George Leslie: The Gentleman Bank Robber

A Privileged Crook

He graduated with a degree in architecture and came from a comfortable and respected family. In his day job, he was the very model of gentlemanly behaviour and an upright citizen. His side hustle was as one of America's most accomplished bank robbers.

Draft Dodger

George Leslie was given a good start in life. He was born into a respectable Cincinnati family that was involved in brewing and architecture. That was in 1842, which meant he was at the prime fighting age when the Civil War broke out in 1861. However, his family pulled what is now known as the bone-spur manoeuvre.*

Three hundred dollars (more than $10,000 in today's value) was passed to the relevant authority to buy young George's exemption from service in the Union Army. This was a perfectly legal tactic available to anybody who had the necessary amount of cash on hand.

But George's failure to muster in defence of the nation did not sit well with the people of Cincinnati. Leslie's biographer, J. North Conway, says: “At the end of the war, men like Leslie who had paid to get out of military service found themselves the object of scorn and ridicule, and Leslie himself was ostracized by many prominent Cincinnati families and friends and former associates.”

His fiancée, Sarah Lawrence, a woman of impeccable bloodlines, broke off the engagement. She married a veteran who had been awarded the Medal of Honor.

Life in Cincinnati was uncomfortable, so Leslie did what many others have done—he moved to New York City to start over.

*Bone spur manoeuvre: In 1968, at age 22 and healthy, former U.S. President Donald Trump was declared unfit for military service in the Vietnam War because he was diagnosed as having a bone spur on his heel. Business Insider notes that Trump “... wasn't the only young man who managed to avoid being sent to Vietnam because he belonged to an influential family who could afford him a college education—or a favorable medical diagnosis.”

The Gilded Age

Armed with a degree in architecture, Leslie arrived in New York at the start of the Gilded Age. Mark Twain gave the years from 1870 to 1900 its name because, in his view, the period had a surface of gilt that obscured the inequality and corruption at its core.

A tiny number of families—with names such as Rockefeller, Astor, and Carnegie—amassed golden fortunes while the vast majority of people got nothing but waste metal.

For the would-be robber, as George Leslie turned out to be, there was little profit to be had poking about in the old tin cans and broken bicycles. Stealing from the owners of gold had a much better upside.

Writing for Slate, Cheya Roth comments:

“Leslie knew the key to robbing from the rich was to blend in. Because, especially in the late 1800s, the rich wanted to believe that they couldn’t be fooled. So if you could become one of the upper class, you could get away with anything.”

Leslie's parents had died so he liquidated the family businesses and had a very healthy bank balance in New York. His profession as an architect also generated a good income and gave him the veneer of respectability.

“The Gentleman Bank Robber” Strikes

In New York, Leslie was set for a comfortable life. He knew the rules of high-society etiquette and dressed well. He could easily fit in with social elites, but seems to have craved something other than swapping small talk and sipping champagne with the upper crust.

That was when he met Marm Mandelbaum, the premier receiver of stolen goods in New York, known as “The Queen of Fences.” The two hit it off. Mandelbaum was looking to branch out from handling stolen trinkets and Leslie was looking for an activity that contained a tingle of danger. A criminal enterprise was formed.

Scroll to Continue

Why Politics Really Isn’t that Important

A General Understanding of Einstein’s Equation for Gravity, (Einstein’s Field Equations)

Synth EP Review: “Neon Heat’’ by Bending Grid & Jolie

Leslie put his architectural skills to work in studying the blueprints of bank buildings so he could identify weak points for entry. Also, he had a gadget he called the “Little Joker.” A criminal named Max Shinburn invented the device and Leslie improved it. It was a tin plate inserted behind the face of a combination lock that recorded the numbers used. Once removed, the little joker provided easy entry to any bank vault.

In June 1869, the gang hit Manhattan's Ocean National Bank. It was a meticulously planned robbery.

A gang member got himself hired as a cleaner and was able to insert the little joker into the vault combination. Another robber rented an office in the basement below the bank; on a Saturday, he and his team began drilling through the ceiling and into the bank. Once inside, they put the Little Joker to work and opened the vault.

There was so much of value that they couldn't carry it all away, leaving behind gold coins, U.S. bonds, and currency. Even then, the haul was $800,000, reckoned to be about $18 million in today's money. But George Leslie was just warming up.

Using the same techniques employed against Ocean National, he pulled off bank heists in Philadelphia, Waterford, New York, and anywhere else on the East Coast that looked like a good target.

In January 1876, it was the turn of Northampton, Massachusetts to get a visit from Leslie and a new bunch of crooks calling themselves the Rufus Gang. They abandonned Leslie's tried-and-true modus operandi and used some rough stuff. They burst into the home of the Northampton Bank's chief cashier and beat him until he gave up the vault's combination. They got away with $1.6 million ($27 million today). But they didn't get far.

A vault salesman who had given the Rufus Gang some inside information was arrested and he squealed on some of his accomplices. George Leslie did not take part in this robbery and cut his ties with the Rufus Gang over its use of violence.

He was not implicated in the Northampton robbery and that was the story of his criminal career—never arrested, never charged. One policeman had suspicions about Leslie but decided that, because he was a gentleman, he could not also be a criminal.

The Femme Fatale

George Leslie was what is politely known as a “ladies' man.” In cruder terms he was a cad and lecher. Tall, dark, handsome, and wealthy, he found sexual conquests on both sides of the tracks.

In 1870, he had met and married Mary Henrietta “Molly” Coath, who was just 15 at the time of nuptials. Early on in the marriage, Molly had no knowledge of her husband's extracurricular occupation, although she came to learn of his infidelities and, later, his crimes. One of George's women was Babe Draper, the young wife of one of his gang members, Shang Draper.

In 1878, Leslie was almost at the end of a three-year plan to hit the Manhattan Savings Institution. It was to be his swan song, the biggest robbery to cap his felonious career. He and Molly would take the money and run to the West Coast and live out their lives in luxury.

In May 1878, Leslie was in a pub when he was handed a note. It was from Babe Draper asking for one last meeting. Leslie could not resist the chance of a frolic and left the pub. Several days later, his partly decomposed body was found under some bushes. There was a bullet in his heart and another in his head. He was 40 years old.

The murder was never solved, but it seemed likely that Shang Draper, known to be a vicious thug, probably had a hand in the killing.

Bonus Factoids

• George Leslie pulled off a record-setting bank robbery on October 27, 1878, albeit posthumously. He had spent three years planning the theft of valuables from the Manhattan Savings Institution; the place where the likes of John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Jay Gould, and Cornelius Vanderbilt kept their wealth because it was super safe. It wasn't, and Leslie's crew used his method to steal what amounts to $65 million in today's money. The gang members were arrested and only then did police learn that George Leslie had been the mastermind behind all the bank robberies.
• It's estimated that during his nine-year criminal career, George Leslie was involved in 80 percent of the bank robberies committed in America.
• Grammatically speaking, George Leslie's title should have been the “King of Burglars.” The crime of robbery involves violence or the threat of violence, and Leslie scrupulously avoided the rough stuff. I'll see myself out.

Sources

• “My Favorite Victorian Criminal Was a Bank Robber With a Secret Weapon.” Cheya Roth, Slate, December 28, 2023.
• “The High Society Bank Robber of the 1800s.” J. North Conway, The Daily Beast, April 14, 2017.
• “Fact Tops Fiction in Story of Country’s Best Bank Robber.” Frank Mulligan, State Journal Register, October 7, 2009.

This content is accurate and true to the best of the author’s knowledge and is not meant to substitute for formal and individualized advice from a qualified professional.

© 2024 Rupert Taylor