No. 571
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
April 13, 2021

Giving the New Room a Lively Opening.

A Tenderfoot's experience in introducing the first billiard table in Arriba County, N. M.
April 13, 2021
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Tag: Robbery

Disguised as the Devil.

A Man in a Black Mask, Disguised as the Devil.

10/19/2021

Robbing a Corpse.

Mrs. Day is accused of stealing a ring from the finger of dead Sophie Ahrens as she lay in her coffin.

2/27/2017

Robbed of Her Tresses.

1/14/2014

Mother Mandelbaum's Secrets.

4/23/2013

Insane Criminal Escapes.

1/27/2013

Beauty as a Shield.

Beauty Conquers avarice and outlawry "We won't rob this house to-night."

7/24/2012

Hospital Horrors.

3/20/2012

Bank Heist

The Audacity of a Professional Thief.

4/3/2011
New York is a city of hooks—Red Hook in Brooklyn, Corlears Hook on the Lower East Side, Tubby Hook in Inwood, for example. Okay, Tubby Hook is a name that hasn’t been widely used for a century. But in the colonial era, Dutch settlers gave the name “hoek”—later anglicized to “hook”—to the many irregular-shaped spits […]
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Ephemeral New York - 5/4/2026
"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
 Welcome to this week's Link Dump!ARE WE HAVING FUN YET?Why you wouldn't want to be punished by a pirate.Why you wouldn't want to see a supervolcano erupt.The mystery of the 115,000 year old human footprints.The mystery of the undersea "Bloop."  Related:  The ocean contains all sorts of creepy stuff.A chair that may have belonged to Anne Boleyn.How nuns helped create a fertility
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Strange Company - 5/1/2026
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 Evening Journal, March 18, 1898)Around 1 a.m. on September 2, 1896, Samuel Meyers ran out of the tenement at 202 East 29th Street, screaming, “Murder! Murder! Police! Police!” Patrolman Tyler heard his cries and ran to the spot. “My wife is murdered!” said Meyers, “Somebody has killed my wife. She’s dead.” Tyler and another officer followed Meyers to a second-floor apartment.
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Murder By Gaslight - 5/2/2026
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
Serpent and Dove. | Woman Kicks Second Husband Out.

Giving the New Room a Lively Opening.

Lively-Opening

"I have a room now in Arriba county, N. M., and, a few days ago, a party that had come down from Callego canon took possession of my bar and room and run it for twenty-four hours. They drank all the liquor I had in stock, broke up several chairs, ripped a hole in a billiard table cloth and set an English Cattle Company superintendent and a cowboy to doing a prize dance on the billiard table. I kicked a little at this for fear, they'd break the slate bed of the table and It would take me weeks to get another. They stood me off with a gun, and served notice on me to keep cool and let my hair grow and they'd settle the score. They left me a tough-looking place, but they didn't kick a bit over the itemized bill I brought them of $190 for what they'd drank and smashed and had the use of. They were satisfied, they said, if I was, and they'd settle if the house would set 'em up. I opened the last three quarts of champagne in the county—three I'd been keeping for a girl, and set 'em up for 'em handsome, and they squared the score and went off peaceful as lambs It is a good country if you know how to take people there, and not be too fresh.”


From Illustrated Police News, February 27, 1886.