CRIMINAL GANGS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 15 May 1941, Page 5

CRIMINAL GANGS

NOTORIOUS PARIS “APACHES.” ACTIVE TN CITY'S UNDERWORLD. Apaches arc on the warpath again -—not along the wild trails of Arizona, but in the dark crooked alleys of Paris, states the New York Times. The police of the occupied capital have banned the sale of large clasp and hunting knives, the type the denizens of the city’s underworld know how to employ with deadly skill. It was the knifing affrays and other rough tactics of the Parisian toughs which, some forty years ago, earned them their sobriquet. Emile Darsy, reporter for "Le Figaro.” wrote a number of lurid stories about an outbreak of gang battles among various street bands ranging the crowded old slum quarters of Paris. He described one encounter between "the Sioux of Compares Street" and "the Pawnies (sic) of the Pre-Saint-Gervais.” The most vicious group of cutpurses and ruffians he labelled "the Apaches." Al that' time in Paris American Indian stories, particularly those of James Fenimore Cooper, were enjoying a vogue. The public adopted with gusto the name "Apaches" for the city's underworld inhabitants. Although the Paris Apache was romanticised as a picturesque scoundrel in tight jackets and trousers, with cap on head, scarf around neck, cigarette dangling from lips and swaggering female companion, he was really a dangerous and sordid bully. At night, looking for someone to waylay, he haunted Montmartre's narrow streets. The Apache's heyday was the preWorld War period. Then the most profitable tourists in Paris were the Russian aristocrats. A special tour of underworld dens was organised for their amusement; it was called "La Tournee des Grands Dues." After the World War came the American tourists. They had notions about the Apaches nurtured by Hollywood. Parisian guides now organised "La Tournee des Americains.” Pop-eyed school teachers and storekeepers from the American hinterland wore escorted to the dives the Russian nobles had known. In the wine-reek-ing. ill-lit taverns they saw the ferocious Apaches drinking, dancing, fighting. Usually there would be a gaunt individual sitting in a Corner, furtively spilling white powder into his drink. The guides acted tense, assured every one that they had police protection. But it was all a fake, a stageplay for the tourist. The dives split fees with the guides: the “Apaches" were harmless actors: the white powder was sufiar, not cocaine.