\n\n\n\nSo before the internet, how did 60s-70s kidnappers even know who rich people\u2019s 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\u2019s Decline And Fall, which was set and written in the 1920s:
\u2019 \u201cDid you try pulling out \u2018is teeth and sending them to his pa?\u201d I asks.
\u2019 \u201cNo,\u201d says Jimmy, \u201cI didn\u2019t do that.\u201d
\u2019 \u201cDid you make the kid write pathetic, asking to be let out?\u201d
\u2019 \u201cNo,\u201d says Jimmy, \u201cI didn\u2019t do that.\u201d
\u2019 \u201cDid you cut off one of his fingers and put it in the letter\u2011box?\u201d
\u2019 \u201cNo,\u201d he says.
\u2019 \u201cWell, man alive,\u201d I says, \u201cyou don\u2019t deserve to succeed, you just don\u2019t know your job.\u201d
\u2019 \u201cOh, cut that out,\u201d he says; \u201cit\u2019s easy to talk. You\u2019ve been out of the business ten years. You don\u2019t know what things are like nowadays.\u201d
‘Well, that rather set me thinking. As I say, I\u2019d been getting restless doing nothing but just pottering round the pub all day. \u201cLook here,\u201d I says, \u201cI bet you I can bring off a job like that any day with any kid you like to mention.\u201d \u201cDone!\u201d says Jimmy. So he opens a newspaper. \u201cThe first toff we find what\u2019s got an only son,\u201d he says. \u201cRight!\u201d 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\u2019ll-show-you kidnapper then does as first step is to take a menial job at the boy\u2019s snooty private school, which would be an obvious way to pick out a suitable target at one\u2019s 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
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