Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from works
Speaker 1: dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Sara
Speaker 1: Downey and I'm Deblin and Charkerboarding And when we left
Speaker 1: off last time. The German Jewish immigrant Adam Worth had
Speaker 1: died in the American Civil War, supposedly and gone on
Speaker 1: to become a successful criminal mastermind, and had over time
Speaker 1: accumulated all the trappings of an upper class British lifestyle
Speaker 1: as Henry Judson Raymond manif leisure, including the nice clothes,
Speaker 1: the posh accent, the yacht you know, really everything. But
Speaker 1: after a disastrous eighteen seventy four forgery attempt in Constantinople,
Speaker 1: Worth found himself safe but without a gang, and broke
Speaker 1: from trying to buy their freedom. To add to his woes,
Speaker 1: his longtime love and the mother of his children, Kittie Flynn,
Speaker 1: had left for America, and his best friend, piano Charlie Bullard,
Speaker 1: Kitty's estranged husband, had been arrested for a robbery committed
Speaker 1: years earlier. Worth did eventually rebound from this, though The
Speaker 1: Pinkerton's called him quote the most remarkable, most successful, and
Speaker 1: most dangerous professional criminal known to modern times, and he
Speaker 1: of course eventually inspired Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's character Professor Moriarty,
Speaker 1: the arch nemesis of Sherlott Holmes, but at this point
Speaker 1: in his career he was down and out and heartbroken
Speaker 1: to boot. Then, as if things couldn't get worse, in
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy six, Worth's criminally incompetent younger brother arrives in
Speaker 1: town looking for work. So John Worth shared his older
Speaker 1: brother's criminal tendencies, but none of his talents that we've
Speaker 1: already learned from Pinkerton's Detective Agency's pamphlet on Worth Life,
Speaker 1: which is an excellent source of information on him. By
Speaker 1: the way, Worth quote never forsook a friend or accomplice,
Speaker 1: and for him, that of course meant putting his brother
Speaker 1: to work on easy jobs with a lot out of supervision,
Speaker 1: very strict instructions, you know, so he wouldn't mess it up.
Speaker 1: John Worth, though, really couldn't manage even the most straightforward job,
Speaker 1: and found himself arrested in Paris were trying to pass
Speaker 1: counterfeit notes. John Sure, the Chief Inspector of Scotland Yard,
Speaker 1: the guy who had been hunting Adam Worth without success
Speaker 1: for years, jumped on this, he had the younger were
Speaker 1: extraditeed into England and charged him with forger, you know,
Speaker 1: hoping to sort of lure out the older brother while
Speaker 1: the younger one was in jail, and Adam Worth did,
Speaker 1: in fact, in the meantime set about trying to get
Speaker 1: his brother out of jail, though he didn't just come
Speaker 1: out in the open. He was a little sneakier about it.
Speaker 1: Though by this time it was tough because though he
Speaker 1: had enough cash on hand for bail, the law at
Speaker 1: the time stipulated that the bondsman must be a gentleman
Speaker 1: of good reputation. So where was Worth going to find
Speaker 1: someone willing to post bond and put his reputation on
Speaker 1: the line for a guy who was just obviously going
Speaker 1: to jump bail and high tail it back to the
Speaker 1: States immediately. So in late May Worth is pondering this
Speaker 1: very problem when he goes by some art galleries on
Speaker 1: Old Bond Street, and one of them, Agnew and Company,
Speaker 1: was staging an exhibition and crowds and carriages were all
Speaker 1: gathered on the street. Just days before, the gallery had
Speaker 1: bought a gains for a portrait of Georgeiane, a Duchess
Speaker 1: of Devonshire at auction, paying the highest amount ever paid
Speaker 1: for an English painting. It's the equivalent of about six
Speaker 1: hundred thousand dollars today. So when Worth went in to
Speaker 1: see this famous work of art, he was struck by
Speaker 1: an idea. If he stole the picture, he could force
Speaker 1: its owner, Thomas Agnew, to postpond for his younger brother
Speaker 1: in exchange for a return of the painting, so basically
Speaker 1: ransoming the painting in the form of a bond instead
Speaker 1: of just straight cash or something like that. So pretty
Speaker 1: soon after he gets this idea, he goes back to
Speaker 1: the gallery with two accomplices and Worth had himself hoisted
Speaker 1: to the second floor window allege Pride open the window
Speaker 1: with a crowbar, cut the portrait from its frame very carefully,
Speaker 1: you know. They police realized later that whoever did it
Speaker 1: barely damage the painting at all, and then rolled it
Speaker 1: all up, taking care not to crack the surface. Of course,
Speaker 1: with this high price that the painting had just sold for,
Speaker 1: the theft created a sensation, and it was partly because
Speaker 1: it wasn't the first time the painting had gone missing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Gainsborough painted Georgiana, previous podcast subject known for her political action,
Speaker 1: her trend setting, and her affair with Charles Gray. He
Speaker 1: had painted her several times during her life, but this
Speaker 1: particular Georgiana, with her trademark broad brimmed hat and feathers
Speaker 1: sometimes called a Gainsborough hat and a suggestive pound, is
Speaker 1: quite different from the other ones. According to Ben McEntire's
Speaker 1: biography of Worth, the Napoleon of Crime, The Life and
Speaker 1: Times of Adam Worth, Master Thief, which we mentioned in
Speaker 1: the previous podcast, the painting first disappeared right around the
Speaker 1: time Georgiana got pregnant by Gray, about seventeen ninety two
Speaker 1: or so. Then about fifty years after that, it mysteriously
Speaker 1: popped up in the home of a retired school mistress
Speaker 1: who had chopped off for Georgana's legs so that the
Speaker 1: painting would fit over her fireplace. An art dealer learned
Speaker 1: that this woman might have some rare paintings, and um
Speaker 1: swung By decided he wanted to buy it, purchased the
Speaker 1: painting off the woman, and then sold it to his
Speaker 1: friend When Ellis. When Ellis died, he left his entire
Speaker 1: impressive art collection to the National Gallery, which kept the
Speaker 1: old school stuff and put the more modern items, including
Speaker 1: the gains for up at auction. So today it may
Speaker 1: be hard for some people to imagine a painting causing
Speaker 1: quite such a stir, but women began imitating Georgana's hats.
Speaker 1: Art critics debated about whether it was really a gain Sbura,
Speaker 1: and people wondered whether the sitter was actually the other
Speaker 1: Duchess of Devonshire, and that's the Duke's second wife who
Speaker 1: had lived with him in Georgiana for years. In Managois. Yeah,
Speaker 1: people were suggesting all of this and saying, oh, maybe
Speaker 1: Agney paid too much because it's not really a Gainsbrow,
Speaker 1: or it's not really georg Jane. Somebody were not as
Speaker 1: interested in So it was a big public hullabaloo, and
Speaker 1: Worth stuffed only added to that sensation. McEntyre sites one
Speaker 1: newspaper's tongue in cheek suggestion that the thief had promoted
Speaker 1: both art and history by stealing the work. Quote, he
Speaker 1: was an apostle of culture. So that's a pretty funny
Speaker 1: way to look at it, and I'm sure that's not
Speaker 1: how Agney saw it after losing his valuable investment. But
Speaker 1: fortunately Worth had never intended to sell the painting because
Speaker 1: the attention would have made it impossible with everybody talking
Speaker 1: about the theft and George, Jana and Gainsborough. But his
Speaker 1: reason for stealing it vanished anyway because John Worth lawyer
Speaker 1: had secured his release and big brother Adam quickly packed
Speaker 1: John up, sent him home and had him promise, don't
Speaker 1: come back here and don't get into crime again, because
Speaker 1: they're not very good at it. So what do you
Speaker 1: do with a painting like this that you've stolen and
Speaker 1: you certainly can't fell, and you certainly can't display. I
Speaker 1: mean probably a lot of art thieves would unfortunately have
Speaker 1: destroyed such an incriminating item. But fortunately for for us
Speaker 1: in the world, Worth instead fell in love with his
Speaker 1: painting and lovingly took care of it. When he was
Speaker 1: at home, he kept it stored flat under his mattress
Speaker 1: between boards. When on the move, he carried it and
Speaker 1: especially made false bottomed trunk so that his lady was
Speaker 1: always on his arm, so to speak. But the attachment
Speaker 1: wasn't without cost. Worth wound up blackmailed by his two
Speaker 1: accomplices in the theft, though neither could really do much
Speaker 1: about it since they didn't know where the painting was.
Speaker 1: When Worth moved back to New York City to escape
Speaker 1: the increased surveillance of John Shore. He did attempt to
Speaker 1: sell the work back to Agnew Corresponding through secret advertisements
Speaker 1: in the London Times, but the half hearted negotiations actually
Speaker 1: fell through when Worth refused to go to London to
Speaker 1: deliver the painting and the dealers refused to send a
Speaker 1: representative to the States. Well, and it really kind of
Speaker 1: seemed at this point like Worth wanted to keep the
Speaker 1: painting for himself, and but that just really did become
Speaker 1: even more important for him when his flesh and blood
Speaker 1: love Kitty Flynn, who had talked about a lot in
Speaker 1: the last podcast, divorce Bullard and married Juan Pedro Terry,
Speaker 1: who was an extraordinarily rich half Irish son of a
Speaker 1: sugar planter. And you know, with this marriage and her
Speaker 1: all her new money and her society cachet, she became
Speaker 1: a New York society matron who would travel with her husband,
Speaker 1: spend excessively, amuse herself with some kind of frivolous lawsuits,
Speaker 1: really kind of assuming the position she had tried to
Speaker 1: attain her entire life. So for Worth, it was definitely
Speaker 1: time for new pastures. It was time to get something
Speaker 1: else going, but he couldn't get it going right away.
Speaker 1: He couldn't form a new trustworthy gang for one thing,
Speaker 1: and his nemesis Max shan burned crimes kept being mistaken
Speaker 1: as his own. In eight he decided to go to
Speaker 1: Cape Town, South Africa, quote partly on business, partly for pleasure.
Speaker 1: He bought a hunting coat for his duchess. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's just it's pretty weird, taking it to another level.
Speaker 1: I mean it's one thing to travel around with her everywhere,
Speaker 1: but he bought her a nice coat, started buying her clothes,
Speaker 1: wrapped her up and left. Expecting the diamond fields would
Speaker 1: make a great target for him. So in order to
Speaker 1: move around South Africa without attracting suspicion, he got into
Speaker 1: the Ostrich feather business, which was really booming at the time,
Speaker 1: coincidentally because of Georgiana and her big hat trend with
Speaker 1: big feathers, you know, it had really caught on with
Speaker 1: the ladies of the era, and so Worth pretended like
Speaker 1: he was in the Ostrich feather business and he'd go
Speaker 1: out to visit Ostrich farms and visit agents feather agents,
Speaker 1: and this gave him kind of a past to move
Speaker 1: around the country without people taking notice. Of course, he
Speaker 1: was really studying the path of diamonds from mind to coast,
Speaker 1: how the rough gems got out of the mind, how
Speaker 1: they travel in armed coaches and reach outbound ships just
Speaker 1: as the ships were about to sail. So these diamond
Speaker 1: heavy boats didn't have to linger too long. So Worth,
Speaker 1: with accomplished Charlie king In another recruit, decided that a
Speaker 1: hold up would be the way to go. Here sounds
Speaker 1: like a bad plan for Worth, though, whose motto was
Speaker 1: quote a man with brains has no right to carry firearms.
Speaker 1: There was always away in a better way by the
Speaker 1: quick exercise of the brain. He of course ended up
Speaker 1: being shot at and had to abandon the attempt, and
Speaker 1: the next plan was more of a master criminal style
Speaker 1: did more Worth style. So working alone this time, Worth
Speaker 1: spent months studying the convoys of coaches and realized that
Speaker 1: if the slightest thing went wrong on the trip, the
Speaker 1: diamond shipment would miss the boat. When this happened, the
Speaker 1: stones would be locked up in the Port Elizabeth post office.
Speaker 1: So Worth made friends with the assistant postmass, eventually copying
Speaker 1: his keys in wax. From there he delayed a shipment
Speaker 1: by cutting a ferry rope and robbed the post office
Speaker 1: of five hundred thousand dollars worth of diamonds. So here
Speaker 1: he is. He's back in the game, and big diamond
Speaker 1: back in the game. So in the last episode we
Speaker 1: talked about or It's double identity as the respectable, comfortable
Speaker 1: Henry Raymond. But with all of this new diamond wealth,
Speaker 1: Worth or Raymond rather re established himself in London and
Speaker 1: put on even more of a gentlemanly show than he
Speaker 1: had before. He bought a coastal house in Brighton, he
Speaker 1: purchased land for hunting. He'd take these elaborate trips to
Speaker 1: Monte Carlo and Gamble. He grew a bush here, more
Speaker 1: impressive mustache, and put on a little bit of weight.
Speaker 1: And he got married to his wife, whose name is
Speaker 1: unfortunately unknown, was the daughter of a gentlewoman widow who
Speaker 1: Worth had lodged with at one point, and um he
Speaker 1: sort of took on the widow's children as his wards
Speaker 1: and hated them, and then ended up marrying the eldest daughter. Mr.
Speaker 1: And Mrs Worth had a sunborn in eight eight and
Speaker 1: a daughter born in eight Although the really strange thing
Speaker 1: about all of this is that Worth kept his criminal
Speaker 1: life completely secret from them. I mean a real contrast
Speaker 1: to his relationship with Kitty, where she was very much
Speaker 1: part of heart of the plane what he was doing.
Speaker 1: Mrs Worth didn't know who her husband was at all.
Speaker 1: But Worth didn't flat out retire. Even Shinburne said of him, quote,
Speaker 1: Raymond loved his work for its own sake, and although
Speaker 1: he lived in luxury and style, applied his energies to
Speaker 1: the last and organizing crimes. He did make a concession
Speaker 1: to married life though. It was a time to move
Speaker 1: his lady friend Georgiana out of the house. Worth crossed
Speaker 1: the Atlantic with his false bottom trunk and store the
Speaker 1: Duchess in a Brooklyn warehouse. He had a pretty close
Speaker 1: call along the way to He was actually stopped by
Speaker 1: police in Canada who found diamonds and undeclared cash on
Speaker 1: his person, but they did not find the That would
Speaker 1: have been quite a fine. So on every trip Worth
Speaker 1: would make after this to the States over the next
Speaker 1: six years or so, he would always move the painting
Speaker 1: to a new storage facility, you know, really taking a
Speaker 1: lot of trouble to make sure it was secret and
Speaker 1: nobody knew he had it. The eighties were clearly worth heyday,
Speaker 1: but the first step in his ultimate downfall happened as
Speaker 1: early as eighteen eighty four. Bullard, his old best friend,
Speaker 1: was out of jail, very sick by this point and
Speaker 1: really not so great at crime anymore. He was no
Speaker 1: longer the ace burglar that he used to be. Bullard, though,
Speaker 1: was still looking for work, so he teamed up with
Speaker 1: shin Burn to stage heist in Liege, Belgium. The two
Speaker 1: of them got busted in the middle of the crime.
Speaker 1: It was really poorly carried out, and Worth took it
Speaker 1: upon himself to try to help out his friend Bullard,
Speaker 1: you know, get him out of prison like the Constantinople incident.
Speaker 1: Though it was not easy, and ultimately the best Worth
Speaker 1: could do is get messages to Bullard, get him some
Speaker 1: extra food, um, just trying to make his old friend
Speaker 1: a little more comfortable. Finally, though, after Bullard was in
Speaker 1: prison for seven years, shouldn't burn too, of course, but
Speaker 1: Worth didn't much care about him being there. After Bullard
Speaker 1: was there for seven years, Worth decided that he really
Speaker 1: needed to make some kind of last ditch attempt to
Speaker 1: get his buddy out, you know, maybe even breaking out
Speaker 1: of prison, because Bullard was clearly by this point dying.
Speaker 1: By the time Worth got to Liege, Bullard was already dead,
Speaker 1: but for some reason, Worth decided to stage a reckless
Speaker 1: crime while he was in town, robbing one of the
Speaker 1: vans that brought money into the city. Along with two accomplices,
Speaker 1: Worth planned the high Swell but got greedy while at
Speaker 1: emptying the van's lock box of money and packages. His
Speaker 1: lookouts fled and he was spotted by a railway employee
Speaker 1: and was chased down by the police. Once caught, he
Speaker 1: tried to bluff his way out as Edward grow but
Speaker 1: police found cards id to find him as Henry Raymond.
Speaker 1: He thoroughly confused them with stories about being a German mechanic,
Speaker 1: being a former thief but one who hadn't stolen in
Speaker 1: two years, being a diamond salesman. But he finally messed
Speaker 1: up when he said, quote, if you knew the truth,
Speaker 1: I would be put away in prison for eternity. Okay,
Speaker 1: So that set off the morning for the authority. This
Speaker 1: guy who's already told them a million different stories and
Speaker 1: given them two different names. Um, so clearly this prisoner
Speaker 1: was somebody, but they didn't know who he was, and
Speaker 1: there was even some suspicion that he might be a
Speaker 1: spy because, unfortunately for Worth, some of those packages he
Speaker 1: had grabbed up from the van happened to contain state papers. Whoops,
Speaker 1: you know, a little more heat than he was anticipating.
Speaker 1: So still, though the authority's information on him was overall
Speaker 1: pretty sketchy, and Worth thought that he might be able
Speaker 1: to get off easy until Max shin Burned, his old nemesis,
Speaker 1: and of course, still in the local jail, wrote a
Speaker 1: that are spilling the beans completely pretty much listed everything
Speaker 1: Worth had ever done since the Civil War. Actually a
Speaker 1: little more than that, because he kind of made him
Speaker 1: out to be a really nasty criminal, you know, one
Speaker 1: who betrayed his friends, not really sticking much to worth
Speaker 1: real personality. All of the international authorities in the know
Speaker 1: about Adam Worth, Henry Raymond and the career of this
Speaker 1: man who was obviously one person backed up the tail
Speaker 1: to accept notably remember this one the Pinkerton's who didn't
Speaker 1: have anything to say about this, these allegations from Max Shinburn,
Speaker 1: even though arguably they knew the most about Worth than anyone,
Speaker 1: or more about him than anyone. Still. Worth story became
Speaker 1: international news, and he began receiving coded messages from his
Speaker 1: friends around the world. They would message him as comedian
Speaker 1: or Edward Grow. That's the best one, Edward Grow. That
Speaker 1: must have really confused the people in the prisons he
Speaker 1: had blamed to be Edward Grow exactly. Also ter boys,
Speaker 1: who turned out to be the now widowed Kitty, offering
Speaker 1: encouragement and even money. His lawyer advised him to confess
Speaker 1: to the liege robbery but deny all the other crimes,
Speaker 1: but it didn't work. After his March trial, Worth was
Speaker 1: found guilty and sentenced to seven years of solitary confinement
Speaker 1: with hard labor at the Prison de louvan. So prison
Speaker 1: was particularly bad for Worth because Shinburne was still there,
Speaker 1: and shinburn had been there for a very long time
Speaker 1: and had gotten quite powerful and actually consequently, Worth did
Speaker 1: not learn of Shinburne's treachery until he was in jail.
Speaker 1: When he found out, he was understandably quite upset. Also,
Speaker 1: Worth's family fell apart while he was in prison. We
Speaker 1: mentioned that he hadn't told his wife, his kids didn't
Speaker 1: know what his real job was. Mrs Raymond learned about
Speaker 1: her husband's true identity in the newspaper and just completely
Speaker 1: flipped out. Johnny Curtain, who was the associate Worth had
Speaker 1: asked with looking out from Mrs Raymond and the kids,
Speaker 1: came to her aid, but unfortunately he came comforting her
Speaker 1: with laudanum and alcohol and ultimately seduced her and then
Speaker 1: stole everything she had the yacht, uh sold off the
Speaker 1: houses and pocketed the money from that and then just disappeared.
Speaker 1: So Mrs Raymond, you know, now completely abandoned, not sure
Speaker 1: what her life is really about, and broke wound up
Speaker 1: in an asylum, and the two kids were sent off
Speaker 1: to Brooklyn to live with John Worth, who had kept
Speaker 1: his promise and had stayed out of criminal activities. And
Speaker 1: John Worth's wife also just some other sad things happened
Speaker 1: while he was in prison. It was a really dark
Speaker 1: period for where marm Mandelbaum, who we mentioned in the
Speaker 1: previous podcast, who had given Worth kind of his first break,
Speaker 1: she died. Kitty also died at only forty one years
Speaker 1: of age, and news officially broke that the famous missing
Speaker 1: Duchess might be in Worth's control. Worth's great secret. How
Speaker 1: did that get out. Well, we're about to talk about that.
Speaker 1: It's actually that story published in the Palmell Gazette only
Speaker 1: months after Worth went to jail that likely influenced Arthur
Speaker 1: Conan Doyle's creation of Professor Moriarty. Worth had been duped
Speaker 1: by a freelance reporter posing as a solicitor into discussing
Speaker 1: the Duchess. Their conversation was published as an interviewer confession
Speaker 1: of sorts and was reprinted in countless periodicals with a
Speaker 1: heavy dose of skepticism about whether it was true or not.
Speaker 1: Worth battled back by granting a real exclusive interview, playing
Speaker 1: the whole thing off as a joke. He had just
Speaker 1: wanted to kind of green up the reporter by spinning tales,
Speaker 1: and it sounded good enough for fiction that whether this
Speaker 1: story was true or not, because by December, Professor Moriarty
Speaker 1: debuted and died in the final problem of course, you know,
Speaker 1: if you're familiar with the character, he's not a complete
Speaker 1: match for his real life counterpart Moriarty. It's tall and thin,
Speaker 1: he's eat creepy, you know, he's stages murders, that sort
Speaker 1: of thing. Whereas, of course, as we know, Worth did
Speaker 1: not like violence. Um, and some inspiration probably came from
Speaker 1: a few other sources. You know, Conan Doyle wasn't relying exclusively. Unworth.
Speaker 1: McIntyre suggests Conan Doyle's friend Major General Drayson Friedrich Nietzsche
Speaker 1: and the crooks George Moriarty and Jonathan Wilde may have
Speaker 1: been inspirations. But in a conversation with Dr Gray Chandler Briggs,
Speaker 1: Conan Doyle did cite Worth as his inspiration. And it's
Speaker 1: pretty obvious too if you read the character. There's some
Speaker 1: clear parallels between them. But moving back to the main
Speaker 1: the real life guy in Or was released early from
Speaker 1: prison for good behavior. He was fifty three years old
Speaker 1: by this point. He was broke. He was really sick.
Speaker 1: He hadn't had good medical care in prison, but he
Speaker 1: still was in possession of the Duchess. He hadn't given
Speaker 1: that Trump card up and he was hoping that maybe
Speaker 1: it would help him reclaim his kids. So he said
Speaker 1: about negotiating a return of the painting. But instead of
Speaker 1: inquiring directly with ag Knew, as he had the last
Speaker 1: go round, Worth instead brought in an intermediary named Patrick
Speaker 1: Sheety to seek out William Pinkerton to be the main
Speaker 1: go between, and you can really see a lot of
Speaker 1: Pinkerton's public image, you know, the the face he put
Speaker 1: out to the world and his agency's pamphlet on Worth
Speaker 1: that we've mentioned a few times now, But McIntyre's book
Speaker 1: also hints at kind of a more complicated detective, especially
Speaker 1: later in life. Pinkerton took a lot of real genuine
Speaker 1: interest in the men he had hunted or put into jail.
Speaker 1: He almost got along with them better than he did
Speaker 1: with people on his side of the law. So Worth
Speaker 1: in Pinkerton had met a way before this, way back
Speaker 1: in the American bar days in Paris. But Worth had
Speaker 1: infinitely more respect for him than he had for guys
Speaker 1: like John Shore of Scotland Yard or for other agencies.
Speaker 1: I mean, partly because they were clearly the only people
Speaker 1: who really knew anything about him, and he felt like
Speaker 1: the Pinkerton's had helped him out a little bit when
Speaker 1: he was in trouble in Belgium. He especially respected the
Speaker 1: Pinkerton's strange silence during his Belgian arrest after some bluffing
Speaker 1: on both sides, I mean, William Pinkerton, he didn't want
Speaker 1: to seem like he was doing anything shady to Scotland Yard,
Speaker 1: in particular the criminal and the detective. They opened up talks.
Speaker 1: Worth actually visited pinkerton Chicago office January twelve and basically
Speaker 1: told his whole story. He told Pinkerton quote, now I
Speaker 1: am placing myself entirely in your hands. I have never
Speaker 1: done it with a human being before, but I have
Speaker 1: implicit confidence in your word that you and yours will
Speaker 1: not take advantage of what I say. They talked all
Speaker 1: day and into the night, and they met the next
Speaker 1: day and the day after that, and they of course
Speaker 1: discussed the Duchess. Worth told Pinkerton that he was sick
Speaker 1: and that the lady should return home, but they also
Speaker 1: discussed his career and his life and just kind of
Speaker 1: talking about everything Worth had done. And as soon as
Speaker 1: this epic interview was over, Pinkerton wrote the entire thing down.
Speaker 1: This is, I mean pretty apparently the basis for the
Speaker 1: pamphlet that we've been discussing. And then and maybe like
Speaker 1: the cutest thing that could happen, he arranged for a
Speaker 1: fox terrier puppy to be sent to Worth kids, kind
Speaker 1: of almost to cement this trusting relationship they were going
Speaker 1: to have together so still, though, even though Worth trusted
Speaker 1: Pinkerton and vice versa, negotiations really did take a long time.
Speaker 1: The Duchess wasn't returned until nineteen o one, when Seymoreland Agnew,
Speaker 1: who was Sir William Agnew's son, took a ship to
Speaker 1: the United States and collected it. And it's unknown how
Speaker 1: much exactly he paid. But the really strange thing about
Speaker 1: the delivery is that while Worth turned the painting over,
Speaker 1: you know, he kept hit side of the deal, he
Speaker 1: didn't entirely give it up because he was almost certainly
Speaker 1: a passenger aboard Agnew's ship back to England in heavy disguise.
Speaker 1: I think that's a little bit it creepy. I don't know.
Speaker 1: He had ideas about taking it back and decided that
Speaker 1: it would be better to have his kids than the painting.
Speaker 1: At this point, well, it was almost like he just
Speaker 1: didn't want to be separated from it. He needed to
Speaker 1: at least go back home with her. J pre pomp,
Speaker 1: Morgan bought the picture from the Agnew family, beating out
Speaker 1: Senator William Clark of Montana, who was huge at Clark's
Speaker 1: father We Talked Together podcast subject. Morgan didn't display the
Speaker 1: painting outside of his home, and after his death his
Speaker 1: children kept it. When his last grandchild died in it
Speaker 1: was taken from her New York City apartment and auctioned
Speaker 1: at Southby's, London, where it was purchased by none other
Speaker 1: than the Duke of Devonshire. So it really did finally
Speaker 1: go home after all of those years away, what seventeen
Speaker 1: nine two or something like that until timee So with
Speaker 1: some of that money though, from the painting's return, Worth
Speaker 1: was able to buy off his sister in law, who
Speaker 1: was sort of holding his kid's hostage almost by this point,
Speaker 1: in order to get some money out of him. Um
Speaker 1: the kid moved to England to live with their father.
Speaker 1: They lived in London together for a short time, with
Speaker 1: Worth and Pinkerton, of course still corresponding regularly. On January
Speaker 1: nine two, actually, just a few days after Morgan had
Speaker 1: taken the Duchess back to New York City, Worth died
Speaker 1: at fifty six years of age. His teenage son, Harry
Speaker 1: Raymond Jr. That's, you know, obviously a completely made up name,
Speaker 1: moved back to America with his sister and then Pinkerton.
Speaker 1: I mean that relationship that Worth forged with him at
Speaker 1: the end really did pay off for his kids because
Speaker 1: Pinkerton helped arrange work for the boy. He secretly passed
Speaker 1: along the proceeds from the agency's pamphlet on Worth to
Speaker 1: the two kids, and eventually he even gave worth son
Speaker 1: a job with the detective firm. So there you go.
Speaker 1: You know, Adam Worth Junior essentially working for the Pinkerton
Speaker 1: an interesting twist. Conan Doyle also revisited the character Moriarty,
Speaker 1: setting the Valley of Fear before the Final Problem so
Speaker 1: that he could focus on Sherlock's nemesis again. According to
Speaker 1: the Economist, people still reenact the death battle from the
Speaker 1: Final Problem, and as we mentioned in the first part
Speaker 1: of this podcast, it looks like Moriarty will play a
Speaker 1: major part in the new Sherlock Holmes reboot. Definitely. I
Speaker 1: mean we've only seen the first season, but he was
Speaker 1: suggested pretty heavily that last episode throughout and then at
Speaker 1: the end it was it was pretty clear that's going
Speaker 1: to be in it, So I guess um listeners in
Speaker 1: England don't don't spoil season two for us. But um
Speaker 1: worth legacy, of course, isn't just the skull headed psycho
Speaker 1: character of Moriarty, though, because in nineteen thirty nine T. S.
Speaker 1: Elliott included a very Moriarty like character called the Mystery
Speaker 1: Cat in his Old Possums Book of Practical Cats, which
Speaker 1: coincidentally was the inspiration for the musical Cats. I mean,
Speaker 1: I just think this is like the most hilarious outcome
Speaker 1: for for a guy like Adam Worth. That's one connection
Speaker 1: I would not make. I think I'm really going to
Speaker 1: have to pick up a copy now two of Old
Speaker 1: Possum's Book of Practical Cats. But we have one somewhere. Well,
Speaker 1: do you have to bring it to work and let
Speaker 1: me borrow because it looks pretty funny. I'll do that. Well,
Speaker 1: this is all we have for the Saga of Adam Worth.
Speaker 1: But I'm so glad that we did it. We've had
Speaker 1: so many requests for it ever since, as you mentioned,
Speaker 1: ever since we did the Sherlock Holmes episode. Um. And
Speaker 1: it's one that you can't find a ton of articles on, strangely,
Speaker 1: and it really a lot of it is based on
Speaker 1: that biography or the Pinkerton pamphlet, which has kind of
Speaker 1: a strange twisted view of the story because Pinkerton is
Speaker 1: a law man, you know, he's got to put that
Speaker 1: face forward for everybody. It's got to be like, this
Speaker 1: is a bad criminal and we need to talk about
Speaker 1: him that way. But he clearly cared for Worth too,
Speaker 1: and sort of brushes over certain aspects of his life. Well,
Speaker 1: I think both through McIntyre's biography and through that, we
Speaker 1: got to see a little bit of the human side
Speaker 1: of Worth two. It wasn't all just crime, and that's
Speaker 1: definitely so I love doing these literary inspiration episodes. So
Speaker 1: if any of you have more suggestions for those, you know,
Speaker 1: people real life biographies who inspired the creation of some
Speaker 1: literary character, I'd love to hear some of those. You
Speaker 1: could email us at History Podcast at Discovery dot com,
Speaker 1: or you could post on our Facebook or our Twitter
Speaker 1: account at mist in History. And if you want to
Speaker 1: learn a little bit more about some of the topics
Speaker 1: we talked about today, like art theft, for example, we
Speaker 1: have an article on our website called how could someone
Speaker 1: Steal a Painting from a museum? And you can find
Speaker 1: that by checking out our home page at www dot
Speaker 1: house stuff works dot com. Be sure to check out
Speaker 1: our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join how
Speaker 1: Stuff Work staff as we explore the most promising and
Speaker 1: perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. The House, Stuff Works, iPhone up
Speaker 1: has a rise. Download it today on iTunes, e