Cardiff, New York, October 16, 1869 – Workers digging a well behind the barn on the farm of William C. “Stub” Newell unearthed a ten foot four inch stone giant. Word spread quickly and people came by the thousands to view the behemoth and speculate as to its origin. Some said it was a petrified man, citing Genesis 6:4, “There were giants in the earth in those days.” Others believed it was a statue created by earlier inhabitants of New York. The attraction was so strong that even when the stone colossus was revealed to be a hoax people stood in line and paid fifty cents each to view the Cardiff Giant.

The Cardiff Giant was the brainchild of George Hull, a tobacconist from Binghamton, New York. During a visit to his sister in Iowa, he got into a heated argument over the truth of Bible stories. Specifically, he could not understand the belief in Biblical giants and wondered if he could create a stone man and pass it off as a petrified giant. He became so obsessed with the idea that he sold his business and went looking for stone.

He found what he wanted near Port Dodge in Iowa—gray gypsum with bluish streaks that would pass for human veins. Hull bought an acre of land with an outcropping of this stone and hired a force of men to chop out a block 11’ 4” x 3’ 6” x 2’. After an arduous journey by wagon to Boone, Iowa then by train to Chicago, the stone block was handed over to an Italian stonecutter named Salla, who, after being sworn to secrecy, carved the giant man.

Salla took the work very seriously, cutting away some spots as if the flesh were imperfectly petrified, and using a tool made from a bundle of darning needles over the entire surface to simulate pores in the giant’s skin. When it was done, he poured sulphuric acid over the sculpture to give it the appearance of antiquity. It was packed in an iron box and sent to Union, New York. The entire package weighed 4000 pounds.

Hull chose Cardiff as the burial site because it has an ancient lake bed where fossilized fish and reptiles had been found. He took “Stub” Newell into his confidence and the two men, working late at night buried the giant on Newell’s farm. Hull then went back to cigar making for one year less two weeks before giving Newell instruction to “discover” the giant.

While Hull was still in the shadows, Newell began charging fifty cents a head to view the Cardiff Giant, now enclosed in a tent behind the barn.  He had made at least $7000 before Hull returned to the scene.

The State Geologist and a number of other scientists declared that it was, indeed, a petrified man. John F. Boynton, an early Mormon leader believed it was not a man but a statue carved by French Jesuits in the 16th century to impress the Indians.  Among those taken in by the Cardiff Giant and expressing belief in its authenticity were Oliver Wendell Holmes and Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Newell began receiving offers to buy the giant. Seeing that Newell could not be trusted to keep the secret—he had already told several relatives and friends—Hull told him to sell. Newell sold three-fourths interest to Higgins, Gillett & Westcott in Syracuse for $30,000, of which Hull received $20,000 and one-quarter interest. He eventually sold the last quarter and the new owners moved the giant to Syracuse.

In Syracuse, the giant received closer scrutiny and Yale paleontologist Othniel C. Marsh declared the Cardiff Giant a clumsy fake. There were fresh chisel marks that would have worn away if the giant had been in the ground any length of time. Having already cashed out, Hull came clean and revealed the giant’s true history. The public didn’t seem to care; they nicknamed the attraction “Old Hoaxey” and continued paying to view it.

At one point showman, P. T. Barnum offered the new owners $60,000 to use the giant for three months. When they refused, Barnum had a German sculptor make him his own Cardiff Giant.  The owners tried to sue Barnum, but the judge refused to hear the case because the owners could not prove that their giant was genuine. Soon after there were at least six copies of the Cardiff Giant being exhibited throughout the country.

The Cardiff Giant also inspired a wave of imitators:

• The Solid Muldoon, Beulah, Colorado, 1876 – A giant made from clay, ground bones, meat, rock dust, and plaster was also created by George Hull
• The Taughannock Giant, Lake Cayuga, 1877 – A stone giant planted by the owner of the Taughanock House Hotel.
• “McGinty,”  Creede, Colorado, 1892 – A real human body injected with chemicals for preservation and petrification. McGinty was displayed by conman Soapy Smith, primarily to run a shell game on people waiting in line.
• Fin McCool, Ireland, 1872 – Salla, the sculptor of the original Cardiff Giant saw the potential of stone giants and began planning his own, including Fin McCool in the north of Ireland.
• The Fresno Giant, Fresno, CA, 1890 – Another of Salla’s creations.

The original Cardiff Giant was displayed at the Pan American Exposition in Buffalo, New York, in 1901. It was then purchased by an Iowa publisher for his basement rumpus room. In 1947 he sold it to the Farmers’ Museum in Cooperstown, New York where it is on display today. Barnum’s “fake” Cardiff Giant is on display at Marvin’s Marvelous Mechanical Museum in Farmington Hills, Michigan.

Sources:

• Boese, Alex. The museum of hoaxes: a collection of pranks, stunts, deceptions, and other wonderful stories contrived for the public from the Middle Ages to the new millennium. New York, NY: Dutton, 2002.
• Costello, J. B.. Swindling exposed from the diary of William B. Moreau, king of fakirs : methods of the crooks explained : history of the worst gang that ever infested this country : names, locations and incidents. Syracuse, N.Y.: J.B. Costello, 1907.
• Vance, Arthur T.. The real David Harum: the wise ways and droll sayings of one "Dave" Hannum, of Homer, N.Y., the original of the hero of Mr. Westcott's popular book : how he made and lost a fortune, his many deeds of charity, amusing anecdotes about him. New York: Baker and Taylor Co., 1900.

The Great Cardiff Giant

The Night the Cardiff Giant Sang Rossini on the Lawn

New York, New York, October 27, 1878 – The manager of the Manhattan Savings Institution found the vault in disarray the morning of October 27, 1878, and nearly $3 million in currency and securities was missing. In real dollars, it remains the largest bank robbery in history. The heist was tightly scripted and well-rehearsed; in timing and precision of execution, the robbery was the equal of a Broadway performance. And, like many great theatrical productions, there was as much drama in the wings as on the stage.

The manager of this production was Frederika Mandelbaum—better known as “Marm”—who, in 1878, was the most successful fence in New York City. Marm Mandelbaum –5 foot 3, weighing 300 pounds—ran a dry goods store on Clinton Street and had warehouses full of stolen merchandise throughout the city. She had a hand nearly every major crime in Manhattan. She also ran a Faginesque school for child pickpockets. To keep her operations functioning she made regular payments to Tammany Hall and to policemen at every level.

Marm Mandelbaum was also famous for her dinner parties where politicians and other prominent New Yorkers would hobnob with equally prominent members of the underworld. It was at one such soiree in 1869 that she met George Leonidas Leslie, the future star of the Manhattan Savings Institution robbery.

Leslie was the son of a wealthy Cincinnati brewer—he was charming, handsome, well-educated and had moved to New York with the express purpose of becoming a bank robber. He was a trained architect, adept at engineering and invention; he was a perfectionist who believed he had the tools and methods to turn bank robbery into a gentleman’s profession.

Marm Mandelbaum was charmed by Leslie and impressed with his approach to bank robbery. She was especially intrigued by a safecracking tool he had invented. He called it “the little joker”—it was a metal disk that, when placed behind the dial of a combination lock, would record the numbers of the combination. Although Leslie had never robbed a bank in his life, and his plan involved breaking into a bank twice—first to plant the little joker, then to reap the combination and open the vault—she gave him seed money and provided him with a gang.

The gang consisted of hard core criminals, different from Leslie in every way. It included Shang Draper, saloon owner, and thief who earned the name “Shang” by his practice of shanghaiing sailors. He was also a noted conman, specializing in the sexual blackmail of the badger game. The muscle of the gang was Red Leary, who stood six foot four and had a hair trigger temper. While Leslie’s plan explicitly avoided violence, it didn’t hurt to have some intimidation, if only to keep the gang in line.

Their first target was Ocean National Bank in Manhattan. Shang Draper and the rest of the gang wanted to go in and dynamite the vault but that was not Leslie’s style. Leslie took three month to plan the robbery, using one of Marm’s warehouses to build a duplicate vault room for practice. He deposited his own money in the bank which provided him with an excuse to visit it frequently and become familiar with the setup and routine. He arranged to have one of Marm’s people, a young pickpocket named Johnny Irving, hired to sweep the bank after hours, and he rented an office directly above the bank. The heist ran like clockwork. The gang left with $800,000.

This became the template for a series of bank robberies planned by George Leslie and executed by Marm’s gang throughout America. Leslie left no clues and managed to remain unconnected to any of them. He maintained an image as a refined man-about-town associating with known criminals only during jobs or at Marm’s dinner parties.

By the end of the 1870s George Leslie was planning his final job, robbing the Manhattan Savings Institution, but his plans were complicated by the failure of two other robberies. In 1876 he devised a plan for robbing the Northampton Bank in Northampton, Massachusetts. Leslie did not accompany the gang and they changed the plan. Instead of using the little joker, they roughed up a cashier to get the combination—violating Leslie’s edict against violence. Though they made off with $1.6 million in cash, bonds, and securities, most of the loot consisted of non-negotiable securities, virtually worthless to the thieves. 

Leslie made sure he participated in the next robbery, the Dexter Savings Bank in Dexter, Maine, but it ended badly as well. Their inside man James Barron had a change of heart and would not let them into the vault. When Leary and Draper pistol whipped Barron he revealed that the vault was on a time lock and it would not open until the morning. They left with only$600 and James Barron died the next morning.

Now the charge against them would be murder. The gang members grew suspicious of each other, fearing if anyone were captured he would inform on the rest. To make matters worse, Leslie had been having affairs with Babe Draper and Kate Leary, the wives of Shang Draper and Red Leary. Leslie no longer trusted Marm Mandelbaum’s men and he was secretly shopping the Manhattan Savings plan to her chief competition, Traveling Mike Grady.

Leslie had been planning the Manhattan Savings job for three years—his inside man, Pat Shevlin had been working there that long. As all of Leslie’s robberies it had intricately planned and well-rehearsed but the vault was complicated and took three break-ins with his usual gang to get the combination.  When he had the combination, Leslie convinced the gang to wait and break in a fourth time when there was sure to be more money in the vault. But he was planning to finish the job with another gang.

Travelling Mike Grady would supply that gang. Grady also provided a bodyguard, Johnny “The Mick” Walsh, because of Leslie’s fear of Marm Maldelbaum’s men. The fears were not unfounded.  Shang Draper had found a camel hair shawl that Leslie had given Babe and traced it to its source. On May 29, 1878, while drinking in a Brooklyn saloon, Leslie was handed a note from Babe Draper.  It said that Shang had found out about their affair and was looking for Leslie. She wanted Leslie to take her out of the city and gave an address to meet. Leslie told Johnny Walsh to stay behind while he took care of some business. It was the last time Walsh ever saw Leslie.

On June 4, 1878 George Leslie’s body was found at the foot of Tramp’s Rock, three miles outside of Yonkers, New York. He had been shot twice, once in the heart and once in the head. With the body was a small pearl-handled, two-shot pistol. It was a gun that Leslie had given Babe Draper for protection.

The Manhattan Savings Institution was robbed on October 27, 1878 by the original gang, now headed by Shang Draper, using George Leslie’s plan.  The take was $2,747,700, however, as in the Northampton robbery, most of that amount was in non-negotiable securities. The net amount to the robbers was about $12,000. Without Leslie’s guidance they overlooked sacks of currency that were also in the vault, and made off with worthless paper.

Pat Shevlin had been promised $250,000 for his part in the robbery; he was given $1,200. Shevlin was not a professional criminal and it was not hard for New York City Police Detective Thomas Byrnes to obtain a confession from him and to get him to finger the rest of the gang.  Jimmy Hope, William Kelly, and Banjo Pete Emerson were arrested for the robbery. Draper, Leary and the rest had already been arrested on other burglary charges.  The police had everyone involved except George Leslie and Marm Mandelbaum.

Though he managed to keep a low profile during his career, after his death George Leslie was acknowledged by the police and the underworld alike as the “King of Bank Robbers.” One estimate said that 80% of all successful bank robberies in America between 1869 and 1878 were carried out by George Leslie. Though he did not live to see it, the Manhattan Savings Institution heist would be his masterpiece.
 

Sources:

• Conway, J. North. King of heists: the sensational bank robbery of 1878 that shocked America. Guilford, Conn.: Lyons Press, 2009.
• Pinkerton, Allan. Professional thieves and the detective: with a sketch by the author how he became a detective etc.. Repr. of the 1881.
• Walling, George W., and A. Kaufmann. Recollections of a New York chief of police an official record of thirty-eight years as patrolman, detective, captain, inspector, and chief of the New York police. Denver: Specially issued for the benefit of the Denver Police Mutual Aid Fund, 1890.

City Bank Robbery