Review

In A Gentleman and a Thief, author Dean Jobb calls Arthur Barry "one of the most brazen and successful jewel thieves in history," a burglar with a winning personality. For example, one might in May 1927, at a 29-room mansion on Long Island Sound, Barry and an accomplice dressed in suits entered through a second-floor window at a house owned by a Wall Street tycoon and his wife. They made off with an $80,000 strand of pearls and a $20,000 diamond ring (value at almost $1.5 million today). Confronted by the owners, the wife asked Barry to return a pair of $60,000 pinky rings because they had personal implications. He gave them back and said good night to them. Barry, born in 1896, in a shabby part of Worcester, MA, was drinking by age 7 and convicted on firearm charges at age 16, was sent to a reformatory, fought in World War I, and returned home to go to New York and become a jewel thief. The author notes that jewelry heists were big business in the Roaring Twenties--many were in the money and there were eager fences for jewel thieves. He plied his trade in the wealthy suburbs of New York and studied the society pages to see which wealthy families were in Palm Beach or traveling in Europe, dressed up and crashed cocktail parties to get acquainted and gather information, dressed as a workman to gain admission to a house to case the place. He was an adept "second story" man and, dressed-to-the-nines, entered bedroom windows while occupants were sleeping or downstairs with guests, and made off with his jewelry take. Barry's many victims included Lord Louis Mountbatteu and his wife Edwina, a Rockefeller cousin, Irving Berlin's mother-in-law, a Woolworth heiress, and a number of bankers and executives. His major heists are listed in an appendix and, in a span of 7 years, his jewelry take was worth about $60 million in today's dollars. After this seven-year run (1920-27), he was captured, convicted, and imprisoned only to escape from the Auburn (NY) Correctional Facility in 1929 and survive some three years on the run with his wife, Anna. He was recaptured and spent a total of 19 years in prison before being paroled in 1949 and retreated to a normal life. Readers will enjoy this well-written, interesting biography.

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