ABSTRACT
In the summer of 1773 a band of robbers travelled to Diemen by boat, where they tried in vain to raid an inn and a farm. A woman raised the alarm and the men were arrested. Most of them were High German Jews. Portuguese Jews were less often involved in crime. While the numerical ratio of Ashkenazim to Sephardim between 1700 and 1795 was around 4:1, between 1680 and 1795 the proportion of Ashkenazi as opposed to Portuguese Jews identified as criminals was ten times as great, at 40:1. They were usually of no fixed abode, and many operated in the countryside and the border areas, but sometimes they struck in the cities. Their field of activity was such that they paid little attention to political boundaries. Portuguese criminals operated towards the south, in Brussels and Paris and all the way to Spain, sometimes also in England. Ashkenazi Jews had the German territories and eastern Europe as their hinterland. That was where they had the most contacts, since it was where they had come from originally.
