Old Jimmy Hope and the Largest Bank Robbery in American History: Mystery, Murder and NYC's Criminal Underworld in 1878

 In the darkness before dawn on October 27, 1878 a group of armed masked men stormed into the lobby of the Manhattan Savings Institution located on the corner of Broadway and Bleecker Street.

The robbers held janitor Louis Werckle and his family, who resided overnight on the bank’s premises, hostage.  While Werckle’s wife and mother-in-law are held at gunpoint the janitor is forced to use his keys to open the outer door to the bank’s vault.

After gaining access to the vault the masked gunmen hogtie and gag Werckle and the women and set to work using an advanced set of safe cracking tools.  Within moments the largest bank robbery in the history of the United States is over.  The group of masked gunmen quietly slip away through a back door to the bank carrying with them money and securities valued at an astonishing $3.5 million dollars!

Only hours later the blaring headline on the frontpage of The New York Times for October 28, 1878 reads: 

A GREAT BANK ROBBERY!  THE MANHATTAN SAVINGS INSTITUTION ROBBED.  THREE AND A HALF MILLIONS IN CASH AND SECURITIES STOLEN FROM THE VAULT!  

Before dawn the luckless janitor Louis Werckle is able to break free of his restraints and sound the alarm.  An immediate investigation is launched and on the very day after the enormous heist New York City Police Detective Thomas F. Byrnes is able to determine that the robbery of the Manhattan Savings Institution was, at least in part, an inside job.

Site of the Manhattan Saving's Institution

Under intense questioning a man named Patrick Shevlin, who was often employed by the Manhattan Savings Institution as a night watchman confesses to having created a set of duplicate keys and given a certain man access to the building in return for a promise that he would receive a substantial payment once the robbery was complete.

The “certain man” that Shevlin identifies is life-long criminal, escape artist and bankrobber James “Old Jimmy” Hope.  Shevlin also tells police that he believes there may have been as many as ten or eleven accomplices involved in American History’s largest bank robbery.

Authorities are well acquainted with “Old Jim” Hope.

Alternately called Jimmy or “Old Jim” James Hope, the son of poor Irish Catholic immigrants, was born in 1836.  Hope grew up in abject poverty in the slums and on the streets of 19th century Philadelphia, though he was always said to be a devout and practicing Catholic.

By the time Jimmy Hope turned thirty he had married, started a family and found employment as a machinist.  It is not known exactly when Jimmy Hope began his criminal career, but it is believed his first successful bank heist occurred in 1871, when disguised as a police officer in Philadelphia, Hope was able to con his way into the vault of the Kensington Savings Bank and make off with thousands of dollars in bonds and securities, while unsuspecting bank employees stood nearby.

"Old" Jimmy Hope

By October of 1878 Old Jimmy Hope has become renowned across the northeast United States for his ability to escape from any jail or prison but he is unable to leave New York City with the millions he and his gang have stolen from the Manhattan Savings Institution and is soon brought into custody.

“Old” Jimmy Hope, the ringleader of the Manhattan Savings Bank robbery of 1878, the largest single bank heist in American history, is sent along with his son Bill and three other accomplices to Auburn Prison in upstate New York.

Entrance to the Auburn State Correctional Facility

Built in 1816, and still in operation today, Auburn Prison (now called the Auburn State Correctional Facility) was infamous the world over during the 19th century for its austere conditions, code of silence among inmates and strict discipline.

Prisoners at Auburn were forced to always keep their heads bowed, walk in lockstep with one another and maintain silence at all times.  Inmates would typically work six twelve hour days a week in the prison’s factory and spend the rest of their time in solitary confinement in unlit cells.

 These methods of harsh discipline and punishment were considered so successful at preventing crime and prisoner recidivism in New York State during the latter half of the 1800’s, that by the 1910’s, most prisons across the northeast United States had adopted what was then called the “Auburn System” of corrections and penal labor.  Even today most New York State license plates are manufactured by inmates engaged in penal labor at what is now called the Auburn Correctional Facility.

Inmates of the "Auburn System" circa 1900

For nearly two centuries the Auburn Correctional Facility has been one of America’s most secure and brutal penitentiaries.  Auburn Prison, since its inception, has been renowned for its brutal, often violent conditions and has been the site of riots and prisoner uprisings more than a dozen times over its long history.

“Old” Jimmy Hope escaped from Auburn Prison not once, but twice, and by the middle of 1880 he was a free man again, this time, trying to fence his stolen loot on the other side of the country in San Francisco.  

James Hope was able to escape one of America’s most secure prisons thanks to his connections on the outside to a criminal syndicate originally called the Leslie Gang.

The Leslie Gang was formed around the year 1870 by criminal mastermind and affluent, professionally trained and educated architect from the University of Cincinnati, George Leonidas Leslie.  British born George Leonidas Leslie immigrated as a young boy to the United States, and was the son of a well-off brewery owner in central Ohio who had been able to avoid service in the Union Army during the Civil War by having his father pay a $300 surcharge to the federal government in lieu of his son being drafted into military service.

However, upon the unexpected death of both his parents in 1867, and the loss of his family’s fortune and business, the twenty-five year old George Leonidas Leslie, while still a young man, turned to a life of crime, specifically bank robbery.  

Leslie, who always resented the criticism that he received from his peers for having been able to “dodge” the draft due to his family’s affluence is said to have felt justified in robbing state backed banks because of his resentment toward the United States government for the way that he was looked down upon by society for not having honorably served in the American Civil War.

George Leonidas Leslie

Originally based in and around Philadelphia beginning in the year 1870, George Leonidas Leslie, after recruiting approximately a dozen followers, picking the best and brightest of the northeast United States underworld, Jimmy Hope among them, soon expanded his gang’s area of  operations from eastern Pennsylvania  to New York City.

Between 1870 and 1878 nearly 80% of the bank robberies in and around New York City would be attributed to George Leonidas Leslie and his gang.  In total, in less than a full decade, it is believed that the Leslie Gang stole as much as eight million dollars in cash, bonds and securities from state backed banks in and around New York City.

In planning the robbery of the Manhattan Savings Institution, George Leslie used a copy of the bank’s blueprints, in conjunction with his background as a professionally trained architect, to plot the most efficient robbery and escape possible.  The robbery of the Manhattan Savings Institution was a full three years in planning and involved upwards of twenty individuals.  Leslie went so far as to build a full scale model of the Manhattan Savings Institution building and drilled each member of his team on every single detail of the building itself.  He created a wire lock pick that he called a “joker” and spent the better part of thirty-six months training “Old” Jimmy Hope on how to use this device to pick almost any locked vault or safe in existence.

Despite all of the gang’s meticulous planning, in May of 1878, a full five months before the robbery of the Manhattan Savings Institution was set to take place, George Leonidas Leslie mysteriously disappeared.  His lifeless body was discovered on June 4, 1878 hidden behind a bush in Yonkers, New York with a bullet hole through the heart.

To this day the murder of George Leonidas Leslie has never been solved, but many suspect that either a gang member named Tom Draper whose wife Leslie was known to be having an affair with, or even “Old” Jimmy Hope himself who was often critical of Leslie in the months leading up to the great heist for being too focused on his career as an architect and not on the robbery iteself, as the possible gunmen.  

Whoever killed George Leonidas Leslie, since his body was obviously moved outside the city limits and hidden in Yonkers, New York at the time, it is almost certain that it was members of his own gang who were behind his mysterious murder.

In 1881, this time in San Francisco, California, luck finally ran out for “Old” Jimmy Hope.  While attempting to rob the Sather Savings Bank in the middle of the night by lowering himself via a rope through an open window from the second floor, Hope was caught on the ground floor of the bank by a squad of police officers who were there waiting for him with revolvers drawn.

Jimmy Hope would serve six years in San Quentin Prison in California for the attempted robbery of the Sather Savings Bank in San Francisco.  New York City law enforcement would seek to extradite Jimmy Hope back to New York State to serve the remainder of his time at Auburn State Prison for his role in the Manhattan Savings Institution robbery but a local court would eventually rule against the extradition order for Jimmy Hope upon his release from San Quentin in 1887.

In 1888, at the age of fifty-two, “Old” Jimmy Hope after having robbed over five million dollars from various banks across the United States over a criminal career spanning two decades, would move back to New York City and settle down to live a quiet life with his wife and daughter in a small two-bedroom apartment on Columbus Avenue.

Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx

Though Jimmy Hope lived the rest of his life as a quiet law-abiding man of seemingly modest means, passing away from a heart attack aged sixty-nine in 1905, he never worked another day in his life or robbed any more banks and there was much speculation until the very day that he died about where his wealth was hidden.

In June of 1905 upon his death, The New York Times reported that “Old” Jimmy Hope died, “with the secret of the whereabouts of the unrecovered bonds from the Manhattan Savings Institution still hidden.”

Jimmy Hope’s funeral was held at the family home in New York City and was attended by many influential politicians including Hoboken Police Commissioner Patrick Smith and New York State Senator Timothy “Big Tim” Sullivan.  His body lies interred at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx.

To this day the murder of criminal mastermind George Leonidas Leslie, and the whereabouts of most of the three and half million dollars stolen from the Manhattan Savings Institution in October of 1878, both remain a mystery.  Perhaps, the answer to each of these mysteries lies in the grave with “Old” Jimmy Hope on the grounds of the Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, New York.