In 1850, a German family of “itinerate peddlers” emigrated to New York’s Lower East Side. The young wife Fredericka, aka “Mother” Mandelbaum, became an upstanding member of the community, and a generous donor to her synagogue.
She funded her lifestyle dealing in stolen goods, and organizing blackmailers, pickpockets, and sophisticated bank heists.
Her worlds met at her glamorous dinner parties, hosting many a corrupt police officer and Tammany Hall official .
Join us to learn of the blossoming of this immigrant Jewish woman in the world of “greenbacks” and organized crime, during the “Gilded Age” of municipal corruption and stark inequality.
1. A Glittering Hoard; The Mere Privilege of Breath
2 All Questions Asked; Breakfast at Tiffanies
3. Home Improvements, Ocean's Four
4. Bureau for the Prevention of Conviction; Where The Money Was
6. Thieves Fall Out; The Thief Taker General of the USA; Maypole and the Egg
7. Strips of Silk, North by Northwest; Kaddish
Core Book: Margalit Fox, The Talented Mrs. Mandelbaum: The Rise and Fall of an American Organized-Crime Boss, Random House 2024
Frederica "Mother" Mandelbaum, New York's First Female Crime Boss, 2020 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aM_AoD0GPZg
Other resources to be provided by coordinator as PDF files:
Mother Mandelbaum, New York's Female Felon, HIstorynet.ccom April 2020
Karen Abbott The Life and Crimes of "Old Mother" Mandelbaum", Smithsonian September 2011
Ana Guerreiro, et al, Feminist Criminology and Women in Organized Crime,Revista da Associacco Portuguessa, (In English), June 2022 pg 45-57
Cecelia Mendez, Womens' involvement in Organized Crime and Drug Trafficking, Chapter 17 pgs 160 -167
Susan Johnson, The Extraordinary "Mother" Mandelbaum, 2018
Nicholas Rossi, New York's First Female Crime Boss Started her own Crime School", 2016
Rossella Selmini, Women in Organized Crime, University of Chicago Press May 2020
Elizabeth Van Flanders, Meet the Woman Behind New Yorks 1800s School for Crooks, 2012