Q&A with Dean Jobb

 

 

 

Dean Jobb is the author of the new book A Gentleman and a Thief: The Daring Jewel Heists of a Jazz Age Rogue. His other books include The Case of the Murderous Dr. Cream. He is a professor at the University of King's College in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

 

Q: How did you learn about Jazz Age thief Arthur Barry, and at what point did you decide to write a book about him?

 

A: I was surfing the internet, looking for ideas for a new true crime book, and found a 1950s Life magazine feature on “the greatest jewel thief who ever lived.” I had never heard of Arthur Barry and I was captivated by his daring and brazenness.

 

Some preliminary sleuthing confirmed there were plenty of twists and turns in his story and enough material for a book. His exploits were straight out of the movies. He’s an anti-hero readers can root for – a real-life version of the charming cat burglar Cary Grant played in To Catch a Thief.

 

Barry was no Robin Hood – he stole from the rich and gave to himself – but it's hard not to admire his skill and cunning as he hoodwinks New York's elite. And his caper-filled career captures the glitz and excess of the Jazz Age.

 

Barry hobnobbed with New York City’s rich and famous during the 1920s. Donning a tux, he crashed parties so he could memorize the layout of mansions and return later to break in through an upstairs window.

 

Scores of meticulously planned burglaries netted him diamonds, pearls and other gems worth at least $60 million today. He robbed Percy Rockefeller, the nephew of the founder of Standard Oil, and Jessie Donahue, the heiress to the Woolworth five-and-dime store fortune.

 

And one memorable night in 1924, he befriended and partied with the Prince of Wales, the future King Edward VIII, before robbing the prince’s cousin and his wife, Lord and Lady Mountbatten.

 

If his victims were awakened as he prowled through their homes, he was soothing and polite, assuring them he meant no harm and was only there for the jewels. “I know he’s terrible,” one socialite told the press after he swiped her jewels, “but isn’t he charming?”

 

Q: How did you research the book, and what did you learn that especially surprised you?

 

A: I specialize in historical true crime and every book requires extensive research, everything from history books and memoirs to old newspapers and magazines, archival records, and long-forgotten court files. This is the raw material needed to recreate scenes, flesh out characters, and inject context and detail that brings lost worlds to life for readers.

 

Historian David McCullough, author of John Adams, The Wright Brothers, and other bestsellers, described it as "marinating your head" – steeping yourself in what life was like for your characters.

 

I researched and wrote the book during the pandemic and I was unable to visit archives and museums to review records in person, as I usually do.

 

I hired a researcher for some tasks but archivists were generous with their time and scoured files for material on Barry and other aspects of his story. Barry served time in three prisons and staff of the New York State Archives in Albany unearthed details of his incarceration and discovered the only mugshot of the master thief that has survived.

 

I also tracked down two cousins who knew him when they were young, after he had done his time and returned to Worcester, Massachusetts, his hometown. Growing up, they didn’t know their Uncle Artie was once a notorious jewel thief – it was a family secret – but their recollections enabled me to recreate his final years.

 

What surprised me the most, I suppose, was how much of the story was true. Despite the often-sensationalist press coverage of his time, most newspaper reports on Barry’s major heists proved to be accurate.

 

My challenge was tying him to a string of burglaries he was suspected to have committed, but had been unsolved for years. Court records and newspaper accounts allowed me to recreate these crimes and dozens more that bore the hallmarks of his crimes – thorough planning, victims confronted by a polite, courteous burglar, and a clean getaway.

 

Q: As you’ve said, Barry was quite well-known in his day – why isn’t he better known today?

 

A: The press treated Barry and other audacious crooks of the era like rock stars. Their exploits were celebrated in front-page headlines and reporters scrambled for salacious details and exclusive interviews.

 

Barry’s story was retold in newspaper and magazine features from the 1930s to the 1950s, and he collaborated with a New York journalist, Neil Hickey, on a biography published in the early 1960s. Barry even appeared on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.

 

After that, his exploits were forgotten. His story has been hiding in plain sight ever since and offers a fresh take on the wealth and glamor of New York in the Roaring Twenties. 

 

Q: Are there any more recent figures to whom Barry could be compared?

 

A: There have been a few copycat burglars in the years since Barry’s spree, but none matched his success in targeting the ultra-rich and eluding the police.

 

His story is stranger than fiction, so it’s apt that characters like him usually spring from the imaginations of novelists and screenwriters. The gentleman jewel thief has been a staple of fiction for more than a century.

 

In the 1890s E.W. Hornung, the brother-in-law of Sherlock Holmes creator Arthur Conan Doyle, introduced A.J. Raffles, a down-on-his-luck member of the English upper crust who resorts to stealing jewels to keep up appearances.

 

Hornung’s stories were so popular that for years, any jewel thief who preyed on the rich – Barry included – was described as a raffles; David Niven is among the actors who have portrayed the character on stage and in the movies.

 

Better known today, thanks to the recent hit Netflix series, is Lupin, a slick Parisian thief with a heart of gold. French writer Maurice Leblanc dreamed up the character in the early 1900s. Arthur Barry accomplished in real life the feats of deception and daring these writers could only dream of.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: The working title of my next book for Algonquin Books is Murder in the Cards and it’s the story of bridge-playing expert Joseph Elwell, who was murdered in his Manhattan home in 1920.

 

It’s one of history’s great unsolved crimes, an enduring mystery that reveals how power, corruption, scandal, and privilege defined and shaped Jazz Age America.

 

Lurid accounts of the killing claimed the front pages of newspapers across America for months as detectives and crime reporters pursued theories and possible motives.

 

Among the suspects were prominent businessmen, socialites, former lovers (along with their jilted boyfriends and husbands), underworld figures, gamblers, and racetrack rivals.

 

I'm writing it like a real life whodunnit and the book will recreate Elwell’s charmed, scandalous life and round up the suspects, Hercule Poirot-style, to present the most likely explanation of who killed him and why.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Dean Jobb.