The blanket definition – a member of an organised gang of criminals – is as wide-reaching as it is meaningless. Robin Hood was a gangster. The fourteen-year-old from the inner city estate with a flick knife in his back pocket – he’s a gangster too. Suicide bombers are gangsters, extended Shameless-style families who conspire to cheat the benefit system – all come under the ‘gangster’ umbrella. Yet, ask the average person in the street to name a gangster and they’ll say the Krays, or Al Capone. In the popular imagination, gangsters aren’t scared teenagers under pressure to belong or politically motivated idealists, convinced that violence can be justified as long as it’s for the greater good. The gangsters in our mind’s eye are hardened criminals operating under a specially adapted moral code. They are both beyond the law and a law unto themselves. They are streetwise and ruthless and uniformly, unequivocally male. Which leads us onto … What is a gangster’s wife?
