Captured here: Mob Moll, 1942: She pleads the fifth! Mob moll Smitty White was arrested and held at police headquarters in 1942 after her boyfriend Ralph Prisco was shot and killed by police during a failed holdup. Mob molls are also known as gun molls, or even gangster molls. The term moll is derived from the world "Molly," a 17th century euphemism for either "whore" or "prostitute.". It was taken in 1942, and like the best archival images it needs almost no explanation — the frame tells its own story.
The first half of the 1940s was consumed by the Second World War, the largest conflict in human history, and photography went to war with it — small 35mm cameras and wire services meant pictures from the front could reach newspaper readers within days.
What makes everyday photographs like this one compelling is the details at the edges: the clothes, the signs, the tools, the postures. They preserve texture that history books flatten out.
