Seventeenth-century London gangs wore coloured ribbons to tell rival factions apart
Long before modern street crews adopted colours, London in the 1600s was plagued by organised gangs with names like the Mims, Hectors, Bugles and Dead Boys. They clashed with one another and pinned coloured ribbons to their clothing so everyone knew which faction a member belonged to.
The word itself is innocent. It comes from the past participle of Old English gan, to go, and shares roots with Old Norse gangr, a journey. It can still mean any close group of people, from a road crew to a circle of friends. In its criminal sense it describes a group that engages in illegal, often violent behaviour, frequently built from lifelong friends or relatives, though criminologists and police do not agree on a single definition.
By the Victorian era, London's criminals had organised into an underworld with ranks and groups sometimes called families. Mostly working class, they lived by pickpocketing, forgery, counterfeiting, burglary and money laundering, and used their own slang to recognise each other, as street gangs such as the Peaky Blinders did. France had its Belle Époque Apaches and the Bonnot Gang, while Italy's Cosa Nostra, Japan's yakuza, Russia's Bratva and China's triads have existed for centuries.
In the United States, the first recognised street gang, the 40 Thieves, emerged in New York City around the late 1820s, and gangs became a worry for city leaders as rural migrants poured into cities. In Washington they controlled an area then called Murder Bay, where Federal Triangle now stands. Some historians trace the first organised crime syndicates to Old West outfits such as the Wild Bunch. Prohibition set off another boom: Chicago counted more than 1,000 gangs in the 1920s. Estimates by 2011 put active members at about 1.4 million in roughly 33,000 gangs.
Modern groups come in many shapes. Mafias specialise in racketeering; cartels in Colombia and Mexico trade in drugs; youth gangs fight over neighbourhoods. The Hells Angels, Pagans, Outlaws and Bandidos form the so-called Big Four of American biker gangs, and prison gangs such as the Mexican Mafia began behind bars for mutual protection. Criminologist John Hagedorn has argued that many of Chicago's biggest gangs originated in prisons.
Source: Gang
