. Worth battled back by granting a real exclusive interview, playing the whole thing off as a joke. He had just wanted to kind of green up the reporter by spinning tales, and it sounded good enough for fiction that whether this story was true or not, because by December, Professor Moriarty debuted and died in the final problem of course, you know, if you're familiar with the character, he's not a complete match for his real life counterpart Moriarty. It's tall and thin, he's eat creepy, you know, he's stages murders, that sort of thing. Whereas, of course, as we know, Worth did not like violence. Um, and some inspiration probably came from a few other sources. You know, Conan Doyle wasn't relying exclusively. Unworth. McIntyre suggests Conan Doyle's friend Major General Drayson Friedrich Nietzsche and the crooks George Moriarty and Jonathan Wilde may have been inspirations. But in a conversation with Dr Gray Chandler Briggs, Conan Doyle did cite Worth as his inspiration. And it's pretty obvious too if you read the character. There's some clear parallels between them. But moving back to the main the real life guy in Or was released early from prison for good behavior. He was fifty three years old by this point. He was broke. He was really sick. He hadn't had good medical care in prison, but he still was in possession of the Duchess. He hadn't given that Trump card up and he was hoping that maybe it would help him reclaim his kids. So he said about negotiating a return of the painting. But instead of inquiring directly with ag Knew, as he had the last go round, Worth instead brought in an intermediary named Patrick Sheety to seek out William Pinkerton to be the main go between, and you can really see a lot of Pinkerton's public image, you know, the the face he put out to the world and his agency's pamphlet on Worth that we've mentioned a few times now, But McIntyre's book also hints at kind of a more complicated detective, especially later in life. Pinkerton took a lot of real genuine interest in the men he had hunted or put into jail. He almost got along with them better than he did with people on his side of the law. So Worth in Pinkerton had met a way before this, way back in the American bar days in Paris. But Worth had infinitely more respect for him than he had for guys like John Shore of Scotland Yard or for other agencies. I mean, partly because they were clearly the only people who really knew anything about him, and he felt like the Pinkerton's had helped him out a little bit when he was in trouble in Belgium. He especially respected the Pinkerton's strange silence during his Belgian arrest after some bluffing on both sides, I mean, William Pinkerton, he didn't want to seem like he was doing anything shady to Scotland Yard, in particular the criminal and the detective. They opened up talks. Worth actually visited pinkerton Chicago office January twelve and basically told his whole story. He told Pinkerton quote, now I am placing myself entirely in your hands. I have never done it with a human being before, but I have implicit confidence in your word that you and yours will not take advantage of what I say. They talked all day and into the night, and they met the next day and the day after that, and they of course discussed the Duchess. Worth told Pinkerton that he was sick and that the lady should return home, but they also discussed his career and his life and just kind of talking about everything Worth had done. And as soon as this epic interview was over, Pinkerton wrote the entire thing down. This is, I mean pretty apparently the basis for the pamphlet that we've been discussing. And then and maybe like the cutest thing that could happen, he arranged for a fox terrier puppy to be sent to Worth kids, kind of almost to cement this trusting relationship they were going to have together so still, though, even though Worth trusted Pinkerton and vice versa, negotiations really did take a long time. The Duchess wasn't returned until nineteen o one, when Seymoreland Agnew, who was Sir William Agnew's son, took a ship to the United States and collected it. And it's unknown how much exactly he paid. But the really strange thing about the delivery is that while Worth turned the painting over, you know, he kept hit side of the deal, he didn't entirely give it up because he was almost certainly a passenger aboard Agnew's ship back to England in heavy disguise. I think that's a little bit it creepy. I don't know. He had ideas about taking it back and decided that it would be better to have his kids than the painting. At this point, well, it was almost like he just didn't want to be separated from it. He needed to at least go back home with her. J pre pomp, Morgan bought the picture from the Agnew family, beating out Senator William Clark of Montana, who was huge at Clark's father We Talked Together podcast subject. Morgan didn't display the painting outside of his home, and after his death his children kept it. When his last grandchild died in it was taken from her New York City apartment and auctioned at Southby's, London, where it was purchased by none other than the Duke of Devonshire. So it really did finally go home after all of those years away, what seventeen nine two or something like that until timee So with some of that money though, from the painting's return, Worth was able to buy off his sister in law, who was sort of holding his kid's hostage almost by this point, in order to get some money out of him. Um the kid moved to England to live with their father. They lived in London together for a short time, with Worth and Pinkerton, of course still corresponding regularly. On January nine two, actually, just a few days after Morgan had taken the Duchess back to New York City, Worth died at fifty six years of age. His teenage son, Harry Raymond Jr. That's, you know, obviously a completely made up name, moved back to America with his sister and then Pinkerton. I mean that relationship that Worth forged with him at the end really did pay off for his kids because Pinkerton helped arrange work for the boy. He secretly passed along the proceeds from the agency's pamphlet on Worth to the two kids, and eventually he even gave worth son a job with the detective firm. So there you go. You know, Adam Worth Junior essentially working for the Pinkerton an interesting twist. Conan Doyle also revisited the character Moriarty, setting the Valley of Fear before the Final Problem so that he could focus on Sherlock's nemesis again. According to the Economist, people still reenact the death battle from the Final Problem, and as we mentioned in the first part of this podcast, it looks like Moriarty will play a major part in the new Sherlock Holmes reboot. Definitely. I mean we've only seen the first season, but he was suggested pretty heavily that last episode throughout and then at the end it was it was pretty clear that's going to be in it, So I guess um listeners in England don't don't spoil season two for us. But um worth legacy, of course, isn't just the skull headed psycho character of Moriarty, though, because in nineteen thirty nine T. S. Elliott included a very Moriarty like character called the Mystery Cat in his Old Possums Book of Practical Cats, which coincidentally was the inspiration for the musical Cats. I mean, I just think this is like the most hilarious outcome for for a guy like Adam Worth. That's one connection I would not make. I think I'm really going to have to pick up a copy now two of Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats. But we have one somewhere. Well, do you have to bring it to work and let me borrow because it looks pretty funny. I'll do that. Well, this is all we have for the Saga of Adam Worth. But I'm so glad that we did it. We've had so many requests for it ever since, as you mentioned, ever since we did the Sherlock Holmes episode. Um. And it's one that you can't find a ton of articles on, strangely, and it really a lot of it is based on that biography or the Pinkerton pamphlet, which has kind of a strange twisted view of the story because Pinkerton is a law man, you know, he's got to put that face forward for everybody. It's got to be like, this is a bad criminal and we need to talk about him that way. But he clearly cared for Worth too, and sort of brushes over certain aspects of his life. Well, I think both through McIntyre's biography and through that, we got to see a little bit of the human side of Worth two. It wasn't all just crime, and that's definitely so I love doing these literary inspiration episodes. So if any of you have more suggestions for those, you know, people real life biographies who inspired the creation of some literary character, I'd love to hear some of those. You could email us at History Podcast at Discovery dot com, or you could post on our Facebook or our Twitter account at mist in History. And if you want to learn a little bit more about some of the topics we talked about today, like art theft, for example, we have an article on our website called how could someone Steal a Painting from a museum? And you can find that by checking out our home page at www dot house stuff works dot com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join how Stuff Work staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. The House, Stuff Works, iPhone up has a rise. Download it today on iTunes, e

Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Sara Downey and I'm Deblin and Charkerboarding And when we left off last time. The German Jewish immigrant Adam Worth had died in the American Civil War, supposedly and gone on to become a successful criminal mastermind, and had over time accumulated all the trappings of an upper class British lifestyle as Henry Judson Raymond manif leisure, including the nice clothes, the posh accent, the yacht you know, really everything. But after a disastrous eighteen seventy four forgery attempt in Constantinople, Worth found himself safe but without a gang, and broke from trying to buy their freedom. To add to his woes, his longtime love and the mother of his children, Kittie Flynn, had left for America, and his best friend, piano Charlie Bullard, Kitty's estranged husband, had been arrested for a robbery committed years earlier. Worth did eventually rebound from this, though The Pinkerton's called him quote the most remarkable, most successful, and most dangerous professional criminal known to modern times, and he of course eventually inspired Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's character Professor Moriarty, the arch nemesis of Sherlott Holmes, but at this point in his career he was down and out and heartbroken to boot. Then, as if things couldn't get worse, in eighteen seventy six, Worth's criminally incompetent younger brother arrives in town looking for work. So John Worth shared his older brother's criminal tendencies, but none of his talents that we've already learned from Pinkerton's Detective Agency's pamphlet on Worth Life, which is an excellent source of information on him. By the way, Worth quote never forsook a friend or accomplice, and for him, that of course meant putting his brother to work on easy jobs with a lot out of supervision, very strict instructions, you know, so he wouldn't mess it up. John Worth, though, really couldn't manage even the most straightforward job, and found himself arrested in Paris were trying to pass counterfeit notes. John Sure, the Chief Inspector of Scotland Yard, the guy who had been hunting Adam Worth without success for years, jumped on this, he had the younger were extraditeed into England and charged him with forger, you know, hoping to sort of lure out the older brother while the younger one was in jail, and Adam Worth did, in fact, in the meantime set about trying to get his brother out of jail, though he didn't just come out in the open. He was a little sneakier about it. Though by this time it was tough because though he had enough cash on hand for bail, the law at the time stipulated that the bondsman must be a gentleman of good reputation. So where was Worth going to find someone willing to post bond and put his reputation on the line for a guy who was just obviously going to jump bail and high tail it back to the States immediately. So in late May Worth is pondering this very problem when he goes by some art galleries on Old Bond Street, and one of them, Agnew and Company, was staging an exhibition and crowds and carriages were all gathered on the street. Just days before, the gallery had bought a gains for a portrait of Georgeiane, a Duchess of Devonshire at auction, paying the highest amount ever paid for an English painting. It's the equivalent of about six hundred thousand dollars today. So when Worth went in to see this famous work of art, he was struck by an idea. If he stole the picture, he could force its owner, Thomas Agnew, to postpond for his younger brother in exchange for a return of the painting, so basically ransoming the painting in the form of a bond instead of just straight cash or something like that. So pretty soon after he gets this idea, he goes back to the gallery with two accomplices and Worth had himself hoisted to the second floor window allege Pride open the window with a crowbar, cut the portrait from its frame very carefully, you know. They police realized later that whoever did it barely damage the painting at all, and then rolled it all up, taking care not to crack the surface. Of course, with this high price that the painting had just sold for, the theft created a sensation, and it was partly because it wasn't the first time the painting had gone missing. Yeah, Gainsborough painted Georgiana, previous podcast subject known for her political action, her trend setting, and her affair with Charles Gray. He had painted her several times during her life, but this particular Georgiana, with her trademark broad brimmed hat and feathers sometimes called a Gainsborough hat and a suggestive pound, is quite different from the other ones. According to Ben McEntire's biography of Worth, the Napoleon of Crime, The Life and Times of Adam Worth, Master Thief, which we mentioned in the previous podcast, the painting first disappeared right around the time Georgiana got pregnant by Gray, about seventeen ninety two or so. Then about fifty years after that, it mysteriously popped up in the home of a retired school mistress who had chopped off for Georgana's legs so that the painting would fit over her fireplace. An art dealer learned that this woman might have some rare paintings, and um swung By decided he wanted to buy it, purchased the painting off the woman, and then sold it to his friend When Ellis. When Ellis died, he left his entire impressive art collection to the National Gallery, which kept the old school stuff and put the more modern items, including the gains for up at auction. So today it may be hard for some people to imagine a painting causing quite such a stir, but women began imitating Georgana's hats. Art critics debated about whether it was really a gain Sbura, and people wondered whether the sitter was actually the other Duchess of Devonshire, and that's the Duke's second wife who had lived with him in Georgiana for years. In Managois. Yeah, people were suggesting all of this and saying, oh, maybe Agney paid too much because it's not really a Gainsbrow, or it's not really georg Jane. Somebody were not as interested in So it was a big public hullabaloo, and Worth stuffed only added to that sensation. McEntyre sites one newspaper's tongue in cheek suggestion that the thief had promoted both art and history by stealing the work. Quote, he was an apostle of culture. So that's a pretty funny way to look at it, and I'm sure that's not how Agney saw it after losing his valuable investment. But fortunately Worth had never intended to sell the painting because the attention would have made it impossible with everybody talking about the theft and George, Jana and Gainsborough. But his reason for stealing it vanished anyway because John Worth lawyer had secured his release and big brother Adam quickly packed John up, sent him home and had him promise, don't come back here and don't get into crime again, because they're not very good at it. So what do you do with a painting like this that you've stolen and you certainly can't fell, and you certainly can't display. I mean probably a lot of art thieves would unfortunately have destroyed such an incriminating item. But fortunately for for us in the world, Worth instead fell in love with his painting and lovingly took care of it. When he was at home, he kept it stored flat under his mattress between boards. When on the move, he carried it and especially made false bottomed trunk so that his lady was always on his arm, so to speak. But the attachment wasn't without cost. Worth wound up blackmailed by his two accomplices in the theft, though neither could really do much about it since they didn't know where the painting was. When Worth moved back to New York City to escape the increased surveillance of John Shore. He did attempt to sell the work back to Agnew Corresponding through secret advertisements in the London Times, but the half hearted negotiations actually fell through when Worth refused to go to London to deliver the painting and the dealers refused to send a representative to the States. Well, and it really kind of seemed at this point like Worth wanted to keep the painting for himself, and but that just really did become even more important for him when his flesh and blood love Kitty Flynn, who had talked about a lot in the last podcast, divorce Bullard and married Juan Pedro Terry, who was an extraordinarily rich half Irish son of a sugar planter. And you know, with this marriage and her all her new money and her society cachet, she became a New York society matron who would travel with her husband, spend excessively, amuse herself with some kind of frivolous lawsuits, really kind of assuming the position she had tried to attain her entire life. So for Worth, it was definitely time for new pastures. It was time to get something else going, but he couldn't get it going right away. He couldn't form a new trustworthy gang for one thing, and his nemesis Max shan burned crimes kept being mistaken as his own. In eight he decided to go to Cape Town, South Africa, quote partly on business, partly for pleasure. He bought a hunting coat for his duchess. I mean, that's just it's pretty weird, taking it to another level. I mean it's one thing to travel around with her everywhere, but he bought her a nice coat, started buying her clothes, wrapped her up and left. Expecting the diamond fields would make a great target for him. So in order to move around South Africa without attracting suspicion, he got into the Ostrich feather business, which was really booming at the time, coincidentally because of Georgiana and her big hat trend with big feathers, you know, it had really caught on with the ladies of the era, and so Worth pretended like he was in the Ostrich feather business and he'd go out to visit Ostrich farms and visit agents feather agents, and this gave him kind of a past to move around the country without people taking notice. Of course, he was really studying the path of diamonds from mind to coast, how the rough gems got out of the mind, how they travel in armed coaches and reach outbound ships just as the ships were about to sail. So these diamond heavy boats didn't have to linger too long. So Worth, with accomplished Charlie king In another recruit, decided that a hold up would be the way to go. Here sounds like a bad plan for Worth, though, whose motto was quote a man with brains has no right to carry firearms. There was always away in a better way by the quick exercise of the brain. He of course ended up being shot at and had to abandon the attempt, and the next plan was more of a master criminal style did more Worth style. So working alone this time, Worth spent months studying the convoys of coaches and realized that if the slightest thing went wrong on the trip, the diamond shipment would miss the boat. When this happened, the stones would be locked up in the Port Elizabeth post office. So Worth made friends with the assistant postmass, eventually copying his keys in wax. From there he delayed a shipment by cutting a ferry rope and robbed the post office of five hundred thousand dollars worth of diamonds. So here he is. He's back in the game, and big diamond back in the game. So in the last episode we talked about or It's double identity as the respectable, comfortable Henry Raymond. But with all of this new diamond wealth, Worth or Raymond rather re established himself in London and put on even more of a gentlemanly show than he had before. He bought a coastal house in Brighton, he purchased land for hunting. He'd take these elaborate trips to Monte Carlo and Gamble. He grew a bush here, more impressive mustache, and put on a little bit of weight. And he got married to his wife, whose name is unfortunately unknown, was the daughter of a gentlewoman widow who Worth had lodged with at one point, and um he sort of took on the widow's children as his wards and hated them, and then ended up marrying the eldest daughter. Mr. And Mrs Worth had a sunborn in eight eight and a daughter born in eight Although the really strange thing about all of this is that Worth kept his criminal life completely secret from them. I mean a real contrast to his relationship with Kitty, where she was very much part of heart of the plane what he was doing. Mrs Worth didn't know who her husband was at all. But Worth didn't flat out retire. Even Shinburne said of him, quote, Raymond loved his work for its own sake, and although he lived in luxury and style, applied his energies to the last and organizing crimes. He did make a concession to married life though. It was a time to move his lady friend Georgiana out of the house. Worth crossed the Atlantic with his false bottom trunk and store the Duchess in a Brooklyn warehouse. He had a pretty close call along the way to He was actually stopped by police in Canada who found diamonds and undeclared cash on his person, but they did not find the That would have been quite a fine. So on every trip Worth would make after this to the States over the next six years or so, he would always move the painting to a new storage facility, you know, really taking a lot of trouble to make sure it was secret and nobody knew he had it. The eighties were clearly worth heyday, but the first step in his ultimate downfall happened as early as eighteen eighty four. Bullard, his old best friend, was out of jail, very sick by this point and really not so great at crime anymore. He was no longer the ace burglar that he used to be. Bullard, though, was still looking for work, so he teamed up with shin Burn to stage heist in Liege, Belgium. The two of them got busted in the middle of the crime. It was really poorly carried out, and Worth took it upon himself to try to help out his friend Bullard, you know, get him out of prison like the Constantinople incident. Though it was not easy, and ultimately the best Worth could do is get messages to Bullard, get him some extra food, um, just trying to make his old friend a little more comfortable. Finally, though, after Bullard was in prison for seven years, shouldn't burn too, of course, but Worth didn't much care about him being there. After Bullard was there for seven years, Worth decided that he really needed to make some kind of last ditch attempt to get his buddy out, you know, maybe even breaking out of prison, because Bullard was clearly by this point dying. By the time Worth got to Liege, Bullard was already dead, but for some reason, Worth decided to stage a reckless crime while he was in town, robbing one of the vans that brought money into the city. Along with two accomplices, Worth planned the high Swell but got greedy while at emptying the van's lock box of money and packages. His lookouts fled and he was spotted by a railway employee and was chased down by the police. Once caught, he tried to bluff his way out as Edward grow but police found cards id to find him as Henry Raymond. He thoroughly confused them with stories about being a German mechanic, being a former thief but one who hadn't stolen in two years, being a diamond salesman. But he finally messed up when he said, quote, if you knew the truth, I would be put away in prison for eternity. Okay, So that set off the morning for the authority. This guy who's already told them a million different stories and given them two different names. Um, so clearly this prisoner was somebody, but they didn't know who he was, and there was even some suspicion that he might be a spy because, unfortunately for Worth, some of those packages he had grabbed up from the van happened to contain state papers. Whoops, you know, a little more heat than he was anticipating. So still, though the authority's information on him was overall pretty sketchy, and Worth thought that he might be able to get off easy until Max shin Burned, his old nemesis, and of course, still in the local jail, wrote a that are spilling the beans completely pretty much listed everything Worth had ever done since the Civil War. Actually a little more than that, because he kind of made him out to be a really nasty criminal, you know, one who betrayed his friends, not really sticking much to worth real personality. All of the international authorities in the know about Adam Worth, Henry Raymond and the career of this man who was obviously one person backed up the tail to accept notably remember this one the Pinkerton's who didn't have anything to say about this, these allegations from Max Shinburn, even though arguably they knew the most about Worth than anyone, or more about him than anyone. Still. Worth story became international news, and he began receiving coded messages from his friends around the world. They would message him as comedian or Edward Grow. That's the best one, Edward Grow. That must have really confused the people in the prisons he had blamed to be Edward Grow exactly. Also ter boys, who turned out to be the now widowed Kitty, offering encouragement and even money. His lawyer advised him to confess to the liege robbery but deny all the other crimes, but it didn't work. After his March trial, Worth was found guilty and sentenced to seven years of solitary confinement with hard labor at the Prison de louvan. So prison was particularly bad for Worth because Shinburne was still there, and shinburn had been there for a very long time and had gotten quite powerful and actually consequently, Worth did not learn of Shinburne's treachery until he was in jail. When he found out, he was understandably quite upset. Also, Worth's family fell apart while he was in prison. We mentioned that he hadn't told his wife, his kids didn't know what his real job was. Mrs Raymond learned about her husband's true identity in the newspaper and just completely flipped out. Johnny Curtain, who was the associate Worth had asked with looking out from Mrs Raymond and the kids, came to her aid, but unfortunately he came comforting her with laudanum and alcohol and ultimately seduced her and then stole everything she had the yacht, uh sold off the houses and pocketed the money from that and then just disappeared. So Mrs Raymond, you know, now completely abandoned, not sure what her life is really about, and broke wound up in an asylum, and the two kids were sent off to Brooklyn to live with John Worth, who had kept his promise and had stayed out of criminal activities. And John Worth's wife also just some other sad things happened while he was in prison. It was a really dark period for where marm Mandelbaum, who we mentioned in the previous podcast, who had given Worth kind of his first break, she died. Kitty also died at only forty one years of age, and news officially broke that the famous missing Duchess might be in Worth's control. Worth's great secret. How did that get out. Well, we're about to talk about that. It's actually that story published in the Palmell Gazette only months after Worth went to jail that likely influenced Arthur Conan Doyle's creation of Professor Moriarty. Worth had been duped by a freelance reporter posing as a solicitor into discussing the Duchess. Their conversation was published as an interviewer confession of sorts and was reprinted in countless periodicals with a heavy dose of skepticism about whether it was true or not. Worth battled back by granting a real exclusive interview, playing the whole thing off as a joke. He had just wanted to kind of green up the reporter by spinning tales, and it sounded good enough for fiction that whether this story was true or not, because by December, Professor Moriarty debuted and died in the final problem of course, you know, if you're familiar with the character, he's not a complete match for his real life counterpart Moriarty. It's tall and thin, he's eat creepy, you know, he's stages murders, that sort of thing. Whereas, of course, as we know, Worth did not like violence. Um, and some inspiration probably came from a few other sources. You know, Conan Doyle wasn't relying exclusively. Unworth. McIntyre suggests Conan Doyle's friend Major General Drayson Friedrich Nietzsche and the crooks George Moriarty and Jonathan Wilde may have been inspirations. But in a conversation with Dr Gray Chandler Briggs, Conan Doyle did cite Worth as his inspiration. And it's pretty obvious too if you read the character. There's some clear parallels between them. But moving back to the main the real life guy in Or was released early from prison for good behavior. He was fifty three years old by this point. He was broke. He was really sick. He hadn't had good medical care in prison, but he still was in possession of the Duchess. He hadn't given that Trump card up and he was hoping that maybe it would help him reclaim his kids. So he said about negotiating a return of the painting. But instead of inquiring directly with ag Knew, as he had the last go round, Worth instead brought in an intermediary named Patrick Sheety to seek out William Pinkerton to be the main go between, and you can really see a lot of Pinkerton's public image, you know, the the face he put out to the world and his agency's pamphlet on Worth that we've mentioned a few times now, But McIntyre's book also hints at kind of a more complicated detective, especially later in life. Pinkerton took a lot of real genuine interest in the men he had hunted or put into jail. He almost got along with them better than he did with people on his side of the law. So Worth in Pinkerton had met a way before this, way back in the American bar days in Paris. But Worth had infinitely more respect for him than he had for guys like John Shore of Scotland Yard or for other agencies. I mean, partly because they were clearly the only people who really knew anything about him, and he felt like the Pinkerton's had helped him out a little bit when he was in trouble in Belgium. He especially respected the Pinkerton's strange silence during his Belgian arrest after some bluffing on both sides, I mean, William Pinkerton, he didn't want to seem like he was doing anything shady to Scotland Yard, in particular the criminal and the detective. They opened up talks. Worth actually visited pinkerton Chicago office January twelve and basically told his whole story. He told Pinkerton quote, now I am placing myself entirely in your hands. I have never done it with a human being before, but I have implicit confidence in your word that you and yours will not take advantage of what I say. They talked all day and into the night, and they met the next day and the day after that, and they of course discussed the Duchess. Worth told Pinkerton that he was sick and that the lady should return home, but they also discussed his career and his life and just kind of talking about everything Worth had done. And as soon as this epic interview was over, Pinkerton wrote the entire thing down. This is, I mean pretty apparently the basis for the pamphlet that we've been discussing. And then and maybe like the cutest thing that could happen, he arranged for a fox terrier puppy to be sent to Worth kids, kind of almost to cement this trusting relationship they were going to have together so still, though, even though Worth trusted Pinkerton and vice versa, negotiations really did take a long time. The Duchess wasn't returned until nineteen o one, when Seymoreland Agnew, who was Sir William Agnew's son, took a ship to the United States and collected it. And it's unknown how much exactly he paid. But the really strange thing about the delivery is that while Worth turned the painting over, you know, he kept hit side of the deal, he didn't entirely give it up because he was almost certainly a passenger aboard Agnew's ship back to England in heavy disguise. I think that's a little bit it creepy. I don't know. He had ideas about taking it back and decided that it would be better to have his kids than the painting. At this point, well, it was almost like he just didn't want to be separated from it. He needed to at least go back home with her. J pre pomp, Morgan bought the picture from the Agnew family, beating out Senator William Clark of Montana, who was huge at Clark's father We Talked Together podcast subject. Morgan didn't display the painting outside of his home, and after his death his children kept it. When his last grandchild died in it was taken from her New York City apartment and auctioned at Southby's, London, where it was purchased by none other than the Duke of Devonshire. So it really did finally go home after all of those years away, what seventeen nine two or something like that until timee So with some of that money though, from the painting's return, Worth was able to buy off his sister in law, who was sort of holding his kid's hostage almost by this point, in order to get some money out of him. Um the kid moved to England to live with their father. They lived in London together for a short time, with Worth and Pinkerton, of course still corresponding regularly. On January nine two, actually, just a few days after Morgan had taken the Duchess back to New York City, Worth died at fifty six years of age. His teenage son, Harry Raymond Jr. That's, you know, obviously a completely made up name, moved back to America with his sister and then Pinkerton. I mean that relationship that Worth forged with him at the end really did pay off for his kids because Pinkerton helped arrange work for the boy. He secretly passed along the proceeds from the agency's pamphlet on Worth to the two kids, and eventually he even gave worth son a job with the detective firm. So there you go. You know, Adam Worth Junior essentially working for the Pinkerton an interesting twist. Conan Doyle also revisited the character Moriarty, setting the Valley of Fear before the Final Problem so that he could focus on Sherlock's nemesis again. According to the Economist, people still reenact the death battle from the Final Problem, and as we mentioned in the first part of this podcast, it looks like Moriarty will play a major part in the new Sherlock Holmes reboot. Definitely. I mean we've only seen the first season, but he was suggested pretty heavily that last episode throughout and then at the end it was it was pretty clear that's going to be in it, So I guess um listeners in England don't don't spoil season two for us. But um worth legacy, of course, isn't just the skull headed psycho character of Moriarty, though, because in nineteen thirty nine T. S. Elliott included a very Moriarty like character called the Mystery Cat in his Old Possums Book of Practical Cats, which coincidentally was the inspiration for the musical Cats. I mean, I just think this is like the most hilarious outcome for for a guy like Adam Worth. That's one connection I would not make. I think I'm really going to have to pick up a copy now two of Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats. But we have one somewhere. Well, do you have to bring it to work and let me borrow because it looks pretty funny. I'll do that. Well, this is all we have for the Saga of Adam Worth. But I'm so glad that we did it. We've had so many requests for it ever since, as you mentioned, ever since we did the Sherlock Holmes episode. Um. And it's one that you can't find a ton of articles on, strangely, and it really a lot of it is based on that biography or the Pinkerton pamphlet, which has kind of a strange twisted view of the story because Pinkerton is a law man, you know, he's got to put that face forward for everybody. It's got to be like, this is a bad criminal and we need to talk about him that way. But he clearly cared for Worth too, and sort of brushes over certain aspects of his life. Well, I think both through McIntyre's biography and through that, we got to see a little bit of the human side of Worth two. It wasn't all just crime, and that's definitely so I love doing these literary inspiration episodes. So if any of you have more suggestions for those, you know, people real life biographies who inspired the creation of some literary character, I'd love to hear some of those. You could email us at History Podcast at Discovery dot com, or you could post on our Facebook or our Twitter account at mist in History. And if you want to learn a little bit more about some of the topics we talked about today, like art theft, for example, we have an article on our website called how could someone Steal a Painting from a museum? And you can find that by checking out our home page at www dot house stuff works dot com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join how Stuff Work staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. The House, Stuff Works, iPhone up has a rise. Download it today on iTunes, e