No. 783
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
December 03, 2024

Photography as an Aid to Divorce.

The Process Applied to a Guilty Woman and Her Paramour.
December 3, 2024
...
...

Tag: Assault

Too Fond of Kissing.

A Steamship Steward Who Has Been Kissing Fourteen Years and Hasn’t Got Sick of It.

5/22/2018

Jack the Garter Stealer.

A bold and eccentric individual, who is alarming the girls and puzzling the authorities of Exeter, Mass.

6/12/2017

Thrown from a Balcony.

An Old Man in San Francisco Becomes Enraged at a Young Lady who Teased Him and Flings Her from a Fourth story Balcony.

1/23/2017

The Pastor Kissed Her.

That is the allegation made against Dominie Hall of the Methodist Church at Livermore, Ky., by Miss May.

11/28/2016

Another Amorous Parson.

Westchester County is all agog over the case of the Rev. Mr. White, accused of violently assaulting the sister-in-law of a brother clergyman. We illustrate the scene.

10/6/2015

Getting Above his Business.

How a too presumptuous shoe dealer’s attention to a female customer was resented by her male escort.

8/31/2015

Murderous Assault by a Wife on Her Husband.

10/6/2014

A Human Vampire.

4/28/2014

What it is Coming to in Chicago.

3/24/2014

Robbed of Her Tresses.

1/14/2014

A Fiendish Husband’s Desperate Deed.

10/16/2012

It Was Another Kind of Cat.

2/21/2012
"Kitsap Sun," February 18, 1997, via Newspapers.comEvery suicide is a tragedy, of course.  However, among the most poignant ones are where the person remains unidentified.  Did they leave behind loved ones who suffered the agony of never knowing what happened to them?  Or--possibly even sadder--did this person have no one in the world who cared if they lived or died?  The
More...
Strange Company - 8/17/2026
  [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 […]
More...
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
More...
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
More...
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
More...
Executed Today - 11/13/2020
Gambling for a Child. | The Bloody Century 2.

Photography as an Aid to Divorce.

Divorce-photo

The pictures-taking process that police authorities have so successfully applied to the apprehension of rogues has received a new application at the West End In Boston, where a photographer has by means of a camera caught a guilty wife and her paramour dead to rights. A professional man on Court Street has for some time believed himself entitled to a divorce on the score of his wife's unfaithfulness. He was willing to separate from her without scandal or publicity providing he could prove her guilt. He confided his suspicious and desires to a friend in the photograph business, who suggested that if he could "catch them with the camera, that would settle it." There would be no disputing the wife's guilt provided she and her paramour could be photographed, at the proper moment, without their knowledge, and there would be no necessity for a "scare" such as usually follows a husband's discovery of a wife's liaison. Get him a place so that he would bring his camera to bear without being observed, and the photographer was confident that he could secure the evidence. The husband got the standpoint he wanted by renting the room next to his own suite, and sending a man to put in a stove pipe collar in the wail under pretense that it was by the landlord's orders and for the accommodation of a new tenant, who proposed to run a stove, and who could obtain no connection with the chimney in his own room. The wife was unsuspicious, and after a week of close shadowing the husband and the photographer realized by onto side indications that it was time to bring the camera to bear thought the stove pipe hole. They did it, and secured very fair pictures, easily recognizable in court or elsewhere as portraits. It is needless, perhaps, to say that the sitters were not postured exactly for the picture taking ordeal, nor were they in the attitude in which they would care to be handed down to posterity. The husband, however, has in his possession a negative and several prints from it, which the wife and her paramour understand that there is no evadIng as an evidence of their criminality. The case Is a new illustration signalizing the value of photography as a means of detection and conclusive testimony.


Illustrated Police News, February 26, 1881.