Watching "Deathwatch" the other day started me thinking about the gangsters of Paris. My friend Alain in Paris was obsessed with this book he had found at the bookshop near his apartment in Monmarte about the History of Gangsters in Paris. The book was filled dope photos of these men and women in action and was crazy. Like a french pictoral version of the book "Gangs of New York". I guess the heyday for this subculture was from the turn of the century to the twenties. Around this time, gangs and thugs prowled the then-quite-thugged-out streets around Rue Pigalle. There were the Apaches, who were young street toughs, and there were older dandies of fashion who carried straight razors and hung around the cafes drinking and whoring. There were gang wars based on whether you dressed like a hooligan, sailor or a fancy Parisian pimp. Everyone, though, was marked up with jailhouse tats that recorded their crimes and loves and mottos, things like the francophile equivalent to "Born to Lose" and "FTW". There were famous characters of this scene who had tales told about their evil exploits and appeared as notorious celebrities in the papers. This is a very vague interpretation of what I learned from this book, as it was in french, and the intenet seems to be desperately lacking in information on this subject. There is one good article about the Apaches here
And another about the "Dirty Tricks of the French Apaches" here, presumably so you can try them for yourself.