Stealing for anarchy

Son of proletarian Marseille, Jacob at the age of eleven sailed as a deckhand on various ships, including a whaling ship that would soon result to be a pirate ship. At sixteen he returns home, where he acquired a solid libertarian faith. And that's when he decided to become a thief, employing in that stimulating activity not only his experience as a pirate but also his inventive genius. It will be the first to adopt methods that will mark history of burglary ... Unsurpassed in disguise (as a priest was his favorite), he became an expert on strongboxes, that he opened using cutting-edge techniques. But he also employed less scientific, yet effective techniques, for example by using as a"post" a toad, amphibian, which has the wise habit to stop croaking when someone approaches. In just three years (1900-1903) he scored with his gang – not surprisingly called "The workers of the night" - a total of 156 shots - or better "Reappropriations" - against bankers, prelates and magistrates. Arrested in 1903 and sentenced to life imprisonment, after several attempts of escape he was sent into the hell of Cayenne, a jail in the French Guyana, where he survived despite a stay of more than twenty years. Pardoned in 1928, he returned to France, and while he stopped theft, did not stop being an anarchist and will remain so until the end of his days. This biography tells his extraordinary life.

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