Did American gangsters in the 1920s and 1930s really carry guns in violin cases, or was that characteristic invented by movie scriptwriters?

D.A. Levey, Boston, Massachusetts USA

• It was more common for gangsters to carry guns in newspapers. Due to the large size of certain US newspapers in the 1920's and the early part of the 1930's (papers were almost twice the size they are today - this applied to Britain too) even a machine gun could be concealed relatively easily. Bullets could be fired from rolled up newspapers much more efficiently than from a violin case. I think Hollywood has a lot to do with this myth - a violin case is much more visually arresting than a copy of the Chicago Tribune. It probably falls into the same category as George Raft's coin-tossing (no gangster would ever do this as it was considered unlucky) or the cinematic trait of calling gangsters "Cheech". There is no known gangster on record named Cheech! That's Hollywood for you.

  Valerie Cormett, Glasgow