Small Town Noir

[BigBoiBrady]

http://smalltownnoir.com/

This is honestly one of my favorite websites at the moment full of vintage mugshots from New Castle, PA and their accompanying short stories. What do you all think?

 

[AtomicEraTom]

Very interesting stuff!

 

[Fletch]

Yep...you have to ask yourself, was New Castle special, being a steel and smokestack town with high immigration and something of a wide-open air? Or did stuff like this go on elsewhere without so much hoop-de-doo?

The blogger got his background info from contemporary newspapers. I know that in other places, say the agrarian midwest, crime reports were much terser. And New Castle probably wasn't that small-town. Really small towns wouldn't just let old police files linger in the trash. Someone might know someone's family, after all.

Notice also that before WW2, a disproportionate number of arrestees were Black.

I love that one perp, arrested for car theft in 1935, went on to celebrate his 95th birthday in New Castle, with the blogger in attendance.