Small Town Noir

Two months after Pearl harbor, New Castle’s chief of police, Willis McMullen, issued a statement to inform the citizens of the town that “War is here” and that, consequently, they should refrain from bothering the police with trivial complaints. “Enemy aliens admittedly are scattered across the United States. It may be that some of them would be saboteurs and may attempt to cripple industry or public utilities,” he declared. If police had to take time […]

Prohibition was repealed on 5 December, 1933, but not one legal drop of liquor was served in New Castle that night. Any private celebrations involved bathtub gin, bootlegged whisky from Canada or the moonshine that was locally referred to as Moravia street bourbon, as nowhere in town was licensed to sell alcohol. That week, the state bought the old C Ed Smith Furnace Company workshop on Produce street, on the east side, and commissioned workmen […]

Joe Relo joined the navy after he graduated from high school in Struthers, Ohio, at the end of world war 2. One Saturday night in 1948, when he was home on furlough from the Pacific, he drove his old school friends, Joe Mediate and Bill Marr, twenty miles to New Castle, just over the state border. They passed the night in the bars downtown and it was nearly one in the morning before they got […]

Frank Tomski was charged with the sale and possession of hard liquor while having only a malt beverages license. Prohibition had been over for four years, but the black market never went away. He paid a fine of $300 to avoid three months in jail, but he was arrested on the same charge later in the year and sent to the Alleghenny workhouse for six months. The morning he was taken away, his son, Chester, […]

Paul Bailey was arrested midway through the first sunny weekend of the spring of 1948, which followed weeks of heavy rain. All over Lawrence County, people went fishing, played baseball or golf or just took the opportunity to sit on their porches. For his part, Paul celebrated the good weather by getting drunk enough to be charged with disorderly conduct. Meanwhile, the town’s criminal element embarked on a minor spree, with four burglaries being reported […]