Gangs of Paree

don't dance, and too, they certainly don't sing. And even though the sharks and the Jets were known to leap and pirouette through city streets, they were still violent in nature, starting rumbles with knives and guns and ending each act with a death or two. But the theater is not real life, or is it. While no real gangs have ever been reported dancing, one Parisian gang was considered the

best dressed in Europe maybe in the world. They were known as the Apaches, a brutal gang that prowled the streets of Paris during the turn of the twentieth century. They were known for two things, their violent nature and their fashion sense. It was the press that gave them their name. One journalist reported on a particular heinous crime in which a victim had been stabbed in the face

with a hat pin and sliced with a knife. The reporter was something of a Wild West fanatic and believed that the brutality of this crime was similar to the misinformation and stereotypes they had heard about the indigenous people over in America. This reporter may not have known much about indigenous people's but they did know how to brand their stories, and the moniker stuck. In fact, the cops had already been using the Apache name inappropriately to describe

the brutality of other crimes they were investigating. You wouldn't think that a violent gang would become popular or exciting, though, but that's exactly what happened with the Apaches. They're catching name, combined with their penchant for butting heads and strangling people with their scarves, made them infamous among Parisian society. One of their signature moves involved one gang member strangling a mark from behind and hoisting them up so they couldn't

fight back. Meanwhile, another gang member would go through the victim's pockets for money, as a third kept watch for the authorities. Well, the goal wasn't to kill the person being strangled. Sometimes the act took so long the victim died anyway, And scarves weren't the only weapons in their arsenal either. These apaches had their own special weapon to set themselves apart from other street gangs. It was a type of revolver with a handle made from brass knuckles

with a short blade that extended past the barrel. Most of the gang members were young men and women, teenagers and adults barely into their twenties, and from shop owners to aristocrats, two cops and firemen. Nobody was safe from their hot headed compulsions. But they weren't special because of their ages, or their guns, or even their headbutting. The apaches were special because they were apparently really snappy dressers. A top there perfectly coffed hair thick with palmaide sat

a hat known as a deaf cap. It bore a strong resemblance to the newsboy caps worn by kids and teens in America around the same time. The women, however, didn't wear hats at all. Instead, they tied a black ribbon around their necks. And although they were often poor, Apaches didn't let their lack of funds stop them from slain,

both literally and in the fashion forward. Since they often wore vests and waistcoats over striped sailor shirts and never walked around in scuffed shoes, it was important for their footwear to be polished and pristine at all times. Gang members had a blue dot tattooed under their left eye to identify their membership, and the looks of the gang members became so iconic elements of their wardrobes started to seep into the closets of the wealthy, and so did

their sling. It was called the green tongue, and it became so popular it was taught to those willing to pay to learn it. But the gang members themselves didn't make it that long. After the outbreak of World War One, the age of the dandie gang member died out, yet their influence did linger on for years to come in plays and in movies. Even legendary actors such as Marlon Brando and James Dean were known to sports Apache style

clothing when they were out on the town. They may not have dance stub sung in the streets of Paris, but the Apaches certainly left their mark on French history and on the runway. History is fraught with strange mercurial things called cursed objects, physical items that have attracted a bit of notoriety over the years, like a dark cloud of painful stories that seemed to follow the item wherever it goes. One such example might be the clock atop

the Palace of Versailles in France. Its hands have remained at eight fifteen am, the exact hour and minute when King Louis the fourteenth was pronounced dead ever since. But one cursed object came from much humbler beginnings, and it seemed to collect the tragic tales and coincidences of one family in particular, the Spicers, lived in Massachusetts during the late seventeen hundreds. Daniel Spicer was killed in seventeen eighty four when two musket balls passed straight through his coat.

His younger brother, Jabez, then inherited the coat. After his brother's death. Three years later, in seventeen eighty seven, Jabez Spicer took up a fight of his own. He was one of many in Massachusetts who were fed up with what they believed was government overreach in its collection of taxes on the poor. A decade earlier, during the Revolutionary war, the economy was mostly based on the agricultural output of

local farms. Farmers towards the center of the states often had little money and would either barter with neighbors or ask pliers for credits until they could pay them back. Times were tough, and folks were doing everything they could to prevent themselves from going under. The Massachusetts coasts, however, were run by a merchant class that had no problem paying for the supplies they needed with cold, hard cash. This kept the economy afloat and made collecting taxes much easier.

The state government preferred things this way. After the war, the idea of credit lines all but disappeared, even for the farming communities that could not afford to pay outright for what they needed. Vendors wanted money, and they didn't want to wait to be paid. As a result of the change, farmers couldn't afford to pay off their debts nor their taxes. They started having their land repossessed. This led to animosity towards the courts and the tax collectors.

When the legal routes to fix their situations stopped working, the people took matters into their own hands. In Sight two, for example, one citizen of Massachusetts, a guy named Job Shattuck started organizing his community to hold protests and stopped the tax collector from fulfilling their duties. From there, things only grew more heated until a mass protest in August of seventeen eighty six effectively shut down the courts from

Northampton to Worcester. Mobs of people prevented the Massachusetts legislature from getting back to work. Even when militias were sent to stop the demonstrations, they refused to act. The troops actually sided with the farmers. Eventually, two of the rebellions ringleaders, Daniel Schayes and Luke Day, organized a full scale assault against the government and its forces. On the other side of the equation was the Massachusetts militia, led by former

Revolutionary War general Benjamin Lincoln. He marched into Worcester on January nineteenth of seventeen eighty seven with three thousand troops behind him. They managed to quell the rebellion in a matter of weeks, with fewer than ten casualties on either side. However, one of those casualties happened to be Jabez Spicer, the brother of the late Daniel Spicer. During an attack on the Springfield Arsenal. Jabez, who was wearing the coat his

brother had died in, was shot twice. The two musket balls that killed him happened to travel straight through the exact same bullet holes that had taken out his brother Daniel three years before. Was it an unfathomable coincidence, a case of bad luck or fate coming to finish what it had started in It's hard to say for sure, but maybe things might have turned out differently if Jabez

hadn't been trying to ride his brother's coattails. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by me Aaron Manky in partnership with how

Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can learn all about it over at the World of Lure dot Come and until next time, stay curious. H