No. 607
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
December 21, 2021

So Far from Home

The Pearl Bryan Murder.
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December 21, 2021
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Tag: Football

A Great Game of Football.

Fair college students engage in a rough-and-tumble chase after the pigskin.

11/7/2023

Fierce Football.

The great game recently played between teams representing the colleges of Princeton and Yale, on the former's grounds, Thanksgiving Day.

11/23/2015

She Went into the Scrimmage.

Mrs. Miller Forcibly Removes Her Two Sons form a Football Game at Bridgeport, Conn.

12/8/2014

Collegians at Football.

12/10/2013
FREDERICK LAUTHER
alias: , F R WILSON, FREDDIE LOUTHER
SNEAK, PICKPOCKET

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.comOn this blog, we’ve met mysterious Women in Black.  Not to mention the occasional Women in White.  So, who’s up for making the acquaintance of a Welsh Woman in Yellow?  The “Bradford Weekly Telegraph,” February 18, 1905:A silent woman, shimmering in a bright yellow light, with gleaming eyes and up-lifted knife, is the latest ghostly form to be reported from South
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Strange Company - 6/24/2026

Artifact #93: Soapy's son, hires attorney to stop the slurring of his father's name.

"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
Amen.

What’s inside these fake row houses that blend into the New York City streetscape?

You’re forgiven if you assumed 58 Joralemon Street was just another beautifully restored Greek Revival row house in Brooklyn Heights. Built in 1847, it resembles many of the elegant single-family houses on the block, with its red brick facade, long windows, and brownstone trim around the entryway. But take a closer look, and you’ll notice […]
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Ephemeral New York - 6/22/2026

1617: A miller of Manberna, the hangman’s last

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

A Delilah's Revenge.

 In 1863, Theodore B. Weber, then a businessman in Burlington, Iowa, was attracted to Mrs. Adelaide (Ada) Bennert, a woman sixteen years his junior. His passion “soon ripened into criminal intimacy,” and although both were married, they began a romantic affair. When Mr. Bennert learned of his wife’s infidelity, he left her in disgust. Weber moved to Chicago to join his brother’s
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Murder By Gaslight - 6/20/2026
On the Russians.

June 14, 1893 Big Day In Court

Be sure to stop by our Facebook page tomorrow for a Prosecution Marathon of witnesses. Here are the witnesses for Wednesday, June 14th, Day 9 Rufus Hilliard, City Marshal, Mayor John Coughlin, Mrs. Hannah Gifford (seamstress and dressmaker), Anna Borden ( wealthy socialite who was on Lizzie’s grand tour of Europe, distantly related to Lizzie), Lucy Collett (watching the office of Dr. Chagnon day of the murder), Thomas Bowles ( handyman who once rented a room from Addie Churchill and was wa
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Lizzie Borden: Warps and Wefts - 6/13/2026

Convicts to Maryland, 1773 by Peter Dickson

  [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
Taking a Criminal's Measure. | Nothing But Wind!

So Far from Home

her struggle (Illustration from: The Mysterious Murder of Pearl Bryan, Or, The Headless Horror. Cincinnati: Barclay & Co., 1896.)

Yes. they drove far from the city,

To a place so far from home,

There they left her body lying

Headless and all stained with blood

Pearl Bryan (traditional ballad)

New Book!

So Far from Home
The Pearl Bryan Murder
by Robert Wilhelm

FrontCoverWeb2The headless corpse of a young woman, discovered in the woods of Northern Kentucky in February 1896, disrupted communities in three states. The woman was Pearl Bryan, daughter of a wealthy farmer in Greencastle, Indiana, and her suspected killers, Scott Jackson and Alonzo Walling, were dental students in Cincinnati, Ohio. How Pearl Bryan died so far from home is an enduring mystery.

 
It was the age of yellow journalism when sensational murder cases drove newspaper circulation, and daily papers competed to print the most gruesome details and explicit illustrations. Local crimes became national news, and readers followed the daily progress of police investigations and murder trials as if they were serialized mysteries. The murder of Pearl Bryan in 1896, featuring a headless body, remorseless villains, and threats of civil unrest, fit the bill perfectly. So Far from Home: The Pearl Bryan Murder revisits the story as it unfolded in the daily press.
 
Available at Amazon.

 

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