"The term public enemy was first widely used in the United States in the 1930s to describe individuals whose activities were seen as criminal and extremely damaging to society." wikipedia
"Public enemy is a term which was first widely used in the United States in the 1930s to describe individuals whose activities were seen as criminal and extremely damaging to society. The term was first popularized in April 1930 by Frank J. Loesch, then chairman of the Chicago Crime Commission, in an attempt to publicly denounce Al Capone and other Chicago gangsters.
It was later appropriated by J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI who used it to describe various notorious fugitives that they were pursuing throughout the 1930s. Among the criminals whom the FBI called "Public Enemies" were John Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson, Bonnie and Clyde, Ma Barker, and Alvin Karpis.
The term was used so extensively during the 1930s that some writers call that period of the FBI's early history the 'Public Enemy Era.'" wikipedia
I think it was probably watching Bugsy Malone when i was just a kid that provoked this interest in the bootlegger, the bank robber and the gangster of the Great Depression. Added to the fact that so many of these criminals' stories have been turned into, or are the basis for many of todays films, music, comics (not to mention the development of what we now know to be the FBI) etc. its so easy to be intrigued in the fast life and wild times of the 1930's law-breaker. Those black and white movies with their flickering reels, smokey theatres, men in shadows in spats and heavy-eyed femme fatale's had me hooked from the start. And now I find myself wanting to know the truth behind many of these people. The stories, newspaper headlines and urban legends that followed them. The life they led before they were romanticised and blasted onto the silver screen. I'll annotate this new knowledge, process it, draw my own conclusions and intend to use this dormant avenue of interest to inform my visual work from here on in.
