Subject: mafioso gangster/mobster

Culture: Italian-American

Setting: Prohibition, Chicagoland 1920-1933

Event Photos

* Perry 2010 p3-4

"Chicago in the spring of 1924 was something new, a city for the future. It thrived like nowhere else. Evidence of the postwar depression of 1920-21 couldn't be found anywhere. The city pulsed with industrial development. Empty lots turned into whole neighborhoods almost overnight. Motor cars were so plentiful that Michigan Avenue traffic backed up daily more than half a mile to the Chicago River. And yet this exciting, prosperous city terrified many observers. Chicago took its cultural obsessions to extremes, from jazz to politics to architecture. Most of all, in the midst of Prohibition, the city reveled in its contempt for the law. The newly elected reform mayor, witnessing a mobster funeral attended by thousands of fascinated citizens, would exclaim later that year: 'I am staggered by this state of affairs. Are we living by the code of the Dark Ages or is Chicago part of an American Commonwealth?'

"It truly was difficult to tell. Gangsterism, celebrity, sex, art, music -- anything dodgy or gauche or modern boomed in the city. That included feminism. Women in Chicago experienced unmatched freedoms, not won gradually -- as was the case for the suffragettes -- but achieved in short order, on the sly. Respectable saloons before Prohibition didn't admit women; speakeasies welcomed them. Skirts appeared to be higher here than anywhere else."

* Sifakis 1999 p335

"A sort of mystique has built up around the members of the Mafia and organized crime on the matter of sex -- licit or illicit. Mafiosi have three advantages most men do not enjoy: 1) they have considerable money to lure women with; 2) if married, their work keeps them out to all hours of the night or even away from home for days at a time, with alibis; 3) they rarely need alibis anyway since their wives are expected to ask no questions."

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Field Notes