No. 550
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
November 17, 2020

Anxious For a Funeral

November 17, 2020
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Tag: California

Her Striped Stockings.

Bound to be in style - The expedient of a carriage painter's daughter at Vallejo, Cal., to obtain striped stockings.

11/30/2021

Vaccination from a Beauty.

Idiotic freak of some young men at Los Angeles.

3/9/2021

An Adventure with a Sea-Lion.

With open mouths and protruding tusks, they warn the intruder agents too near an approach.

3/26/2018

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

Trying to Scare an Old Maid with a Wooden Dutchman.

A wooden Dutchman, rather than no man at all, was what a sensible spinster argued when some practical jokers under took to scare her in Oakland, Cal.

7/11/2016

The Southern Pacific Railway Disaster.

2/11/2014

Hospital Horrors.

3/20/2012

Anxious For a Funeral

10/23/2011
Fractional house numbers can be found across New York’s older brownstone and townhouse neighborhoods. Usually the half refers to an adjacent carriage house or backhouse, or sometimes even a basement apartment. But as far as I can tell, this is the only 3/4 fractional on a Gotham doorway or entryway. It’s at 184 3/4 West […]
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Ephemeral New York - 4/20/2026
"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
 It's time for this week's Link Dump!Let's dance!That time when an English village was terrorized by a giant rabbit.How the Declaration of Independence made the news.The socialite and the "Titanic orphans."The last victim of the Berlin Wall.Remembering the American Soapbox.Life on one of Lord Nelson's 32-pounders.The hidden communication of animals.British fairies, meet Indian changelings.3I
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Strange Company - 4/17/2026
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
(New York Journal, May 31, 1896.)On the morning of Memorial Day, May 30, 1896, Mrs. Annie Cunningham had to go to work, while her 13-year-old daughter, Mary (known as Mamie), was home from school for the holiday. Mrs. Cunningham asked Mamie if she planned to go to the parade. Mamie said no, she wasn’t interested, and she planned to do housework and study. At 8:30, she said goodbye to her daughter
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Murder By Gaslight - 4/18/2026
Whatever you believe about the guilt or innocence of Lizzie Borden, I have always believed film makers do a great injustice to the story by not beginning at the beginning- the death on March 26, 1863 of the first Mrs. Borden. In the dying moments of Sarah Morse, Emma takes on the weight of the care of her little sister, not yet three years old. Emma herself was just 12 on March 1st. Emma has seen her mother suffer for a long time, seen her pain and loss of little Alice Esther. Emma is old enough
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Lizzie Borden: Warps and Wefts - 3/26/2026
  [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
A Newspaper Man’s Plight | The Edson Electric Garter.

Anxious For a Funeral

Anxious For a Funeral

Joseph Biberich, of San Francisco, has his wife measured for a coffin before she is dead. [more]

Joseph Biberich, a San Francisco. Cal., man, was arrested the other night for disturbing the peace. Blberich has been married only six months, and his wife lies on her deathbed, cared for by a nurse and attended by kind-hearted neighbors. Biberich got drunk and tried to drive tho nurse from the bedside.Then the police interfered.

The nurse says he has openly threatened to poison his wife, and has pinched and beaten her while she lay powerless in bed. He called in an undertaker and had his wife measured for a coflin. Then be purchased a burial lot and made arrangements for the funeral. His wife has some property which, the nurse says, Biberich wants to get hold of.


The National Police Gazette, October 10, 1891