The Bobbed Haired Bandit: A True Story of Crime and Celebrity in 1920s New York

Celia Cooney, most celebrated as the "Bobbed-Haired Bandit" of the Twenties, comes vividly to life in this scholarly yet entertaining exploration of her brief life of crime and celebrity, with emphasis on the celebrity. Both Celia's own recognition of her fame and the multifaceted interpretations of it by police, press, and the public make for fascinating reading. Her duel persona as the aspiring flapper and expectant mother who joins her husband on holdups to make ends meet makes for one of the more compelling crime stories of the Jazz Age. Her later life, concealing her criminal past while raising her sons who knew nothing of it, presents a striking contrast to the young lady bandit who publicly gloried in her exploits. The photos are equally intriguing and belie the image of the dangerous gunwoman, especially when tiny, harmless-looking Celia is standing alongside husband Ed. And there are plenty of absolutely classic old crime cartoons from New York newspapers. Alternately funny, shocking, touching, and harrowing, this is one of the best historical crime books I've read in a while.

The Bobbed-Haired Bandit is about a pair of poor newlyweds, Celia and Ed Cooney, who turned to armed robbery to better their lot, sriking terror in the hearts of Brooklyn grocers in 1924. The competitive New York City tabloid press turned the girl desperado into a media darling, an anti-heroine for the age - Jesse James, in a flapper dress. The authors - both of whom are historians and "scholars of the media" - stumbled across the story by accident: "Digging through yellowed clippings in a scrapbook at the New York State Library in Albany, we came across a criminal with an intriguing moniker: the Bobbed Haired Bandit. With so much type set on her behalf, she was hard to miss. There were hundreds of articles about her, none of them all true." But these two fellows knew a good story when they saw one, and like me they have a fine appreciation for the rich vernacular of old journalism. They don't write headlines like these any more. NEW GIRL BANDIT, A BLONDE, HELPS KIDNAP TRUCKLOAD OF SUGAR: TWITS CHAUFFEUR *** BEWARE THE BOBS *** DEPREDATIONS BY GIRL ROBBER AND MAN COMPANION ROUSE POLICE OFFICIALS TO ACTION *** FORGET SEX - SHOOT ! Now tell me the last time you saw a word like "depredation" in a headline. Or "twit" as a verb. I love it! Now back to the story. So this young lady and her man go on a tear, robbing store after store, making the police "look like brass monkeys almost every time the sun went down," in the lady's own words. The journalists of New York gave her the front page day after day, while the crimes of other, more ordinary folk were "passed over unnoticed" (Brooklyn Eagle). The lady robber became a blank canvas, and journalists threw lots of ink on her. The authors did something interesting with all these old clippings, using newspaper articles from elsewhere in the same papers to explore other themes in the life of the city at the time, from the impact of Prohibition, the changing roles of women, on down to the weather reports to flesh out the full story of the "naughty scamp," to try to explain why she became the media phenomenon she was. Then, like the Younger Brothers before them, the Cooneys attempted a poorly planned daylight robbery, and it was their downfall. Though they tried to flee, they were caught and returned to New York for a triumphant homecoming. It turns out the journalists liked her story a lot more before she had a name. Before she had a poor childhood. Before the truth of what she was negated a lot of the coverage of her crime spree. In an extraordinary editorial, the influential newspaperman Water Lippmann had this to say about Cecilia Cooney: "For some months now we have been vastly entertained by the bobbed-haired bandit. Knowing nothing about her, we created a perfect story standardized according to the rules laid down by the movies and the short story magazines. The story had, as the press agents say, everything. It had a flapper and a bandit who baffled the police; it had

The 1920s was a decade when few major metropolitan newspapers didn't have National Enquirer style headlines every day. Renegade women were a fixture in these potboiler stories: Katherine Malm, a.k.a. the "Tiger Woman" and lethal flapper Wanda Stopa titillated Chicagoans, and in New York, a tough little laundress named Celia Cooney was determined to burst through the economic barrier between the Haves and the Have-Nots. Stephen Duncombe and Andrew Mattson have written the type of book I love: an intelligent re-examination of a now-forgotten media sensation. Celia Cooney and her husband, Ed, embarked on a brazen robbery spree after money worries galvanized them out of anxiety and into action. That's the simplified version. Seen from a broader perspective, the Cooneys' crimes provided an impetus for politicians and the public to argue their views on touchy political and social issues, such as consumerism, attitudes toward the poor, and women's liberation. While telling the story of Ed and Celia Cooney, Duncombe and Mattson also expose the ambivalent feelings that the New York public of the 1920s had toward social progress and change. The authors did an especially good job of capturing Celia's spunky personality, and showing how it kept her spirits up from her degraded childhood right into her feisty old age. Well done.

This book is a historically accurate, compassionate and insightful look at a fascinating couple who committed robberies in 1923-24. She was pregnant and fashionable and he was the mastermind. Together, they set both the Police Department and the population of NYC on their ears. They were fast, gutsy and a little desperate. The real story to me is one of triumph over adversity. Not only did "the Bandit" overcome a tragic childhood to become a strong, compassionate, fiercely loyal and independent woman, but she became a tax-paying, law-abiding citizen after her jail time. After her husband's death, she raised two boys on her own through the Depression and World War 2. She is a wonderful example of how it is possible to move past our negative histories and ethical blunders. I should know - she was my grandmother.

As far as I can tell there was simply never a dull moment in New York City during the first few decades of the 20th century. In those days the city was ruled in large measure by the legendary men of Tammany Hall and it seemed there was hardly a week without some controversy surrounding that bunch. At the same time, anarchists like Emma Goldman worked tirelessly to improve conditions for the working poor in the city in the years following the tragic 1911 fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist factory. Meanwhile, vaudeville was at the height of its popularity with live performances daily at hundreds of theaters throughout the city. There was so much going on and no shortage of newspapers to cover it all. Amid this backdrop a feisty 20 year old woman named Celia Cooney would make headlines in all of these papers for several months. Celia would come to be known as "The Bobbed Haired Bandit". This sensational but long forgotten tale is brought to life by authors Stephen Duncombe and Andrew Mattson in this fast moving new book. The story of "The Bobbed Haired Bandit" would begin with the wedding of Ed Cooney to Celia Roth in the Spring of 1923.In September Celia and Ed found out they were expecting a baby. Celia was frantic. She did not want to raise a child in the tiny room they had been living in. And so they put their heads together and came up with a brainstorm. They would hold up a store. But what made this pair so very different was that Celia would be cast in the leading role. It was Celia who would pull the gun and shout "Stick 'em up!" Their very first robbery netted the couple over $600.00! This was too easy. And so they did it again...and again...and again. Because of the way she wore her hair Celia Cooney would be dubbed "the bobbed haired bandit" by the newspapers. After just a couple of weeks Celia would become a front page sensation. Celia and Ed were making fools of the NYPD and the papers were ratcheting up the pressure on Commissioner Richard Enright to apprehend this pair. And then came the copycats. Others began using roughly the same MO and so even in those robberies where Celia and Ed were not the least bit involved the legend of the so-called "bobbed haired bandit" would loom ever larger. It would be several months before Celia and Ed would finally bite off more than they could chew. When the jig was up thousands of people would show up to catch a glimpse of the notorious larger-than-life "bobbed haired bandit". In "The Bobbed Haired Bandit" Stephen Duncombe and Andrew Mattson present a snapshot of life in the City in 1924. It is fascinating to learn how the various newpapers of differing politcal persuasions presented this story to their readers. Equally interesting is the way the NYPD responded to the pointed criticisms directed at them by the press and the business community. It is quite apparent to me that this book was a labor of love for Duncombe and Mattson. The amount of painstaking research involved must