Ce se fura, în secolele trecute, la Brăila, de la cine și de către cine. (I) Cu privire specială asupra spargerilor...
What was stolen in Braila in the past centuries, who were the criminals and who were the victims (I) A special focus on burglaries

Summary/Abstract: In the present article, I have processed several press reports regarding a specific category of crimes committed in Brăila. This entails the documentation of about 60 burglaries, chronologically covering the period 1890–1944, although their number was obviously much larger. On the one hand, of course, only some of these caught the attention of the press, while on the other hand, it refers exclusively to the periodicals accessible to me, as I currently sense that achieving exhaustiveness is still a distant goal. Nevertheless, despite the fact that in the present paper – part of a broader endeavour – I only present a few examples, some conclusions can be drawn, at least in the form of preliminary working hypotheses. The structure of the articles is some what conservative, containing the essential elements: usually the target of the burglary or the victim, the modus operandi, the damages, a few details regarding the investigating authorities, and/or the working hypotheses concerning the suspects. Beyond these, when meticulously analysed, this seemingly trivial information may contain data regarding everyday aspects of life in Brăila at the end of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century, such as the names of merchants, the locations of certain shops, associations, banks, etc.

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