No. 216
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
August 18, 2014

The Girls Have a New Game.

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August 18, 2014
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Tag: Hoax

Willie Craig Was a Girl.

But what a lovely sensation she created among the Henderson, Tenn. sweet girls and susceptible boys before her sex was discovered.

5/11/2015

Was Her Story a Fake?

Miss Alice Jackman, a St. Louis heiress, claims to have been abducted a second time.

3/2/2015

Aboriginal Footprints.

11/17/2014

Undercover Lunatic.

5/26/2013

The Advent of Spiritualism.

A simple schoolgirl prank spawned a new belief with millions of followers.

9/4/2012

McGinty Survives!

10/30/2011

The Cardiff Giant

Cardiff, New York, October 16, 1869.

4/10/2011

“Daredevil” Steve Brodie

2/17/2011
JOHN LOVE
alias: JAMES D WELLS
SNEAK, BANK BURGLAR

The Bizarre Murder of Pauline Amsel

"Indian Citizen," November 12. 1914, via Newspapers.comA frightening and inexplicable tragedy hit the normally peaceful town of Durant, Oklahoma in 1914.  According to Jake and Celia Amsel, a well-to-do, respectable couple, at about one-thirty a.m. on the night of November 11, they were awakened by screams emanating from their home’s outdoor sleeping porch.  They were horrified to
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Strange Company - 6/8/2026

Artifact #93: Soapy's son, hires attorney to stop the slurring of his father's name.

"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
Amen.

The story of the 19th century factory building hidden within modern Bronx high-rise towers

You can see it peeking out from the Harlem River Drive or through the chain-link fence of the Third Avenue Bridge: a five-story red brick building almost buried behind glass and steel apartment towers. The towers are newish luxury rental residences built on the Bronx side of the Harlem River. Shiny and modern, they bring […]
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Ephemeral New York - 6/8/2026

1617: A miller of Manberna, the hangman’s last

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

The Conspirators and their Hitman.

In 1830, Joseph Knapp conspired with his brother, John Francis Knapp, to hire a local criminal, Richard Crowninshield, to murder their great uncle, Captain Joseph White, in Salem, Massachusetts. They believed that if the captain died without a will, they stood to inherit a sizable fortune.Read the full story here: "A Most Extraordinary Case"
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Murder By Gaslight - 6/6/2026
On the Russians.

Lizzie causes a sensation

As Mr. Moody for the Prosecution dramatically expounds on hatchets and grisly details, and a glimpse of two skulls in a leather case, Lizzie slumps over in her chair. Was it the heat or the ghastly descriptions?
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Lizzie Borden: Warps and Wefts - 6/7/2026

Convicts to Maryland, 1773 by Peter Dickson

  [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
An Undertaker’s Assistant’s Mistake. | They Got Hilariously Full.

The Girls Have a New Game.

The Girls have a new game

They wile away the hours in the beach at Narragansett Pier in bewitching bathing costumes pitching clam shells at a mark. [more]

They wile away the hours in the beach at Narragansett Pier in bewitching bathing costumes pitching clam shells at a mark.
The girls at Narragansett Pier have a new game now played on the beach in bathing suit costume. They mark a ring in the sand and stand about twenty feet off and try to throw shells and stones inside the line. Once in a long while a girl gets inside the line and is allowed to rest and watch the others as a reward for her prowess. A poet who observed the game in progress the other morning said it reminded him of that beautiful poem beginning:

She threw a stone into the air,
It fell to earth, I know not where.
But there was a mile, I know full well,
Between where she aimed and where it fell!

Reprinted from The National Police Gazette, 9 Sep 1893.

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