J. North Conway - King of Heists: The Sensational Bank Robbery of 1878 That Shocked America

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO MY WIFE, JULIA.

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he greatest bank robbery in American history took place in October of 1878, when thieves broke into the Manhattan Savings Institution at Bleecker Street and Broadway and stole nearly $3 million in cash and securities. Based on economic calculations conducted through the Economic History Service, the Manhattan bank heist amounts to approximately $50 million by today's currency standards. This far surpasses the 1950 Brink's armored car robbery in Boston, Massachusetts, that netted thieves approximately $3 million (approximately $21 million today), or the great train robbery in London, England, in 1963, where thieves made off with $4 million (about $22 million today). Neither of these twentiethcentury bank heists can compare to the Manhattan bank robbery of 1878, and no bank robbery since has equaled it.

According to bank examiners, the exact amount the robbers stole was $2,747,700, nearly $2.5 million of which was in stocks and bonds. It was an incredible amount of money by nineteenth-century standards. The New York Times hailed it as "... the most sensational in the history of bank robberies in this country."

The robbery was planned down to the minutest detail by criminal mastermind George L. Leslie, dubbed "the King of Bank Robbers" by New York City police, newspaper reporters, and underworld figures. According to police reports, Leslie was responsible for more than 80 percent of all the bank robberies in the country from 1869 through 1878. Despite his reputation, Leslie was never apprehended and never spent a day of his life in jail.

What made the robbery of the Manhattan Savings Institution more incredible than just the amount taken in the heist was that the bank itself was one of the largest and most imposing in the world. The Manhattan Savings Institution was not just a bank; it was also a depository for the money, jewelry, securities, and other valuables of some of the most prominent, wealthy citizens of New York City. The building was a ponderous labyrinth of bolts, locks, and steel doors, making it an almost impregnable fortress. Using George L. Leslie's intricate plans, which took him three years to devise, his gang was able to pull off the almost impossible feat of cleaning out the Titanic of American financial institutions.

This book narrates the incredible double life of George L. Leslie leading up to the Manhattan Savings Institution robbery. Leslie arrived in New York City in 1869. The son of a prosperous Cincinnati brewer, a graduate of the University of Cincinnati, and a successful architect, he ingratiated himself with many of New York City's social, cultural, and financial elite, choosing a life of crime as his means to fame and fortune. Known as a ladies' man, Leslie engaged in a slew of romantic liaisons with several of the wives of his criminal cohorts. Ultimately, it was Leslie's roving eye-not his criminal behavior or the robbery of the Manhattan Savings Institution-that led to his downfall.

It took Leslie three years to plan the robbery. He began by posing as a customer and depositing a substantial sum of his own money in the bank. This allowed him to frequent the building whenever he wanted. He then carefully surveyed the premises until every inch of it was familiar to him, using his training and talent as an architect to build a replica of the bank in an abandoned warehouse. Leslie rehearsed the well-planned robbery with his handpicked gang for months, right down to the split-second timing.

Leslie found a bank vault fabricator and learned how to duplicate the combination of the Manhattan bank vault. He bribed a night watchman and was able to break into the bank whenever he liked in order to try his various vault combinations. Leslie worked tirelessly to find the secret to the vault's tumblers until he finally cracked the combination. The Manhattan Savings Institution was his for the taking. All in all, Leslie broke into the Manhattan Savings Institution three times before his gang actually robbed it.

One of the largest investigations in New York City police annals began immediately following the heist, and slowly, one by one, the men who robbed the Manhattan Savings Institution were tracked down and brought to justice-all except George Leslie. A different fate lay in store for him.

This story about George Leslie and the greatest bank robbery in American history is set in a period of great economic and social contrast-the opulent lifestyle of the wealthy alongside that of the poor and working class during the notorious "Gilded Age" in New York Citywhich echoes our current times. The phrase The Gilded Age was coined by Mark Twain, and served as the title of one of his books, published in 1873. According to Twain, the Gilded Age was a period of great wealth, greed, and poverty, and New York City-where much of this story takes place-was the hub.

The Gilded Age was also a period of tremendous industrial growth and invention. With dramatic increases in the production of iron, oil, and steel, great fortunes were made by enterprising businessmen like Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Jay Gould, James Fisk Jr., and Cornelius Vanderbilt. Dubbed robber barons by historian Matthew Josephson, these great business leaders and industrialists were able to accumulate great wealth through often ruthless and sometimes illegal business practices. According to national economic trends of the period, 1 percent of the population owned 99 percent of the wealth during the Gilded Age. Unfortunately, the Gilded Age was also a period marked by massive immigration, unemployment, dire poverty, unsanitary tenement housing, and violent crime. George Leslie was part of this complex era in our country's history, although he did not amass his fortune through business or industry; he simply stole it.