No. 625
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
April 05, 2022

Dropping Their Disguise.

How a loving bridal couple were suddenly transformed into a brace of absconding counterfeiters.
April 5, 2022
...
...

Tag: Theatre

A Bevy of Stage Beauties.

Five footlight fairies, whose faces and forms charm audiences in London, Paris and New York.

2/22/2022

A Wine-Inspired Wager.

A Female Who Was Not Allowed to Exhibit Her Terpsichorean Abilities.

5/28/2018

A Scene not on the Bills.

Actor Ricardo’s bluff jump from the stage to the audience at the Grand Opera House, Columbus, Ohio.

10/17/2016

Floating Circus.

Spaulding & Rogers’s Floating Circus Palace.

4/11/2016

She Swallowed Her Teeth.

Mrs. Dunsford, of Reading, Pa., meets with a mishap in a theatre.

2/15/2016

Chorus Girls Fight.

Two of the charming girls who pose as "living pictures" in Rice's "1492" have a wordy war, which ends in a hand-to-hand conflict.

5/18/2015

New Years in the Wings.

The fairy of the enchanted realm entertains her subjects in an earthly way.

12/29/2014

Scenes from “In the Tenderloin.”

6/16/2014

Naughty Anthony.

10/23/2012

Spectacular Scenes & Sights Down on the Jersey Coast

Poster for the 1898 Broadway show "Have You Seen Smith?"

7/17/2012

Trixie Got the Best of It.

Two Little Gem Theatre, Buffalo, N. Y., Soubrettes have a scrap on account of a man.

10/8/2011

The Astor Place Riot

8/15/2011
Via Newspapers.comIt’s time for some Mystery Blood!  The “Sacramento Bee,” August 16, 1870:At the Juapa, at the residence of Mr. John Baldwin, one of those phenomena occurred for which it is so difficult to account. On the 15th instant, a shower of blood fell at the dwelling of Mr. B., spattering the doorstep and the surrounding grounds. There had been only an instant before a perfect calm,
More...
Strange Company - 6/17/2026
"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
More...
Soapy Smith's Soap Box - 10/13/2025
Getting around the western Bronx by foot means encountering hilly streets, lots of hilly streets. The pitched terrain comes from ridges of bedrock formed millions of years ago extending into Northern Manhattan. Back in the early 1900s when the Bronx was undergoing urbanization, all these hills posed a challenge to transit engineers, since some roads […]
More...
Ephemeral New York - 6/15/2026
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
 Stephen Pettus gave Hannah Southworth a glass of drugged champagne and had his way with her while she was unconscious. Hannah became pregnant and for years after, she badgered Pettus to acknowledge that he had ruined her. When all legal means were exhausted, she avenged her honor by shooting him in the back on a Brooklyn street.Read the full story here: Avenging Her Honor.
More...
Murder By Gaslight - 6/13/2026
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
More...
Lizzie Borden: Warps and Wefts - 6/13/2026
  [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
A Rattling Main. | A Woman Gambler in Nevada.

Dropping Their Disguise.

Dropping Their DisguiseHow a loving bridal couple were suddenly transformed into a brace of absconding counterfeiters after crossing the border between the United States and Canada, on the A. & G. W. R. R. 

“We’re in Canada now, Mike; I’m going to take of these togs."

This was the remark made by an apparently youthful bride to her companion, a well dressed young bridegroom on his wedding tour.

They were seated in one of the parlor cars on the Atlantic and Great Western railroad, and the train had just passed the boundary line that separates the land where the stars and stripes float supreme and the territory where flaps the crimson ensign of England.

The pair had attracted much attention all the way from Lockport, being very loving and billing and cooing like turtle doves. The rather peculiar expression alluded to above attracted still more attention, and the passengers were somewhat surprised to see the blushing bride disrobe herself, take off a jaunty hat and blonde wig and disclose an underdress of male clothing. Her companion also divested himself of a mustache and a wig. The metamorphosis showed up the travelers in their true light. . They were two counterfeiters escaping from the land of the brave and the home of the free, where things had got too hot for them.


Reprinted from The National Police Gazette, November 19, 1883.