Beechdale RTA 04.00 today

There was an RTA on Stephenson Avenue at around 4 a.m this morning. Here are some pictures taken around 5 hours later.

The accident involved 2 parked cars and a Vauxhall Corsa. The two parked vehicles were written off, the one on the pavement has a twisted chassis and is awaiting collection by the insurance company. but the driver door will not open because of the damage. The other vehicle is still on the road towards the housing association building, but has extensive damage to the rear end. The Corsa was being driven by a young man and although he originally made off! Was detained by the police later, he was taken to hospital so that his injuries could be seen too. I have no idea what speed he was travelling but the skid mark is 9 of those white line markings plus the gaps, on the road. Luckily NO ONE ELSE was involved. The Corsa was taken away by E & S Motors for examination, but was obviously going to be a write off. It could have been so different

Britain will pay the price for shafting the working class

This article, believe it or believe it not, first appeared in of all newspapers ‘THE GUARDIAN’  on Friday 13th December 2013

Britain will pay the price for shafting the working class
The middle class has taken over, and the price we’re paying is the destruction of all we hold dear

Of the attributes Britons hold dear, the most potent is stability. Our traditions endure, institutions survive. We seem loth to countenance revolution. And yet we have experienced a coup d’etat of sorts and the question must be asked: just when did the middle classes take untrammelled control of the levers? It always was a force; but now there is hegemony. Today, a glimpse of what has happened to the vanquished.

According to the conservative think-tank Policy Exchange, the under-representation of people from working-class backgrounds in public spheres such as parliament and magistrates courts can be reasonably described as shameful. It suggests an inquiry is necessary, perhaps run by the government equalities office and the equality and human rights commission. One can disagree with its diagnosis of the problem. Policy Exchange, true to its leaning, says the diversity policies of the last Labour government were too narrow – too much focus on race and gender – but that feels like scratching at the surface. Still, who can dispute that the problem exists?

One can look to the figures. According to the Sutton Trust think-tank – which focuses on social mobility – 68% of “leading public servants” went to private schools. It says 63% of leading lawyers were privately educated, as were 60% of the upper ranks of the armed forces. Independent schools produce more than half of the nation’s leading journalists, diplomats, financiers and business people. Policy Exchange says just 4% of MP’s  previously worked in manual trades.

A few weeks ago, I spoke to a would-be Labour councillor: a busy man; a professional. So busy that he thought the task of actually campaigning to get himself elected might be too time-consuming. So he placed an advert online seeking someone to do his campaigning for him. The powers that be took a dim view and the ad was promptly withdrawn, but I took to wondering what the councillors I knew in Newham in London, where I grew up and was a cub reporter, would have thought of him.

These were people who had graduated to the council having been shop stewards and tenants’ association leaders. Charlie, the taxi driver; Lew, the tube driver; Jim, the car plant worker. I think of activists such as Sue, the diffident single mother who galvanised the residents in one tower block and then another and then built a campaign that culminating in a clutch of dangerous tower blocks being demolished. There were working-class people in representative positions, voicing the concerns of people from their communities. Fewer now. What happened?

Thatcherism happened. The social geographer Danny Dorling details how the grocer’s daughter from Grantham fractured the post-war reality of the poor becoming less poor and the narrowing of the gap between the very poor and very rich. “By the time Thatcher left office in 1990, the annual incomes of the richest 0.01% of society had climbed to 70 times the national mean.” For them to win, as they did under Thatcher and New Labour, others had to lose. Those who lost most were working-class communities.

With their institutions unravelled and a daily battle for subsistence, how are they to seek office in meaningful numbers? With what support? There are excellent groups building capacity, such as Citizens UK, but still the fundamental problem remains. Dorling recently estimated that of the bottom 50% of people in Britain by income “all are financially insecure”. How is that a springboard?

The total capture of the professions by the middle classes happened. Take journalism. I entered national journalism 27 years ago with no degree – just a year’s college training, funded by a council grant, and after an apprenticeship on the Newham Recorder. That was when journalism was a trade, not a profession, and there were routes of entry for other than the middle classes. People took those routes to senior positions in our industry. With the middle class self-selecting, we wouldn’t stand a chance today.

The country ticks along, stable and first-world prosperous. So why does the absence of working-class representation matter? Because it conflicts with everything we say we want for Britain: inclusion, fairness, equality of opportunity. Because without the broadest input, our institutions become myopic; our democracy atrophied. Isn’t that the story of the last 30 years?

Twitter: @hugh_muir

• This article was amended on 13 December 2013. It originally stated that the Sutton Trust had found that 68% of public servants were privately educated. This should have read “leading public servants” – the missing word has now been added, along with a link to the study

 

 

ROAD HOLES.

This ones a personal one.

About three weeks ago i needed a bag of cement, it was late on the friday evening and so I decided that I would go to Edwards Build Base up at Leamore Four Crosses. Off I go top of Stephenson onto Green Lane to the Four Crosses Island, turn Left and Left again. as I was making this last left turn I Hit one of the POT HOLES . Clump! PSSSSSS pull down a little bit. Burst Tyre. In the way so go down the bottom where I can change the wheel. I put the spare on and go home. To late to get my cement. On the Saturday morning go to visit brother and do shopping. Car pulling so I decide that I must get tracking done, have to get new tyre anyway. The tyreman checks and says the tracking quite bad, but does it. Have to go back in a few days for a recheck. Do that its moved a little but he fixes that. Then we have some little drops of oil on the drive, but cannot see were from.

Today car goes for MOT and she fails because the suspension is knackered and the oil is from that. Road is not the councils so no redress from them. Cannot find owner of road from anyone Moral dont buy or go to buy from people who can’t give you information so you can get a redress.

I must make it clear that i don’t blame Edwards Buildbase for the damage unless of course they own thee road, but I am annoyed that they could or would not let me know who owns the road and is responsible.

H H HOLMES and Murder at Castle Holmes

(From the Odgen Standard – July 4, 1914)
Memory of Trap Doors, Secret Elevators and Stove, Wherein Bodies of Women Were Burned, Haunted Man for Nineteen Years.
A few weeks ago word was sent over the telegraphic wires that Patrick Quinlan had killed himself in his home at Portland, Mich. The telegram did not cause much of a stir. Quinlan’s name had been forgotten. A new generation is reading the newspapers, which nineteen years ago carried stories day after day for months about the remarkable murder system of H .H. Holmes, with whose name the name of Quinlan was linked.

Holmes Murder Castle

Quinlan proved his innocence. He showed that he was only an employee of H.H. Holmes, arch-murderer. He proved that he was Holmes’ janitor and caretaker of the Holmes Castle, 701 63rd St., Chicago, and nothing more. He admitted he had helped construct some of the secret trapdoors and had helped line some of the rooms with asbestos, which it is believed aided in deadening the sound of dying men, but Quinlan new nothing of the purpose of the traps he helped build, and had no part in the machinations of his chief.
Yet when the body of Quinlan was found lying in his room where he had taken poison, a note was found beside his body. The note said:
“I could not sleep.”
For nineteen years Quinlan could not sleep. At night he would wake with a start, and find himself covered with sweat, his friends say. He would call for help and when a light would be brought to his room or when the electric switch would be turned on he would recount how he was attacked while half asleep by strange hallucinations.
For nineteen years this man had been unable to sleep peacefully because of the awful experiences he endured during his employment by Holmes and during the period immediately after.
Holmes Castle was a three-story flat, looking more like an ordinary residence than like a castle. In that place it is believed four women, at least, were slain. It was the retreat of the man who also had killed men, women and children in Philadelphia, Toronto and Indianapolis.
The castle was built admirably for a murder shop. A dumbwaiter ran from the third floor to the basement and there were no connections with the dumbwaiter on the intervening floors. The conveyance was big enough to admit of a man riding upon it. On the top floor in one of the rooms was a gigantic stove. It was eight feet high and three feet in diameter. It was an ideal stove for the burning of a human body. A person could be thrown into the stove bodily and could be burned to nothing.
In the basement were quicklime vats. Bodies could be thrown in quicklime and consumed. The flagging in the basement could be torn up and bodies could be buried beneath the flags.
The trouble with the average slayer is that he does not know what to do with the body of his victim.
Finding of Body Starts Search
The finding of the body of the victim always starts the search for the slayer. If a man could dispose of the body he could slay on a wholesale plan and avoid detection. Holmes is believed to have built the castle with a view of hiding bodies of those he slew. He directed the work on the building. Quinlan was only an ordinary workman who did what he was told unhesitatingly. Quinlan never questioned the authority of the slayer. He never asked who the women were Holmes had visiting him. He never asked where they went when they disappeared. He was an ideal servant. Born in a small Michigan community, he went to Chicago to make his fortune. Chicago was about to have a world’s fair in commemoration of the discovery of America.
It was a good town to go to, thought Quinlan. An honest Irish young man, his only thought of making a living was by honest hard work. That is why he went to work for Holmes and worked so willingly and so faithfully. The other day when he drank the fatal potion he was middle-aged and broken in health. He looked as though he had been carried to the point of death by the ghosts of the slain women of the castle he helped to build.
It is said by some of his best friends that he often reproached himself for his part in the affair. He blamed himself for not suspecting Holmes and turning him up to the police. Yet he could not be blamed. Everything in Holmes Castle seemed to be right. There was no sign of murder there. Everything was quiet and still. The rooms were lined with asbestos and the dying victims never made a sound that reached the outside world. There at night in the dark house they met their death.
Some of them were asphyxiated, it is believed. Others were stabbed. Others were shot, according to the opinions of investigators. No one knows. Holmes knew and the victims perhaps could tell harrowing tales if they could talk, but they are gone and Holmes has been hung for his crimes, so in this world no one ever will know.
How many crimes Holmes devised no one can tell. The first thing to attract the attention of the world was the sudden, horrible death of B. D. Pietzel, a chemist, in Philadelphia. He died in such a manner that it seemed he had been making chemical experiments and had met with an accident when his chemicals exploded. Holmes, whose right name was Herman W. Mudgett, telegraphed to St. Louis to the home of Mrs. Pietzel and told her to come to Philadelphia and identify the body.
It is alleged that Holmes met Mrs. Pietzel and informed her the body was not that of her husband but that her husband had his life insured for $10,000.
“He’s safe in Canada,” Holmes told Mrs. Pietzel. “He had me frame up his body. It is so badly mangled by the explosion that no one can ever recognize it. You identify it and we’ll get the insurance. Your husband said for me to give you half and bring the other half to him.”
Mrs. Pietzel later confessed that she identified the body without believing it was that of her husband. She thought it was a big swindle game on the part of her husband and she entered into it readily. She brought her three children, Alice, Nellie and Howard with her. Alice was 15 years old. Holmes separated her room from her children and took them to Toronto, Canada.
Later the bodies of Alice and Nelly were found in the cellar of the building Holmes had occupied at Toronto.
Tip from Crook Revealed Holmes

Marlin Hedgepeth is the man who first directed attention to Holmes. Holmes was conducting the drugstore in St. Louis when he was arrested on a minor charge and placed in jail. There he met Marion Hedgepeth, noted as an out and out criminal. Holmes asked Hedgepeth to tell him the name of some St. Louis lawyer who could give him assistance in putting over an insurance swindle. Hedgepeth said he gave him the name. In return Hedgepeth was to get $500. This swindle was consummated. That is Pietzel was killed in Philadelphia in order to collect the insurance, but Hedgpeth got no money.
Then Hedgepath notified Chief of Police Harrigan of St. Louis that he had “the biggest insurance swindle case the police ever had to deal with anywhere, anytime in the world.”
He sent that message to Harrigan October 9, 1894. Pietzel had died September 3, 1894. That failure to deal squarely with Hedgepeth is doubtless what cost Holmes his liberty and life and checked his long career of crime. Police at once set out to hunt for him. The Philadelphia death of Pietzel had caused them some wonder, but the word from Hedgepeth made them doubly sure of crime. They trailed Holmes to Toronto, where the bodies of Alice and Nellie Pietzel were found. Later they found the body of Howard in Indianapolis and identified it as that of Howard, because of some peculiar playthings he had. His body had been burned in the stove and the bones alone were left intact.
Holmes was found in Boston and arrested. He was going under the name of Howard there. He was arrested July 14, 1895.
Mrs. Pietzel told her part in the affair and tried to atone by fighting for the conviction of the man who had made her a widow and slain three of her beautiful children.
In Chicago the record of Holmes was looked up. When he was under arrest in Philadelphia awaiting trial for the death of Pietzel word came from all parts of United States that Holmes, or a man answering his description, had taken women from their town and the unfortunates had never been heard from. From Fort Worth came the information that Miss Minnie Williams and her sister, Anna, had been led away by Holmes several years before and no one had ever heard of them. It was found that Miss Minnie Williams had entered Holmes Castle under the supposition that she was to be the wife of the arch-slayer. She sent to Fort Worth for her sister, Anna, to be a bridesmaid at the wedding.
The sisters had $60,000 worth of property in Fort Worth. They were induced to borrow heavily on the property and that is the last anyone heard of them. Minnie, the bride-elect, died before the wedding in Holmes Castle. Anna the bridesmaid-to-be, also died without ever having a chance to wear her bridal clothes. What happened to the bodies no one knows for certain. In the flue of the chimney, which led from the big stove on the top floor, hair was found. It is believed that the hair was that of the sisters as it corresponded to their hair. The theory was advanced at the time that the sisters were thrown into the stove and burned. The suction of the flue carried the hair up in the flue, where it remained as needed evidence against Holmes.
From Davenport, Iowa came another story of disappearance and Holmes name was linked with that too. Mrs. Julia Connor and her daughter where the missing ones.
Beautiful Woman and Daughter Lost
For more than three years prior to 1895, Mrs. Julia L Connor and her daughter, Pearl, had been missing from their friends in Iowa. Mrs. Connor had gone to Chicago with her husband and daughter to work in the drugstore conducted by Holmes. The drugstore failed and Holmes gave the property to Connor. Mrs. Connor was so taken with his generosity that she ceased to love her husband. She returned to Davenport and Connor obtained a divorce.
Then she returned to Chicago, ostensibly to open the boarding house in Chicago or the suburbs. She and her daughter never were heard of again. When Holmes was arrested in Philadelphia, relatives of Julia Connor claimed he killed her.
Many bones were found around Holmes Castle. He explained they were beef bones. He explained that the flat had been used as a restaurant during the World’s Fair at Chicago and that much meat was used there. He explained that the huge dumbwaiter was used to convey food. He explained that the asbestos was to make the house fireproof and to keep out cold.
He had an excuse for everything. He admitted he was crooked. He explained that he went to Toronto to smuggle furs into the United States. He admitted knowing all the women he was accused of murdering. He admitted knowingPietzel. He denied killing any of them. Damaging evidence against him were buttons of the women he was charged with killing, which were found in his castle.
But the defense of Holmes netted him nothing. He swung from the gallows for his crimes.

Though Holmes paid for his misdeeds with death, Quinlan suffered much more than he. He was arrested with Holmes but freed. When he went back to his Michigan home he found himself the center of eyes. Everywhere he went he was stared at or else he felt he was stared at. While the rest of the world forgot Holmes, the little town where he lived always rehearsed the story.
No wonder the honest Irish janitor finally picked up a piece of paper and wrote, “I could not sleep.” No wonder that after writing that simple line which told the story of nineteen years of suffering and horror, that he took poison and ended it all.

Hollywood Orgies Exposed by Police (1921)

Hollywood Orgies Exposed by Police (1921)
(From the Philadelphia Evening Public Ledger – September 16, 1921)
Detectives Spy on Wild Rebels of Film Folk Belonging to “Live Hundred”
SAY ARBUCKLE IS MEMBER

LOS ANGELES – Nero, whose lurid orgies have been a byword of history, would have turned his head in shame at some of the modern-day ribald gatherings in which certain members of the Hollywood motion picture colony gave their passions and impulses unrestrained play.
Tearing down the curtain of secrecy that has veiled the spectacular conduct of a group known as “The Live Hundred,” investigators have begun sensational disclosures of parties at which expense was not permitted to stand in the way of unmeasured excesses in drinks and drugs.
These investigators have drawn a colorful picture of the assemblies in which the participants surfeited their appetites for drugs and liquors and in which the host spent vast sums and considerable effort to appease the lustful demands of their guests.

Girls Lured to Wild Orgies
One such event, in which the host spent $20,000 for decorations, is described as an affair in which drugs were liberally served, goldfish deluged with gin while their agonized contortions furnished play to the guests and a movie girl called for “the most beautiful man” as her mate.
Those who attended will, it is understood, be witnesses in the Arbuckle case. In addition there will be called certain girls who were lured to orgies and attacked.
Together with these revelations has come the announcement of the arrest of a naval officer, a chief petty officer and a civilian for bootlegging for “The Live Hundred.”
In the very name of the group is found full substantiation of the emphasis placed by the authorities on the fact that comparatively few of the colony gave themselves to the riotous affairs, and that the vast majority are a clean-living, wholesome body who are as scandalized by these disclosures as are any other decent folk not connected with the colony.
Detectives Peep in Windows
Though the investigations have been going on quietly for some time they have been projected into the light by the Arbuckle case. Arbuckle, it is said, was a member of “The Live Hundred.”
The disclosures are made By Capt. J.H. Pelletier, executive secretary of the Los Angeles Morals Efficiency Association, and are confirmed by the police. Names have not been made public because indictments have not yet been asked. But these names and a full detailing of certain of the lurid parties will be placed in the record at Arbuckle’s trial.
Perhaps the most sensational of the exposures is that involving a festive event staged by a prominent male actor of the screen. Concealed in a hedge below the windows of his home, detectives viewed and noted the excesses that proved of so extreme a nature as finally to nauseate and impel them to leave the party in disgust.
Guests Served With Drugs
From without, as the group sat down at the long table in the “grotto,” the watchers saw a maid push a wheeled tea tray in after extensive indulgence by all in drinks. On the tray was an assortment of needles, opium, pipes, morphine, cocaine, heroin and opium.
Each guest hilariously helped himself or herself to liberal doses of drugs and selected needles or pipes as the individual desire demanded.
But even this diversion quickly lost its “punch.” A new one was created by a motion picture actress.
Standing on the stairs she called in high-pitched syllables that were interrupted as she turned now and then to the white powder in her palm:
“I want the most beautiful man here. I am his.”
Lights Suddenly Extinguished
What followed proved too much for those at the hedge to endure. They pounded at the doors. Lights went out. Excited tones, then a hush. In some manner the host got out. The detectives found that drugs and needles and pipes had been destroyed or concealed in the brief few minutes since they had demanded entrance.
The host came back, ringing at the front door. He had driven up in an automobile. He wore a cap, a motoring ulster and goggles. He had, was his explanation, been out driving. The host angrily denounced the invasion. He demanded search warrants. He was not arrested, but the guests were. They were not prosecuted, however.
It was learned that the host had made a practice of leaving his automobile a few blocks away during these parties so that he might establish just such an alibi as he bluffed successfully on this location.

Thugs and Human Vultures (1889)

(From the New York World – June 3, 1889. This is a story of the aftermath of the Johnstown, Pennsylvania Flood of 1889, which killed 15,000 people.)
Some of Them Meet Deserved Death While at Their Nefarious Work

Last night a party of farmers, who had organized themselves as a patrol at Sang Hollow, came upon thirteen Hungarians who were sneaking along the edge of the subsiding waters, depredating and robbing even the dead bodies which were revealed by the receding tide.
One of them in his eagerness to secure a ring from the hand of a woman wrenched the ringer off.
Farmers, armed with guns, attacked them and they fled. Three escaped, but four were driven into the water and were drowned.
Two miles below Curranville a posse of five stalwart railroad men found two wretches cutting the earrings and rings from the bodies of two women.
“Throw up your hands or we’ll blow your heads off!” yelled the leader of the posse.
The vultures, surprised in their ghastly work, obeyed with blanched faces.
They were searched and in the pocket of one was found the tiny finger of a little child bloody and torn. It was encircled by two rings.
A crowd had quickly gathered and there went up a cry of “Lynch them! Lynch them!”
The infuriated mob closed in upon the cowering wretches, and in two minutes their bodies were dangling from a tree nearby – a tree in which the bodies of a dead father and son were found entangled when the waters subsided Saturday morning.
In Johnstown scores of thieves have congregated. They are rifling the wrecks of houses, though fifty officers from Pittsburgh and Allegheny City have been sworn in as deputies by the Cambria County Sheriff and are exerting all their powers to maintain order.
At midnight three thieves were discovered in the act of breaking open a safe in the cellar of a wrecked building. An effort was made by the police to capture them, but they escaped in the darkness.
One of them hurled a stone at the posse, and Special Officer Thomas Morris received a severe wound on the head.
At Kernville a wretch was discovered rifling dead bodies, and the infuriated citizens strung him up and left him for dead. He was cut down by unknown parties, and his body, dead or alive, was spirited away.
Ex-Mayor Chalmer Dick, of Johnstown, came unexpectedly upon a ghoul who was removing the rings from the fingers of a dead woman.
He shot the fellow with his revolver and the wounded man fell forward into the water and was drowned. He was a Pittsburgh crook.
W.C. Hagan, of Pittsburgh, this morning shot a Hungarian dead as the latter was trying to cut a diamond ring from a lady’s finger.

I suppose that what this story tells us is that no matter how many years the human race are here, that in times of adversary, there will always be people who will rob the dead and the dying!

FBI (Ma Barker Gang) Final part for now!

All of these criminals would become “public enemies,” actively hunted by law enforcement nationwide. At first, the Bureau was playing only a bit part in pursuing these gangsters, since few of their crimes violated federal laws. But that began to change with the 1932 Lindbergh kidnapping, which gave the Bureau jurisdiction in these cases for the first time; with the “Kansas City Massacre” in June 1933, a bloody slaughter at a train station that claimed the lives of four lawmen, including a Bureau agent; and with the rise to national prominence of John Dillinger.
Using whatever federal laws it could hang its hat on, the Bureau turned its full attention to catching these gangsters. And despite some stumbles along the way, the successes began to add up. By the end of 1934, most of these public enemies had been killed or captured.
Bonnie and Clyde were the first to fall, in May 1934, at the hands of Texas lawmen (with the Bureau playing a small supporting role in tracking them down). In July, Melvin Purvis and a team of agents caught up with Dillinger, who was shot dead leaving a Chicago theater. “Pretty Boy” Floyd, one of the hired hands of the Kansas City Massacre, was killed in a shootout with Bureau agents and local law enforcement on an Ohio farm in October 1934. And Nelson died the following month after a bloody firefight with two special agents, who were also killed.
The Bureau caught up with the rest soon enough. Agents arrested “Doc” Barker in January 1935, and the infamous “Ma” Barker and her son Fred were killed by Bureau agents in Florida eight days later. Alvin Karpis, the brains of the gang, was captured in May 1936 and ended up in Alcatraz.
In just a few transformative years, thanks to the successful battle against gangsters, the once unknown Bureau and its “G-Men” became household names and icons of popular culture. Along the way, Congress had given it newfound powers, too, including the ability to carry guns and make arrests. In July 1935, as the capstone of its newfound identity, the organization was renamed the Federal Bureau of Investigation—the FBI.
As the decade came to a close, the FBI would find itself shifting gears once again. War was brewing in Europe, and pro-Nazi groups were becoming more and more vocal in the U.S., claiming fascism was the answer to American woes. The gangsters, it turned out, were just a prelude to the dark days to come.

The Birth of the FBI Lab
In the pages of FBI history, November 24, 1932, is considered the official birthday of the FBI Laboratory. But it is really a “declared” anniversary for what was an evolving concept.
From the 1920s on, Director Hoover had been actively interested in scientific analysis, and by 1930 he had authorized the use of outside experts on a case-by-case basis in identification and evidence examination matters. Then, over a two-year period, the first true “technical” laboratory functions began to take shape. When all these functions moved into Room 802 of the Old Southern Railway Building in Washington, D.C., it seemed appropriate to recognize that a true lab had been born.

 

Special Agent
Charles Appel
It was Special Agent Charles Appel who was its midwife. He had served as an aviator in World War I before joining the Bureau in 1924—and right from the start he focused on meticulous investigations based on scientific detection.
Appel was an extraordinary man with extraordinary vision, fully backed by Director Hoover with the necessary resources. He took courses to further his knowledge of state-of-the-art techniques, and by 1931, he began seeking expert opinion on starting a crime lab. In July 1932, when he proposed “a separate division for the handling of so-called crime prevention work” under which “the criminological research laboratory could be placed,” he got an immediate endorsement. By September, Room 802 in the Old Southern Railway building was fully equipped. By November 24, it was in business

.

The FBI Laboratory’s first home: Room 802 of the Old Southern Railway Building in Washington,and the modern day lab.

The new lab was pretty sophisticated by 1932 standards. It included a brand new ultra-violet light machine; a microscope, on loan from Bausch and Lomb until the requisition for its purchase could be finalized; moulage kits (for taking impressions); photographic supplies; and chemical sets. A machine to examine the interior of gun barrels was on order.
For about a year, Appel was the Bureau’s one-man lab. His handwriting and typewriter font analysis solved a poisoning case in 1933. His analysis of handwriting on the Lindbergh kidnapping ransom notes ultimately helped convict Bruno Richard Hauptmann.
Agents across the Bureau soon started receiving training on what this new lab could do for them and their cases, and they spread the word about the value of scientific work to their law enforcement partners.
By January 1940, the lab had a total of 46 employees. As America headed into a second world war, its growing skills and capabilities would be needed more than ever.

Donnie and Kate (Ma Barker)

 

Prohibition Hits The USA!

Glasses Clink Gloomily as Saloon Gets Dry News (1919)
(From the Philadelphia Evening Public Ledger – January 16, 1919)
Barkeep Almost Collapses and Rum Hounds Mingle Briny Tears With Social Bibblers When Joy-killer Tells What Nebraska Went and Did

Groans went up from the tipplers when the news flashed around that the Nebraska Legislature had voted the whole country dry by ratifying the prohibition amendment to the Federal Constitution.
The washerwoman sat down in her soapsuds at the first shock. Then she cuffed the ears of her nearest offspring and sent her away from the ringer for a bucket of “suds” that wasn’t soap.
There was a general rush to the nearest barroom by those who could get away.
Fat and smiling, spick and span in a clean white apron and coat, the barkeep smiled and rubbed his hands as the horde burst through the swinging doors. But his happiness was short-lived.
“Huh?” he pleaded in a voice that was more a moan than a question, as the vanguard broke the news. No smile was reflected in the smooth, shining surface of the bar, as he leaned forward and inclined one ear, hoping against hope that he had heard wrong.
“S-s-say that again.”
“It’s the truth,” hoarsely whispered the joy-killer.
The clink of glasses was stilled for a long moment of silence. The mirror behind the bar reflected a long line of faces that were longer. The drooping back of the bartender loomed smaller than it ever had before.
The joy-killer tried to moisten his lips with his tongue and failed.
“Let’s have a drink,” he finally achieved more hoarsely than before.
The spell was broken and the drowning of sorrows began. The barkeep laid aside his troubles as the long line of long faces grew longer. The rum hound and the social drinker were standing side-by-side, weeping on each other’s shoulders, as the joy-killer announced he “mush be goin.”
“Aw, you’re not gonna quit now, the crowd chorused.
“Yesh-mush be goin.” Thish place only staysh open till midnight. I’m gonna fin’ one thatsh open all night.”

When the press of business became too great the bartender woke up the proprietor from where he slept over in the corner with his feet on his desk. But the proprietor had no time for pouring drinks for the mourners now. Grabbing his hat, he rushed away to the wholesale house to lay in the stock he had postponed buying in the hope that something would happen to keep things wet.
And this laying in of stock is the most popular indoor sport in Philadelphia today.

FBI (Bonnie and Clyde)

Bonnie and Clyde
Clyde Champion Barrow and his companion, Bonnie Parker, were shot to death by officers in an ambush near Sailes, Bienville Parish, Louisiana on May 23, 1934, after one of the most colorful and spectacular manhunts the nation had seen up to that time.
Barrow was suspected of numerous killings and was wanted for murder, robbery, and state charges of kidnapping.

Bonnie Parker and Clyde Champion Barrow

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), then called the Bureau of Investigation, became interested in Barrow and his paramour late in December 1932 through a singular bit of evidence. A Ford automobile, which had been stolen in Pawhuska, Oklahoma, was found abandoned near Jackson, Michigan in September of that year. At Pawhuska, it was learned another Ford car had been abandoned there which had been stolen in Illinois. A search of this car revealed it had been occupied by a man and a woman, indicated by abandoned articles therein. In this car was found a prescription bottle, which led special agents to a drug store in Nacogdoches, Texas, where investigation disclosed the woman for whom the prescription had been filled was Clyde Barrow’s aunt.
Further investigation revealed that the woman who obtained the prescription had been visited recently by Clyde Barrow, Bonnie Parker, and Clyde’s brother, L. C. Barrow. It also was learned that these three were driving a Ford car, identified as the one stolen in Illinois. It was further shown that L. C. Barrow had secured the empty prescription bottle from a son of the woman who had originally obtained it.
On May 20, 1933, the United States Commissioner at Dallas, Texas, issued a warrant against Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker, charging them with the interstate transportation, from Dallas to Oklahoma, of the automobile stolen in Illinois. The FBI then started its hunt for this elusive pair.
Background

Bonnie and Clyde met in Texas in January, 1930. At the time, Bonnie was 19 and married to an imprisoned murderer; Clyde was 21 and unmarried. Soon after, he was arrested for a burglary and sent to jail. He escaped, using a gun Bonnie had smuggled to him, was recaptured and was sent back to prison. Clyde was paroled in February 1932, rejoined Bonnie, and resumed a life of crime.
In addition to the automobile theft charge, Bonnie and Clyde were suspects in other crimes. At the time they were killed in 1934, they were believed to have committed 13 murders and several robberies and burglaries. Barrow, for example, was suspected of murdering two police officers at Joplin, Missouri and kidnapping a man and a woman in rural Louisiana. He released them near Waldo, Texas. Numerous sightings followed, linking this pair with bank robberies and automobile thefts. Clyde allegedly murdered a man at Hillsboro, Texas; committed robberies at Lufkin and Dallas, Texas; murdered one sheriff and wounded another at Stringtown, Oklahoma; kidnaped a deputy at Carlsbad, New Mexico; stole an automobile at Victoria, Texas; attempted to murder a deputy at Wharton, Texas; committed murder and robbery at Abilene and Sherman, Texas; committed murder at Dallas, Texas; abducted a sheriff and the chief of police at Wellington, Texas; and committed murder at Joplin and Columbia, Missouri.
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Later in 1932, Bonnie and Clyde began traveling with Raymond Hamilton, a young gunman. Hamilton left them several months later and was replaced by William Daniel Jones in November 1932.
Ivan M. “Buck” Barrow, brother of Clyde, was released from the Texas State Prison on March 23, 1933, having been granted a full pardon by the governor. He quickly joined Clyde, bringing his wife, Blanche, so the group now numbered five persons. This gang embarked upon a series of bold robberies which made headlines across the country. They escaped capture in various encounters with the law. However, their activities made law enforcement efforts to apprehend them even more intense. During a shootout with police in Iowa on July 29, 1933, Buck Barrow was fatally wounded and Blanche was captured. Jones, who was frequently mistaken for “Pretty Boy” Floyd, was captured in November 1933 in Houston, Texas by the sheriff’s office. Bonnie and Clyde went on together.

On November 22, 1933, a trap was set by the Dallas, Texas sheriff and his deputies in an attempt to capture Bonnie and Clyde near Grand Prairie, Texas, but the couple escaped the officer’s gunfire. They held up an attorney on the highway and took his car, which they abandoned at Miami, Oklahoma. On December 21, 1933, Bonnie and Clyde held up and robbed a citizen at Shreveport, Louisiana.
On January 16, 1934, five prisoners, including Raymond Hamilton (who was serving sentences totaling more than 200 years), were liberated from the Eastham State Prison Farm at Waldo, Texas by Clyde Barrow, accompanied by Bonnie Parker. Two guards were shot by the escaping prisoners with automatic pistols, which had been previously concealed in a ditch by Barrow. As the prisoners ran, Barrow covered their retreat with bursts of machine-gun fire. Among the escapees was Henry Methvin of Louisiana.
The Last Months

On April 1, 1934, Bonnie and Clyde encountered two young highway patrolmen near Grapevine, Texas. Before the officers could draw their guns, they were shot. On April 6, 1934, a constable at Miami, Oklahoma fell mortally wounded by Bonnie and Clyde, who also abducted a police chief, whom they wounded.

The FBI had jurisdiction solely on the charge of transporting a stolen automobile, although the activities of the Bureau agents were vigorous and ceaseless. Every clue was followed. “Wanted notices” furnishing fingerprints, photograph, description, criminal record, and other data were distributed to all officers. The agents followed the trail through many states and into various haunts of the Barrow gang, particularly Louisiana. The association with Henry Methvin and the Methvin family of Louisiana was discovered by FBI agents, and they found that Bonnie and Clyde had been driving a car stolen in New Orleans.
On April 13, 1934, an FBI agent, through investigation in the vicinity of Ruston, Louisiana, obtained information which definitely placed Bonnie and Clyde in a remote section southwest of that community. The home of the Methvins was not far away, and the agent learned of visits there by Bonnie and Clyde. Special agents in Texas had learned that Clyde and his companion had been traveling from Texas to Louisiana, sometimes accompanied by Henry Methvin.
The FBI and local law enforcement authorities in Louisiana and Texas concentrated on apprehending Bonnie and Clyde, whom they strongly believed to be in the area. It was learned that Bonnie and Clyde, with some of the Methvins, had staged a party at Black Lake, Louisiana on the night of May 21, 1934 and were due to return to the area two days later.

Before dawn on May 23, 1934, a posse composed of police officers from Louisiana and Texas, including Texas Ranger Frank Hamer, concealed themselves in bushes along the highway near Sailes, Louisiana. In the early daylight, Bonnie and Clyde appeared in an automobile and when they attempted to drive away, the officers opened fire. Bonnie and Clyde were killed instantly.

“Machine Gun” Kelly and the Legend of the G-Men

“Machine Gun” Kelly and the Legend of the G-Men
Before 1934, “G-Man” was underworld slang for any and all government agents. In fact, the detectives in J. Edgar Hoover’s Bureau of Investigation were so little known that they were often confused with Secret Service or Prohibition Bureau agents. By 1935, though, only one kind of government employee was known by that name, the special agents of the Bureau.

George “Machine Gun” Kelly
How this change came about is not entirely clear, but September 26, 1933, played a central role in the apocryphal origins of this change.
On that day, Bureau of Investigation agents and Tennessee police officers arrested gangster George “Machine Gun” Kelly. He was a “wanted fugitive” for good reason. Two months earlier Kelly had kidnapped oil magnate Charles Urschel and held him for $200,000 in ransom. After Urschel was released, the Bureau coordinated a multi-state investigation, drawing investigative information from its own fie

G-Man (short for Government Man) is a slang term for Special agents of the United States Government. It is specifically used as a term for a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agent.

According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, its first known use in America was in 1928. The earliest citation in the Oxford English Dictionary for the American usage is 1930 from a book on Al Capone by FD Pasley.

The phrase may have been inspired by its use in Ireland during its War of Independence, 1919-’21 to refer to the members of G Division, a section of the Dublin Metropolitan Police. G division was a plainclothes political policing unit that specifically dealt with tackling Irish separatists during the war.^[1][2]

In FBI mythology, the nickname is held to have originated during the arrest of gangster George “Machine Gun” Kelly by agents of the Bureau of Investigation (BOI), a forerunner of the FBI, in September 1933. Finding himself unarmed, Kelly supposedly shouted “Don’t shoot, G-Men! Don’t shoot, G-Men!”^[3] This event is dramatized in the 1959 film The FBI Story and this dramatization is referenced in the 2011 film J. Edgar. The encounter with Kelly is similarly dramatized in the 1973 film Dillinger.

With the popularity of film noir and gangster films during the 1940s and 50s, “G-Men” became a popular slang term for the FBI.

ld offices as well as from other police sources, as it identified and then tracked the notorious gangster across the country.
On September 26, “Machine Gun” Kelly was found hiding in a decrepit Memphis residence. Some early press reports said that a tired, perhaps hung-over Kelly stumbled out of his bed mumbling something like “I was expecting you.” Another version of the event held that Kelly emerged from his room, hands-up, crying “Don’t shoot G-Men, don’t shoot.” Either way, Kelly was arrested without violence.

The rest is history. The more colorful version sparked the popular imagination and “G-Men” became synonymous with the special agents of the FBI.