fireleaptfromhousetohouse:

kontextmaschine:

So before the internet, how did 60s-70s kidnappers even know who rich people’s children were, where they were, and what they looked like? The society pages? Was it more a case of people already in their orbit becoming kidnappers than kidnappers tracking them down?

From Evelyn Waugh’s Decline And Fall, which was set and written in the 1920s:

’ “Did you try pulling out ‘is teeth and sending them to his pa?” I asks.
’ “No,” says Jimmy, “I didn’t do that.”
’ “Did you make the kid write pathetic, asking to be let out?”
’ “No,” says Jimmy, “I didn’t do that.”
’ “Did you cut off one of his fingers and put it in the letter‑box?”
’ “No,” he says.
’ “Well, man alive,” I says, “you don’t deserve to succeed, you just don’t know your job.”
’ “Oh, cut that out,” he says; “it’s easy to talk. You’ve been out of the business ten years. You don’t know what things are like nowadays.”
‘Well, that rather set me thinking. As I say, I’d been getting restless doing nothing but just pottering round the pub all day. “Look here,” I says, “I bet you I can bring off a job like that any day with any kid you like to mention.” “Done!” says Jimmy. So he opens a newspaper. “The first toff we find what’s got an only son,” he says. “Right!” says I. Well, about the first thing we found was a picture of Lady Circumference with her only son, Lord Tangent, at Warwick Races.

But what this I’ll-show-you kidnapper then does as first step is to take a menial job at the boy’s snooty private school, which would be an obvious way to pick out a suitable target at one’s leisure. Waugh makes a lot of the society pages, though - he turned out a whole book about the posho set becoming journalists simply by burbling on about which of their chums were at which party last night.

“Society columnist”, incidentally, was one of the early steps of Gabriele d'Annunzio’s rise