Historical Information Thread

[Shangas]

A whole heap of information, stuff you might find useful. This information covers stuff from the era of 1900 until 1950.

Dates:

1900 - Galveston Hurricane, Galveston, Texas.
1904 - Times Square, in Manhattan, comes into existence.
1906 - San Francisco Earthquake & Fire, San Francisco, California.
1912 - RMS Titanic sinks off Newfoundland. 1,496 people die.
1914-1918 - World War I. (Until 1945, known as 'The Great War').
1918 - The Thompson submachine gun, AKA - Tommy-gun, comes on the market.
1920-1933 - Prohibition in the USA.
1929-1939 - The Great Depression.
1939-1945 - World War II.
1945-1955 - Postwar prosperity.
1940s-1990 - Cold War.

Communications:

Telephone. This will be the most commonly-used form of telecommunications within cities.

Telegraph. Telegrams were commonly used for long-distance communications between the 1850s up until the 1980s.

Internet. From the 1990s onwards.

Entertainment:

Theater. Nothing like a live show. Popular at all periods of time.

Radio-serials. The first commercial radio-station was created in 1920. From then until the 1950s, radio-serials with everything from news, sports, horror, mystery, action, adventure and much more besides, were common on the airwaves. Killed off by TV in the 1950s.

Movies. By the 1910s, cinemas were showing films with tickets costing just a couple of cents. In the 1920s, 'talkies', or sound-films emerged.

TV. Television made its appearance in the 1940s, but it would not be until the middle 1950s until it became affordable or practical for many people to own one.

Internet-surfing. No need to explain this.

Products and who made them

What was around in the early 20th century? Who made it and where would you find it? How much would it cost?

Pens and watches.

From 1900 until the 1950s, the fountain pen was the main writing-instrument (the alternatives were the pencil and dip-pen). A cheap pen could be had for a few cents. More expensive ones could cost up to $7, $12 or higher. If this sounds cheap, please remember this is a time when a film-ticket cost 25c. Common pen-manufacturers were:

- The Parker Pen Company. Founded in the 1890s, it made many famous and good-quality pens.
- The Sheaffer Pen Company. Founded in 1913, it manufactured several pens of unique and famous designs.
- The Waterman Pen Company. Founded in the 1880s, Waterman produced affordable pens of good quality and of a variety of writing-styles (This is saying a lot when you consider from 1880 until 1925, the only thing a pen was made of was black rubber).

A decent pen in the 1920s cost about $4. The famous Parker Duofold cost $7.



Parker Duofold senior 'Big Red'. Circa 1922.



Waterman Pens factory. Manhattan, NY, NY

Watches in this period were all mechanical handwound pieces. You wound up the watch and it would run for 36 hours until you would need to rewind it. Typically, a watch was wound once or twice a day - when you woke up and when you went to bed. Mechanical watches can keep time just as accurately as quartz (battery-powered) watches, provided they're looked after.

A watch's quality was determined by the number of jewels in the movements, how many positions it had been adjusted to and who it was made by. This might be something to remember if your character is a thief and wants to sell some of the watches he's stolen.* (See bottom for more).

From 1900 until the 1920s, all watches for men were pocket watches. You kept your watch in your waistcoat pocket. It was linked to your clothing by a watch-chain that would run through a middle button-hole on your coat. After WWI, mens fashion changed and they started wearing wristwatches in the 1920s and 30s. Some older people still stuck onto wearing pocket watches out of habit or conservatism, however.

A list of watch-companies (most of these are American):

Rolex. (Euro).
Patek-Philippe. (Euro).
Hamilton.
Ball.
Waltham. (US. President Abraham Lincoln owned a Waltham pocket watch).
South Bend.
Illinois Watch. Co.
Tissot. (Euro).
Elgin.
Ingersoll.

A decent watch, pocket or wrist, cost anywhere between one dollar (for an Ingersoll Dollar Watch, absolute rock-bottom), to as much as $50 for a gold pocket watch or wristwatch.

Tobacco.

Everyone (or nearly everyone) in this era smoked. What cigarettes were around? Here's a list.

Camels.
Lucky Strike. (Kevin Costner has a pack of "Luckies" - as they were known - on his desk in the closing scenes of "The Untouchables").
Fatima.
Chesterfield. (Film-stars like Humphrey Bogart smoked these for breakfast, lunch and dinner...and died young as a result).
Prince Albert. Prince Albert was, and is, a brand of pipe-tobacco.

Cars.

Until the 1910s (In America, at least), automobiles were luxury toys for the rich and famous. Every car was custom-made and they cost a fortune, both to buy and to own and operate. After 1908 and Henry Ford's Model T, cars began to get cheaper. By the 1920s, a Model T Ford cost just $270. Most cars from the 1900s-1920s were crank-started. From the 1920s onwards, most had electric starters that started with either a button, or a car-key.

Crank-starting a car is a risky business. When the car started, the crank-handle would fly backwards, against your hand. Hold and turn a crank incorrectly and you'd break your thumb off.

Some common car-manufacturers (some of these you may know, some you may not):

Ford.
Studebaker.
Hudson.
Deusenberg. Deusenberg made high-quality cars in the 1920s and 30s.
Chevrolet.
Renault.
Mercedes-Benz.
Stanley. Stanley's an interesting car-company. Its cars were powered by steam.
Auburn.
Maxwell. Maxwell was a car-company that made mid-level cars in the 1920s and 30s. Comedian Jack Benny was typically associated with this car.
Packard.

Where would you find...?

Where would you go in the "olden days", if you wanted a certain something?

Cigars, cigarettes & pipe-tobacco? - Tobacconist's shop.

Pens, watches & other jewellery? - Jeweller's shops, or specialist pen shops, watchmaker's shops & jewellery stores.

Gun & bullets? - A sporting goods store or a firearms manufacturer.

A new car? - Depending on the period, you'd either have it custom-made, or you'd go to a showroom like you do today.

Sending a telegram? - Post-office, telegraph-office or any large important building (train-station, city hall, etc). The cost of a telegram was determined by the number of words it contained, so people always tried to be as brief as possible in their messages, to save money.

A bottle of coke? - Coca Cola and lemonade, both readily available soft-drinks by the early 20th century (Coca Cola is older than most people realise, and was invented in 1886), could be bought from your neighbourhood drugstore, diner, cafe or restaurant.

A drink of booze? - Depending on the period, either a restaurant, a bar, tavern or a nightclub. During Prohibition (1920-1933), getting a drink was not so easy. With alcohol prohibited within the USA except for very special reasons (religious & medicinal, for example), one had to be resourceful in finding a drink.

If you knew where to go and who to ask, you could head off to the local speakeasy. Some wealthier people used to frequent foreign embassies. Since the soil which an embassy is built upon is automaticaly part of that embassy's country and not of the USA, prohibition did not apply there.

Another way to get a few good drinks was onboard an ocean-liner. The great British steamship lines such as Cunard and White Star, were not bound by American laws, and could therefore stock alcoholic beverages onboard. People would buy a return ticket and spend anywhere from two weeks to up to a month on an ocean-liner, getting soused in what were affectionately called 'booze-cruises'.

Structure of a criminal organisation:

This is a basic 'tree' diagram, showing the structure of a typical criminal organisation, using the Sicillian Mafia as an example:



*A watch's quality is determined by the number of jewels it has. Jewels are rubies, which act as bearings (like ball-bearings), inside the workings of the watch, to make it run smoothly and keep time better. Watches could have no jewels (the Ingersolls didn't), or they could have dozens. A cheap, but decent watch might have 7 jewels. A good quality one would have 17. Some watches had as many as 21 or even 35 jewels. Beyond a certain point, jewels don't make a difference to how good the watch runs.

Watch-cases are made of either stainless-steel, nickel (cheapest), gold-plated (cheapish), silver (more expensive), rolled gold or gold-filled and finally - solid gold. A solid gold watch was obviously the most expensive you could get.

[Shangas]

Gangster History

January, 1899 - Alphonse Capone is born in Brooklyn, New York City.
Sometime before 1918 - Al Capone gets into a bar-brawl and is slashed in the face by Frank Gallucio. He recieves his famous scars.
December, 1918 - Alphonse Capone marries Mae Coughlin.
1921 - Al Capone moves to Chicago.
1929 - Al Capone is jailed for carrying a concealed firearm. Released in 1930.
1932 - Al Capone is sentenced to prison for tax evasion and is sent to US. Federal Penitentiary - Atlanta, Georgia. His sentence is 11 years (Due for release in 1943).
1934 - US. Federal Penitentiary - Alcatraz Island, California, opens for business. Al is one of their first customers and is transferred there from Atlanta.
1939 - Al Capone is released from Alcatraz suffering from syphillis.
January, 1947 - Al Capone dies in Florida, USA, at the age of 47.

More coming soon.

[Falcon]

The following criminal organizations have been active in the united state, and the timeframe in which they were

Sicilian Cosa Nostra, Camorra, and other ethnically Italian gangs(Late 19th Century to Present)

Ethnically Irish street gangs and crime families (Early 19th Century to Present, although losing considerable power since the end of prohibition and practically non existent today)

Ethnically Jewish Street Gangs and Crime Families(Late 19th Century to Post War, practically nonexistent after the 1960s)

Triad Tongs and Ethnically Chinese Criminal Organizations (Late 19th Century to Present, although not gaining considerable power until modern times)

Yakuza and ethnically Japanese Criminal Organizations(Late 20th Century to Present)

Russian Mob and ethnically Russian Criminal Organizations(Late 20th Century to Present)

African American street gangs and ethnically Black Criminal Organizations(mid 20th century to Present)

Latin-American Street Gangs and Ethnically Latin-American Criminal Organizations(mid 20th Century to Present)

Outlaw Motorcycle Clubs (1950s to Present)

East Indian Organized Crime(Late 20th Century to Present)

Polish-American Organized Crime(Early 20th Century to Present)

Western Outlaw Gangs(Early 19th Century to Early 20th Century)

[Shangas]

Getting Around

How did people move around in the past? How much did it cost, and how long would it take? Here's a few facts...

Horse and Cart

One of the simplest ways of moving around. Hitch a horse to a wheeled vehicle and off you went. Common throughout the world until the motor-car took over. In some places, the horse lasted well into the 1950s, but this is rare. Once practical and cheap motor-vehicles became available to the public, about the 1910s, the era of horse-drawn taxi-cabs, horses and carts, private carriages and stage-coaches died out.

Bicycle

The Safety Bicycle was invented in the 1880s and in the past 120-odd years, the basic design hasn't changed much. The bicycle is relatively fast, light and manuverable. It's easy to make your way through traffic-jams on this baby.

Motor-cars

...or automobiles, as some people call them, first became a practical mode of transport in the 1900s with the invention of internal combustion-engines, tyres and headlamps. Early motor-cars were extremely expensive. To own, operate and maintain one was a luxury afforded to only the very richest people in society. In 1908, Henry Ford cranked up his first Ford Model T automobile, the car that quite literally put America on wheels. By the 1920s, 50% of all cars in the world were Model Ts. Motor-cars and trucks and buses are a much quicker way to get around. Early cars, up until the 1930s, had to be started by hand, turning the crank until the engine started. This was an unpredictable and dangerous way to get a car going. It could take thirty seconds, or it could take half an hour. And when the engine caught on, you risked breaking your thumb as the crank-handle swung back against you.

The 1920s saw the introduction of electric starters, first with buttons, and then with what everyone carries around today - a set of car-keys.

Public Transport[/u]

Streetcars

...or trams, have existed since the 1800s. Originally horse-powered, they were converted to cable-grabbing cable-cars during the industrial revolution. Electrical streetcars wouldn't come until the 1930s.

Elway & Subway

The elevated railway, once common in several American cities, from New York to Chicago and many other places besides, was borne out of the incredible congestion of 19th-century streets. Trains were faster, but had no place on the road. So instead, they shoved it upstairs in the sky. Elevated railroads were fast and efficient, not having to deal with traffic-jams or red lights. They existed in many US cities until the 1950s. Some cities (such as Chicago), still have them.

The subway is not a modern invention. In fact the world's oldest one dates to the 1860s in London, which later became the London Underground, or 'The Tube'.

The New York Subway System was created at the turn of the century and ran alongside the elevated railway system that was already in-place. A blizzard in 1888 which literally buried Manhattan under several feet of snow, had caused the city planners to make the decision to bury their trains rather than stick them up, out in the open. Electric trains became a reality in the 1890s.

Trains

Getting from city to city before the 1930s and 40s was done in several ways. You could walk, or you could drive, if you had a car. If you didn't, then you took the train. Travelling at an average of 90-120 miles an hour, trains were fast, noisy, smoky and the only way to travel.

Trains were always on-time. They had to be. Time was everything on the railroad, to the extent that conductors and engineers had to have very specific watches which had such strict specifications that they were so expensive most of the railroad workers could barely afford them.

Ocean-Liners

Before the 1950s, when transcontinental air-travel finally became a reality, the only way to get from country to country was by sea. And this meant going by ship.

Ships were all steam-powered and could be simple, or could be floating hotels. A sea-voyage from the East Coast of America to Europe took about a week, going at an average speed of 20 knots, that's twenty nautical miles an hour. Only big ocean-liners could attain such speeds, though. In smaller ships it would probably take two weeks.

Onboard ship you could do just about anything that you could do on land. Including sending messages to your destination, or your departure-point, via wireless radio. As with all telegram services, messages were charged by the number of words, so people kept their messages short.

Luggage

Whenever you move around, you're bound to have some sort of luggage. What would a gangster or any sort of man, carry with him during the first half of the 20th century?

Briefcases

Briefcases, so-called because they were originally used by lawyers to carry legal briefs in, are typical bag of the businessman...or a gangster who wanted to look like a businessman. It would hold books, papers, pens...and perhaps a pistol and some spare ammunition.

Gladstone

Forever associated with doctors and being the bags where medical supplies are kept, the black leather Gladstone bag could hold anything you wanted it to, but it usually held clothes, for short trips.

Suitcase and steamer trunk

The suitcase hasn't changed much since it was first invented. Just a really big briefcase, used for carrying clothes. Suitcases of the turn of the century were made of leather. They were simple and tough and were held closed with clasps and leather straps.

In a day and age of backpacks, laptop bags, wheeled cabin-baggage and overnight bags, the steamer-trunk looks like an aircraft hangar next to a log cabin. Steamer-trunks were huge, heavy things made of leather and were used, as the name suggests, when travelling on a steamship. When a trip by sea could take up to a month, you had to take a lot of stuff with you, and this was where the steamer-trunk came in. You could put whatever you wanted in here, so long as you could move it, because steamer-trunks weigh a lot. In fact, steamer-trunks are so huge that you could even hide a body or two inside them, and some people have.