No. 303
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
April 18, 2016

Gambler Vs. Cook.

James Toohey, a Covington, Neb., scullion, gets awfully mad and fatally stabs a man about town named
April 18, 2016
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Tag: Boston

Grand Panoramic View

Of The East Side of Washington Street, Boston.

4/4/2023

A Female Gambling House in Boston.

They call it the "retreat" because of its charming privacy and apparent obscurity.

5/31/2022

A Charming Female Vaccinator.

Young gentlemen of Boston submitting their arms to a charming female vaccinator.

8/30/2021

His Mouth Full of Ivory.

A billiard ball stuck in a man's mouth - the mishap of an idiot at the Adams House in Boston.

5/4/2021

The Merry Wives of Boston.

Such is Boston morality and such is woman's fidelity.

1/5/2021

Ringling Bros.' World's Greatest Shows!

First Time Here of the Amusement Colossus of the West.

10/29/2018

A Human Rat Eater.

An employee of the Boston Gas Works boasted his ability to kill a rat with his teeth.

8/14/2017

Wicked Victorian Boston.

Wicked Victorian Boston, a new book by Robert Wilhelm.

7/31/2017

Caught Helping Themselves.

Boston detectives arrest two stylishly-dressed women while in the act of the shoplifting game.

1/9/2017

A Winter Scene.

Winter Pastime – A Skating Scene.

1/25/2016

“For Members Only.”

11/10/2014

Society Unveiled.

2/3/2014

She Had a High Old Time.

8/13/2013

Baseball Animals.

Cigarette cards, 1880s, 1890s

5/14/2013

Philanthropist or “Moral Leper?”

4/30/2013

Burglary Tools.

2/11/2013

John L. Sullivan Saved by a Neck.

11/6/2012

Female Tobacco Chewers.

What a Correspondent Asserts Regarding a Boston Girl.

7/10/2012

The Female Marine

12/27/2011

The Swindling Beggar

7/11/2011
In 1956, author Miriam Allen deFord (1888-1975) described the eerie phenomena she and her husband experienced after they moved into a seemingly innocuous little home, only to realize they were really renting a hefty dose of The Weird:When the owner showed me the little cottage on a hill in Mill Valley, California, nearly forty years ago, she made a strange remark. We were on the sun porch,
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Strange Company - 3/23/2026
"As his son I am proud of hisefforts to succeed in life"Jefferson Randolph Smith IIIArtifact #93-2Jeff Smith collection(Click image to enlarge) oapy's son hires a legal firm to stop the defamation of his father's name. At age 30, Jefferson Randolph Smith III, Soapy and Mary's oldest son, was protecting his father's legacy and his mother's reputation from "libel" and scandal. He was also
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Soapy Smith's Soap Box - 10/13/2025
Stores come and go; office buildings gain and lose tenants. But the grief really hits when a shuttered movie theater remains empty, stripped of posters, concession signs, even the theater’s name. This is what remains of the Beekman Theater at 1271 Second Avenue, between 65th and 66th Streets. It showed its last film before abruptly […]
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Ephemeral New York - 3/23/2026
Youth With Executioner by Nuremberg native Albrecht Dürer … although it’s dated to 1493, which was during a period of several years when Dürer worked abroad. November 13 [1617]. Burnt alive here a miller of Manberna, who however was lately … Continue reading
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Executed Today - 11/13/2020
Maggie Crowley(New York American, March 16, 1898)Robert Hoey, coming home from work in the early hours of March 15, 1898, literally tripped over the body of a dead woman in the courtyard of his New York City tenement. The woman had been strangled to death and dragged to the courtyard known in the neighborhood as “Hogan’s Alley.” Four days later, she was identified as Maggie Crowley, a young woman
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Murder By Gaslight - 3/21/2026
The good-looking thirty-seven year old gentleman handling the reins behind the glossy matched pair pulling the spanking-new carriage drew the attention of more than one feminine eye.  Pacing down French St. at a sharp clip, the lady next to him, dressed neatly in a tailor-made suit with the latest in millinery fashion, smiled up at her coachman. Behind the lace curtains on the Hill section of Fall River, tongues were wagging about the unseemly pair. Lizzie Borden, acquitted of double homici
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Lizzie Borden: Warps and Wefts - 10/16/2025
  [Editor’s note: Guest writer, Peter Dickson, lives in West Sussex, England and has been working with microfilm copies of The Duncan Campbell Papers from the State Library of NSW, Sydney, Australia. The following are some of his analyses of what he has discovered from reading these papers. Dickson has contributed many transcriptions to the Jamaica […]
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Early American Crime - 2/7/2019
The Kissing Quadrille. | Floating Circus.

Gambler Vs. Cook.

Gambler vs Cook

James Toohey, a Covington, Neb., scullion, gets awfully mad and fatally stabs a man about town named Erwin

A gambler named Erwin entered the saloon of M. Tiernes at Covington, Neb., recently, and walking up to James Toohey, a cook, knocked him down twice. Toohey rushed into the kitchen, and returning with a huge butcher’s knife, attacked Erwin. During the fight the cook drove the blade through the gambler’s heart, it coming out at the back and sticking into the floor as Erwin fell. There were threats of lynching, and Toohey was taken to Dakota City for safety. No trouble had existed between the men previous to the tragedy so far as is known.


National Police Gazette, January 4, 1890.