 Figure 1.--This sthaged phitiograoh looks like a session of cops and robbers, but long on the robbers and short on cops. Sort of the 1926 version of defunding the police. |
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don't recall as a boy in the late 1940s and early50s playing cops and robberrs. We played war games. It was great outdoor summer fun. I am guessing that during the inter-war era that cops and robbers may have been popular given all the gangster films in the movies. The game often took oin the guise of gangsters and G-men -- G for Government. The gangster movies are too numerous to list and virtually defined the decade. This was the Depressioin era. Money for most kids was hard to come by, but you had to be really poor not to scrape up an occassional nickle. A few soda bottle reurns could get you there. And a nickle would get you in the Saturday matiunee--often a double feature with a cartoon and newsreel. Gangter and cowboy films were staplles. And if you managed to came up with a dime, you could add popcorn. There were also popular radio programs. 'The shadow' premiered in 1930 and 'Gangbusters' in 1936. I loved cowboy films and Hop-a-long Cassidy on the television. I don't recal, however, playing cowboys and Indians or cops and robbers with my friends. But the term cops and robbers in such a part of the vernacular, at least for my generation, that it must have been commonly played in thev1929s and 30s. Of course armament was important. And during the 30s not all boys had toy guns. Wooden or car board fascimilies could be fasgioned or even fingers pointed. One aithor described wooden gyns shooting cut up inner tubes. [Clemet and Reinier, p. 327.) That sounds more like a sling shot. Many memoirs deacribing boyhood in the 1930s mentiomn playing cops and robbers, but unfortunately do not go into detail about the game was played. An examole of a rural boyhood is a good example. [Richards] One thing about these games, including cops and robbers. They were not suppervised by adults, the action gane entirely from the boys' active little minds.
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