Newspaper reports across the country proclaimed it “shocking wholesale slaughter”, a “most astonishing, cold-blooded killing” that left a “pile of bodies” “stretched like rag dolls” after a mass shooting. Even in a city known for its violence, such “slayings, in the form of a massacre, was something new”.
It was February 1929, and America was reeling from the news that seven Chicago gangsters had been gunned down in what became known as the St Valentine’s Day Massacre. Today, as the country routinely absorbs mass shootings of 32 (Virginia Tech, 2007), 49 (Orlando, Florida, 2016), or 60 dead with 413 wounded (Paradise, Nevada, 2017), it is instructive to recall that a century ago the US considered the shooting of seven organised criminals unprecedented, and unacceptable, mass slaughter.
Content from our partners
