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Chernov Svetozar

Adam Worth - prototype of Professor Moriarty

Adam Worth - prototype of Professor Moriarty

In December 1893, the next issue of Strand magazine, as you know, plunged all British fans of the Great Detective into mourning: the ruthless author brought him together on the edge of the Reichenbach Falls with the evil genius of the London underworld, Professor Moriarty, and buried both at the bottom of the foaming abyss.

Conan Doyle spared no color to describe his hero's opponent:

He's the Napoleon of crime, Watson. He is the organizer of half of all atrocities and almost all unsolved crimes in our city. This is a genius, a philosopher, this is a person who knows how to think abstractly. He has a first-class mind. He sits motionless, like a spider in the center of his web, but this web has thousands of threads, and he picks up the vibration of each of them. He rarely acts on his own. He's just making a plan. But his agents are numerous and superbly organized. If someone needs to steal a document, rob a house, remove a person from the road - all he has to do is bring his ego to the attention of the professor, and the crime will be prepared and then carried out. The agent may be caught. In such cases, there is always money to bail him out or invite a lawyer. But the main leader, the one who sent this agent, will never be caught: he is above suspicion.

Doyle endowed his professor with a penchant for mathematics - a trait he spotted in his friend Major General Drayson. (However, Holmesian enthusiasts have other candidates in mind.) It is believed that the professor received his name from a certain George Moriarty, about whom London newspapers wrote every now and then in 1874 in connection with his attempt on his wife. This assumption seems unlikely, since the surname Moriarty was quite common - even among criminals, the mentioned George was not the only Moriarty. This surname appears quite often in the press of that time. And it’s unlikely that Conan Doyle would rummage through crime chronicles to choose a name for his villain. Besides, there were other Moriartys. For example, in the 1880s, one James Moriarty was treasurer of the Land League. And in June 1893, it was published in the press about the appointment of the Rev. James H. Moriarty as chaplain and naval instructor on the training ship Boscowen in Portland.

Conan Doyle himself, in the story “The Valley of Fear,” put into the mouth of Sherlock Holmes a comparison of the professor with the famous “thief catcher” and head of the crime syndicate Jonathan Wilde, who was hanged in 1725. However, there is every reason to believe that the elusive king of the London underworld, Professor Moriarty, owes his main features not to Jonathan Wilde the Great, but to the famous Adam Worth, which - according to one of the early Holmes scholars Vincent Starrett - Sir Conan Doyle himself mentioned in a conversation with the doctor Gray Chandler Briggs.

What was so famous about Adam Worth - why did Doyle choose him as the prototype of the evil genius? One must think that the writer chose him primarily for his incredible resourcefulness of mind. The actions of the real “Napoleon of the underworld” are in no way inferior to the atrocities of the fictional Moriarty, and more than one detective dreamed of putting him behind bars. However, Worth's fate is not similar to Moriarty's in the main thing - he did not have his own Sherlock Holmes, and he ended his life completely differently.

Adam Worth was born in 1844 into a poor family of German Jews and emigrated to America with his parents at the age of five. At the age of 14 he ran away from home, lived for some time in Boston, then in 1860 he came to New York. At the very beginning of the Civil War, he enlisted in the Northern army as a volunteer, was wounded by shrapnel at the Battle of Manassas (the so-called Second Battle of Bull Run) and ended up on the list of those killed on the battlefield. This gave him the idea of ​​recruiting into various regiments under fictitious names in order to receive the money assigned to volunteers. In the end, he was identified by agents of Allan Pinkerton's National Detective Agency, who were searching for deserters, and he had to flee to New York.

In the mid-1860s, New York was known as one of the most corrupt and criminal cities in the world: it was full of corrupt politicians and police officers, Irish and Jewish immigrant gangs, pimps and prostitutes. Starting out as a common pickpocket, Worth soon assembled a gang and gained the trust of New York's most famous buyers of stolen goods, becoming the leader, organizer and financier of the robberies that his men committed. Having been caught robbing an Adams Express Company van, he spent several weeks in the famous Sing Sing prison (New York state). After which he decided that the sad experience should not be repeated, and found himself a patron - Marm Mandelbaum, the most successful buyer of stolen goods in New York. Under her leadership and protection, he began to rob banks and warehouses. Just like Doyle's Moriarty, Worth achieved what he wanted thanks to his intellect and made the following principle his principle: a person with brains has no right to carry a firearm. There is always a way, and a much better way, to achieve the same thing with the help of the mind. In his entire life, he never resorted to violence and, unlike his literary competitor, forbade others to do so. The successful escape from the White Plains prison of safecracker Charles Bullard, organized by Worth and another of his henchmen at the request of Mandelbaum, not only strengthened his authority in the criminal world of New York, but also made him friends with Bullard, with whom they became partners.

The pair's first venture was the daring robbery of the Boylstone National Bank in Boston on November 20, 1869. Under the guise of sellers of strengthening agents, they rented a room next to a bank vault, dismantled the wall, broke into the safe and took out a million dollars in cash and securities, after which they fled to England. Here Adam Worth, who first called himself Henry Raymond - the name of the late editor of the New York Times (under which he lived until the end of his days), began robbing usurious shops.

In June 1871, after the defeat of the Paris Commune, he moved with his gang to Paris. Here, not far from the Grand Opera, he and Bullard opened the American Bar, which became one of the main post-war centers of entertainment for the Parisian public. The first two floors offered legitimate entertainment: a chic restaurant with French cuisine and American drinks, a reading room with French and foreign newspapers. But on the third floor there was an underground gambling house with roulette and card tables. In the event of a police raid, with the help of a special mechanism, it instantly turned into an ordinary, albeit very spacious cafe. The “American Bar” was visited by the cream of society, located on both sides of the “barricade”: Worth greeted with equal cordiality both bankers and socialites, and the famous safecrackers, counterfeiters and swindlers, who often became the perpetrators of his carefully thought-out robberies. The end of the American Bar was when William Pinkerton, one of the two Pinkerton brothers who took over the detective agency after their father's death, visited the establishment. The agency, hired by the Banking Association after the Boston Boylstone Bank robbery, compiled a large file containing information about Worth's entire criminal career. As a result, in the winter of 1873, he had to close his establishment and move all property and equipment to London, where he decided to settle.

Still under the same name, Henry Raymond Worth rented an apartment in Mayfair - the most fashionable area of ​​London - at number 198 Piccadilly, from where he directed his assistants. The matter was put on a grand scale. He and his assistants carefully planned robberies of banks, railway ticket offices, post offices, warehouses, and houses of wealthy citizens. Over the course of a decade and a half, Adam Worth created a real criminal empire in London. The performers, who were always hired through a chain of intermediaries, never knew anything about the organizers. All they knew was that the order had come from “above”, the matter had been thought out to the smallest detail and would be well paid, that’s all. Having been caught red-handed, they could not give anyone away even if they wanted to.

Worth used his criminal network not only for his own purposes, but also committed contract crimes, and also provided “assistance” to all his “colleagues”: robbers, burglars, and swindlers. In a brochure dedicated to Worth and published in 1903 (after his death), William Pinkerton wrote: “Thieves came to him for help. Need to bribe a bank employee or make a master key? Please. Does a certain businessman need an experienced robber or fake documents? Adam Worth has everything you need and for every taste. He knew where to find the right person for any job, for which he received an impressive percentage of the profits.”

The king of criminals watched the crimes committed at his will, as if from behind the scenes: he was a puppeteer, skillfully directing his puppets.

His henchmen operated throughout Europe and, on the orders of their leader, could commit any robbery or forgery. However, Worth and his associates were not limited to Europe. In the early 1870s, they acquired a 34-meter steam yacht “Shamrock”, on which they made long overseas forays: they robbed banks on the coasts of South America, the West Indies... In Kingston, in one of the warehouses of Jamaica, his people “lightened” safes for ten thousand dollars. This case almost ended in failure: a British gunboat set off in pursuit of Worth’s yacht, but was never able to catch up with the high-speed vessel of the criminals.

Not many high-profile cases in which Adam Worth personally participated are known - he, as we already know, preferred to remain in the shadows, shifting the implementation of his plans to others. But in 1876, he and two accomplices repeated the “feat of Herostratus” - he committed a theft that immortalized his name. At Christie's (during the sale of the Wynne Ellis collection), William Agnew bought Thomas Gainsborough's Georgina, Duchess of Devonshire for his art gallery for 10,100 guineas; three weeks later it was stolen - the portrait disappeared for 20 years. Twelve of these twenty paintings were kept in a chest with a double bottom and accompanied its new owner wherever he went - until he decided that it was too dangerous to keep it with him and hid it in 1886 in America.

In 1878, Adam Worth and a certain Megotti with several accomplices robbed the Calais - Paris courier train; in 1880, Worth managed to detain an armed convoy in South Africa near Fort Elizabeth, which was carrying rough diamonds from the mines, and after several frauds managed to take possession of the protected cargo. Next, he figured out how to sell these diamonds without resorting to the services of dealers in stolen goods: he organized a legal sale - which was both safer and more profitable.

This was one side of Adam Worth's life. But there was another, external one: Henry Raymond, a wealthy American who was interested in horse racing and bought a herd of 10 horses, and then two more stallions, in 1877 purchased an estate in south London, in the Clapham Common area, called West Lodge. There stood an impressive red-brick two-story house, and soon there appeared a tennis court, a shooting range, and a bowling green. Raymond hosted lavish dinner parties at both his Piccadilly flat and his country mansion, both of which he decorated with “expensive furniture, bric-a-brac and paintings,” rare books and expensive china. According to Sir Robert Anderson, by easily changing his identities, Raymond-Worth "was able to make his way into any company" - be it as a wealthy ne'er-do-well or the godfather of the London underworld. In the 1880s, his annual expenses reached 20 thousand pounds, and his income sometimes exceeded this figure three times. According to Pinkerton's calculations, the brilliant criminal made at least two million dollars during his criminal career, and possibly all three. “Adam Worth is probably the only criminal who has achieved such enormous wealth,” said one of his old acquaintances in the world of thieves. “He had an expensive apartment in Piccadilly, he entertained the best people in London, who knew him only as a very rich man with bohemian inclinations.”

Naturally, the activities of Worth and his people could not escape the attention of the police; his name was well known to Scotland Yard - in this the elusive Moriarty was superior to his prototype. When Sir Robert Anderson was asked in 1907 who was the most cunning and resourceful criminal he knew, he answered without the slightest hesitation: “Adam Worth. He was the Napoleon of the underworld. All the others were no match for him.” John Shore, first an inspector and later a superintendent of the Department of Criminal Investigations, vowed to arrest and imprison Worth, but failed to do so. The Pinkerton Agency, the New York Police and Scotland Yard constantly exchanged information about the crimes that Worth was behind, but it was never possible to find direct evidence that would link the mastermind of the robbery with the crime committed.

Worth masterfully hid the traces of his activities. He almost never met anyone he could not rely on entirely, and if he did have to do so, he made an appointment in some East London brothel where the police would not venture. When going to a meeting with his henchmen, Worth changed his elegant dress for a shabby one, and when returning, he went into the railway toilet to quickly and discreetly change into a “gentleman’s” suit. He bribed several Scotland Yard employees who kept him constantly informed of events. The London Evening News wrote in 1901 that “he maintained a staff of detectives and a solicitor, and his private secretary was a barrister.”

Robert Anderson talked about one of the methods that Adam Worth, aka Henry Raymond, used to provide himself with an alibi. “A friend of mine, a doctor practicing in one of the rich suburbs of London, once told me about a certain remarkable patient who, although he lived in luxury, suffered extremely from hypochondriacal syndrome. From time to time, my doctor friend was urgently called - the patient was lying in bed, although, apparently, he was completely healthy. However, he always insisted that he be given a prescription, which the servant immediately took to the pharmacist... I must have dispelled the bewilderment of my interlocutor by explaining to him that the eccentric patient was the king of criminals. Henry Raymond knew that the police were monitoring his movements, and, suspecting that he had been spotted in a dangerous company, he rushed home and pretended to be sick. The doctor’s testimony and the records in the pharmacy books could serve as confirmation that at the hour when the police allegedly saw him at the crime scene, he was lying at home sick.”

It all ended in the early 1890s, when Worth went to France to rescue his former friend Bullard from prison, but he died before his arrival. For some reasons known only to him, Worth decided to personally take part in a very dangerous robbery of a Belgian cash-in-transit van in Liege. Local banks received most of the money from Switzerland, from where the money was delivered by rail on certain days and times. Two men picked up fireproof boxes of bills from the depot and transported them to banks on a simple two-wheeled van. The van was left unguarded at the bank for about three minutes, but Worth thought that, with a good scrap of scrap, that would be enough to open three or four boxes and remove the contents. On October 5, 1892, he and two of his men tried to do this, but the accomplices, without warning the leader of the danger, fled, and the “Napoleon of the underworld” was arrested by the gendarmes. He appeared in court the following March.

Since he refused to give his real name, the Belgian police sent inquiries to their foreign colleagues. Both the New York Police Department and Scotland Yard confidently identified him as Worth. His old competitor, “Baron” Max Shinburn, did the same, wanting to earn early release. But the Pinkerton Detective Agency, which had the largest dossier on the “robber king,” chose to remain silent, which later played a significant role in his fate. Worth categorically denied involvement in the various crimes charged against him, and called his latest robbery a gesture of despair - he allegedly ran out of means of subsistence. He was sentenced to seven years in prison and sent to Leuven prison.

Most likely, Conan Doyle first heard about the existence of Worth in July 1893, when he had already decided to get rid of Holmes. On July 24, the Pall Mall Gazette published an article revealing the mystery of Worth's daring theft at Agnew's gallery seventeen years earlier. The material for the article was an interview conducted with Adam Worth by freelance journalist Marcend of Pall Mall in a Belgian prison; he managed to extract from the prisoner (who mistook Marcend for a lawyer) a confession that it was he, Henry Raymond, and in reality Adam Worth, “le Brigand International”, who stole the famous painting “Georgina, Duchess of Devonshire” by Gainsborough in 1876. The article described Worth's life and crimes, which struck London as a bombshell. Conan Doyle was also struck by this.

However, his professor even looked little like Worth, who was strong, short - only 154 centimeters - and wore sideburns. Doyle's Moriarty, by contrast, was a true Victorian villain: “He is very thin and tall. His forehead is large, convex and white. Deeply sunken eyes. The face is clean-shaven, pale, ascetic - something still remains of Professor Moriarty in him. The shoulders are stooped - probably from constantly sitting at a desk - and the head protrudes forward and slowly, like a snake, sways from side to side.” Such a personality was much better suited for the role of gravedigger Sherlock Holmes. The Great Detective died, and for ten years Conan Doyle forgot about both Sherlock Holmes and Adam Worth.

Meanwhile, Worth was alive: in 1897, sick and having lost all his former accomplices, he left prison - two years ahead of schedule. Some members of his gang retired, others died, and others were in prison. No one met him at home: one of the two accomplices in the unsuccessful Liege robbery, to whom Worth entrusted the care of his wife and children, took advantage of his absence and forced his wife Louise into cohabitation, methodically getting her drunk and teaching her to consume opiates. He gradually sold off Worth's property: a yacht, horses, diamonds, and when Louise Raymond turned into a complete alcoholic and drug addict, he took everything to the last penny and disappeared. Worth's wife, who had gone crazy, was placed in a psychiatric hospital, and the children were sent to America to live with Adam's brother.

To earn a living, Worth robbed a jewelry store for 4,000 pounds and went to America, where he turned to William Pinkerton - he well remembered that Pinkerton refused to give information about him to the Belgian police. Worth asked for mediation in the sale of Gainsborough's painting - now to the grandson of the previous owner. The exchange took place in 1901. With the proceeds (which, according to some sources, was about twenty-five thousand dollars, and according to others - only five), he returned with his children to London, where he bought a modest house and lived in it for the eleven months remaining until his death. He died on January 9, 1902 and was buried under the name of Henry Raymond.

In the year of the return of the portrait of the Duchess of Devonshire, Conan Doyle wrote another story about Holmes - “The Hound of the Baskervilles”, and a year later he was forced to resurrect the Great Detective. Professor Moriarty also had to cross swords with Sherlock Holmes once again - this time in the story "The Valley of Fear", which takes place before the fatal battle at the Reichenbach Falls. The impetus for the emergence of a new story about Sherlock Holmes was, most likely, Doyle's trip to New York in May - June 1914. James Horan, in his book “The Pinkertons - the Famous Detective Dynasty” (1967), claimed that on one of his transatlantic travels, Conan Doyle met William Pinkerton, who has already been mentioned here more than once. The exact date of this meeting is unknown, but most likely it took place on board an Atlantic liner on the writer’s return trip from America (Pinkerton is not listed on the list of passengers on the Olympia steamer on which Doyle sailed to America). On the way, the American regaled Doyle with stories about the deeds of the Pinkertons, including the defeat of the Irish underground organization Molly Maguires. It is very likely that they were talking about Adam Worth, whose confidant was William Pinkerton in returning Gainsborough’s painting to the Agnew Gallery.

Upon returning to England, Conan Doyle began writing The Valley of Fear, using Allan Pinkerton's Molly Maguires and the Detectives, published in 1877 and republished in 1886, as the basis for the second part (the story of the Sweepers and Birdie Edwards). m. Pinkerton Agency CEO Ralph Dudley claimed in an interview with James Horan that William Pinkerton was enraged after reading The Valley of Fear. “At first he said he would file a lawsuit against Doyle, but then he cooled down. He was angry that Doyle, even if he fictionalized the story, did not consider it necessary to ask Pinkerton’s permission to use his notes. They used to be good friends, but from that day on their relationship became strained. Mr. Doyle sent several letters trying to settle the matter, and although W.A.P. sent him courteous replies, he no longer treated Mr. Doyle with the same warmth." Perhaps Pinkerton had another reason for dissatisfaction: he probably felt that in the first part of the story Doyle had already used his own work - the 1904 brochure “Adam Worth, nicknamed Little Adam,” which outlined Worth’s story.

Indeed, in The Valley of Fear, Conan Doyle again resorts to the story of Adam Worth (the episode with the theft of Gainsborough's painting) - in the detective's conversation with Inspector MacDonald about Professor Moriarty. Holmes asks the policeman if he noticed the painting by Jean Baptiste Greuze hanging in the professor's office. In response to the inspector's confusion about how the case they are discussing is related to the painting, Holmes reports the following:

Even the prosaic fact that in 1865 Greuze's Girl with a Lamb was sold at Portal auction for one million two hundred thousand francs (equal to more than forty thousand pounds) can push your thoughts in a new direction.

It was assumed that such a large sum received for the painting in itself reminded readers of the theft committed by Worth, but Conan Doyle also played on the name of Agnew’s art gallery - in the original, Greuze’s painting is called in French: “La Jeune Fille? "I`Agneau". Later in the conversation, Holmes leads MacDonald to the conclusion that the painting came to Professor Moriarty through illegal means:

It indicates that its owner is a very rich man. How did he acquire his wealth? He is not married. His younger brother works as a railway station master in the west of Britain. His scientific work earns him seven hundred pounds a year. And yet he has the painting of Dreams.

And that means what?

In my opinion, the conclusion suggests itself.

That is, that he has large incomes, and, apparently, illegal ones?

Two world wars and the emergence of new, even more powerful criminal organizations completely erased the memory of Adam Worth, but Professor Moriarty, unlike his prototype, thanks to the talent of Conan Doyle, escaped oblivion. As the embodiment of evil, he continues to exist not only in the memory of Conan Doyle's readers, but also in numerous films and books, rivaling his fame with other literary, cinematic and real-life criminals.