Adam Worth (18448 January 1902) was a crime boss and fraudster. His career in crime, stretching from the United States to Europe and South Africa, included the infamous theft of Gainsborough's celebrated Portrait of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, which he retained for 25 years. In London, he lived as a respected member of high society under the alias Henry Judson Raymond. Scotland Yard Detective Robert Anderson nicknamed him "the Napoleon of the criminal world" (because of his short stature). He is widely considered the inspiration for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's fictional criminal mastermind James Moriarty in the Sherlock Holmes series. Early life Adam Worth was born into a poor Jewish family somewhere in Germany. His original surname might have been "Werth". When he was five years old, his family moved to the United States and settled in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Worth's father became a tailor. In 1854, Worth ran away from home and moved first to Boston and then, in 1860, to New York City. He worked as a clerk in a department store for one month. When the American Civil War broke out, Worth was 17. He lied about his age and enlisted in the Union army. He was wounded in the Second Battle of Bull Run on 30 August 1862 and shipped to a Georgetown Hospital in Washington, D.C. In the hospital, he learned he had been listed as killed in action and left. (Worth is often confused with Adam Wirth, who served in the 2nd New York Heavy Artillery, Battery L (later designated 34th New York Battery), died at Georgetown Hospital of wounds he suffered at the Second Battle of Bull Run, and was buried in Washington, D.C. Adam Wirth and his family were residents of College Point, Long Island, New York, and had no connection with Adam Worth.) Criminal career Worth became a bounty jumper, enlisting into various regiments under assumed names, receiving his bounty, and then deserting. When the Pinkerton Detective Agency began to track him, like many others using similar methods, he fled from New York City and went to Portsmouth. After the war, Worth became a pickpocket in New York. In time, he founded his own gang of pickpockets, and then began to organize robberies and heists. When he was caught stealing the cash box of an Adams Express wagon, he was sentenced to three years in Sing Sing prison. He soon escaped