No. 52
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
November 08, 2011
alias: DILLON, MARY ANN DOWD, SANDERS
PICKPOCKET, SHOPLIFTER
Via Newspapers.comOn this blog, I’ve covered what many Fortean experts like to call “Anomalous Falls From the Sky,” but this is a new one for me. Lousy actors and criminals in the stocks used to get pelted with tomatoes, but it’s a bit unusual for modern-day suburbanites to get such treatment. The following is from a syndicated 1998 Dave Barry column which summarizes the incident.&
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Strange Company - 8/19/2026
[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
"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
Ida Quinlan and Sophia Grant.Mrs. Ida Quinlan went out to buy a pair of stockings at
around 9:00 on the night of February 1, 1896, leaving her baby in the care of
her sister, Mrs. Sophia Grant. She took a streetcar to the store several miles
away and returned to the house at around 11:00. Entering the sitting room, she
was surprised to find the drawers of the chiffoniers pulled out and
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Murder By Gaslight - 8/15/2026
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
Waldo, Florida, September 1894 - Dan Wiggins, a notorious wife beater of Waldo, Fla., was dragged from his home by masked men recently. Wiggins was carried into the woods and lashed to a tree. Several women of the neighborhood, who sympathized with Mrs. Wiggins, were present, and as soon as Wiggins had been tied, they began to whip him. After he was beaten unmercifully, Wiggins was untied and left to make his way home. It is thought he will die from the beating.The Bloody Century 2
Takes the reader back to 19th-century America in all its gory glory.
