Adam Worth (1844–January 8, 1902) was a German-American criminal. Scotland Yard detective Robert Anderson nicknamed him "the Napoleon of the criminal world", and he is commonly referred to as "the Napoleon of Crime". It has been widely speculated that Arthur Conan Doyle used Worth as the prototype for Sherlock Holmes' nemesis, Professor Moriarty. In his "Books Alive" column in The Chicago Sunday Tribune (December 26, 1943), Vincent Starrett wrote...
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Adam Worth (1844–January 8, 1902) was a German-American criminal. Scotland Yard detective Robert Anderson nicknamed him "the Napoleon of the criminal world", and he is commonly referred to as "the Napoleon of Crime". It has been widely speculated that Arthur Conan Doyle used Worth as the prototype for Sherlock Holmes' nemesis, Professor Moriarty. In his "Books Alive" column in The Chicago Sunday Tribune (December 26, 1943), Vincent Starrett wrote, "Worth was the original of Prof. Moriarty. This information, which isn't generally known, was revealed by Conan Doyle in conversation with Dr. Gray C. Briggs of St. Louis, Dr. Briggs once told me." Starrett was a good friend of Dr. Gray Chandler Briggs (1882—1942), a St. Louis doctor and X-ray specialist.
Adam Worth was born into a poor Jewish family in the Kingdom of Prussia in 1844. His original surname might have been Werth. When he was five years old, his family moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts in the United States and his father became...
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