PUBLIC ENEMY NO. 1
TN the brief period since his dramatic escape from 1 prison nine months ago, John Dillinger, having beaten most of the records in his own department of crime, seems likely to have won a disagreeable immortality of fame. • Killing, wounding, hold-ups, robbery were his trade and his pastime. His gang of efficient desperadoes were old associates of his convict days. His skilfully organized escape from prison is one of those disquieting episodes of gaol-breaking which are too frequent for the comfort of law-abiding American citizens. Having escaped, he was not content to seek to conceal himself, but on the contrary became one of the most conspicuous persons in America in that sphere of adventurous life which newspapers love to exploit. Public Enemy No. 1 was in the fullest sense of the term an enemy waging an almost formal warfare upon the armed police of the United States. When cornered he again and again fought and won. When captured, he was allowed to repeat the miracle of escaping, and resumed his course of bank robberies and murders, making free use of weapons of precision, motor-cars, and telephones, and even availing himself of the skill of surgeons and beauty specialists, with whose aid he altered the appear- ance of his eye-brows and his hair, and had a scar removed from his face. Indeed the drastic transfor- mation reported in the physical features of the dead man might well have occasioned an ugly question— Was it actually the real Dillinger who was shot, or another, framed to provide him with a permanent alibi ?
Though first among " public enemies," Dillinger, was only one among a large and growing class of criminals of a type which has been flourishing in recent years on American soil. Not that it is of recent origin. When the more adventurous spirits of a population, which was to become increasingly a mixed popula- tion, migrated westwards during the last century, the pioneers had to hold their own as best they could in a new, rough-and-ready society in which the law of the gun and lynch-law played no inconsiderable part. The primitive law or lawlessness of those times left a mark upon western and middle-western society which has never been wholly effaced. Among some of its elements the tradition of violence still remains. The spirit of reckless adventure re-emerged in a new form even in the world of business, and by reaction has produced a distinctive state of mind, unknown in Britain, among the police force, and a prison regime which, in spite of many reforms and many enlightened experiments, is still very far from satisfactory. Prison life plays its part—as it did in the case of Dillinger—in creating confirmed criminals.
In the first two decades of the present century it seemed likely that the highly civilized conceptions of law and order which were gaining strength in America would gradually eradicate or at least keep within bounds the numerous forces making for crime. Unhappily the disastrous experiment of Prohibition set back the clock. At one and the same time it introduced the boot- legger, out for gain at any cost, and tended to weaken respect for the law among the general public. When a great part of the population of the United States was actively encouraging breaches of the Prohibition law, law-breakers had a unique opportunity for organizing their illegal and profitable traffic. Boot-legging had big money and shrewd brains behind it, and armies of criminal hirelings. Racketeering and gangster law made Chicago notorious in the days of Mayor Thompson, but actually several other cities surpassed Chicago in their records of crime. Like the comitadjis who used to engage in guerilla warfare in the Balkans, the gangs had a rough and brutal law of their own, exacting an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Using every appliance of modern invention, they were as well armed and almost as well equipped as the police themselves ; and until the Prohibition law was repealed and some of the richest boot-loggers elected to retire into private life, the police were able to make little headway in their campaign against organized crime.
Dillinger himself had no connexion with the boot- legging industry, though some of his associates may have had. But gangs of bank-robbers and experts in hold-ups were the by-products of the lawlessness which has flourished for a dozen years, and they drew into their ranks men of that new criminal type which has appeared in other civilized countries—men of mental agility who are able to make the utmost use of motor-cars, telephones, automatic pistols and even machine guns. Concerning the influence of the sensational Press and the films upon young potential criminals expert opinion is inconclusive ; but it is difficult not to believe that picturesque tales of the exploits of famous gangsters, and films which roman- ticize their lives, are likely to stir the imaginations of some at least of the restless and dissatisfied young. Dillinger himself is described as having a special weakness for cinema pictures, and it was the attraction of a gangster film which led to his death. We are told that when he was on the run he spent a week-end at his father's home and held a reception for the townsfolk, who were so gratified by his action that they petitioned the Governor to pardon him. That story, whether authentic or not, indicates the attitude of mind of a section of the public towards his career. Like his father, who is reported to have said that he " never really upheld him in the things he did," the neighbours, no doubt, did not approve of such a mode of life ; still, for them, he was romantic; he was even something of a hero. Could such a perverse and perverted view of dastardly crimes be held by large sections of the people but for the distorting influence of the sensational Press and the false glamour of the gangster films ? Dillinger is a striking example of the man who learnt his skill in crime by association with other criminals in prison. His first offence was a clumsy hold-up in his home town, for which he was sent to prison for a long term at the age of twenty-two. When he emerged he appeared instantly as a master in the modem art of violent and ruthless crime. Quarter of a century ago our own prison system was busily engaged in creating hardened criminals, and it certainly cannot be said to be altogether free from reproach today. The case of Dillinger shows how wise are the attempts made in this country to separate first offenders from habitual criminals, and to group men undergoing sentences into classes—a procedure which will no doubt be developed in the future. Dillinger in his first criminal phase was a social product and in his last a prison product. Our problem is not so baffling as that of America. None the less the clever, violent criminal type exists in this country, and it is one of our most urgent problems to check its incipient development by modifying the social conditions which breed it.
Previous page
