No. 778
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
November 04, 2024
A New Child Abandonment Trick.
How a soman slipped out and left a kid on a photographer's hands.
November 4, 2024
alias: NIGGER BAKER
PICKPOCKET, BURGLAR
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
"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
Riverside Drive is one of Manhattan’s most beautiful and dramatic avenues. It’s also a place of legend and mystery, especially during the Drive’s early decades as a Gilded Age “millionaire colony” rival to Fifth Avenue. Which mansion built in the early 1900s has a basement tunnel leading to the Hudson River? Where can you find […]
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Ephemeral New York - 4/16/2026
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.Helen Kahlert, a washerwoman, came home from work at 8:00 on the evening of Wednesday, May 30, 1894. After working all day at a home on Park Avenue in New York City, she climbed the stairs to the humble, second-floor apartment on East 61st Street that she shared with Minnie Weldt. To her surprise, the door was unlocked, and the apartment was dark. Minnie
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Murder By Gaslight - 4/11/2026
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 lady called at a photograph gallery in Columbus, 0., the other day, with a baby whose photograph she desired taken. The necessary arrangements were made, the little cherub was propped up in a chair in the best possible position, and the artist was proceeding to adjust his camera, when the mother excused herself for a moment. The moment grew to minutes, and the minutes to hours. In short, the mother did not come back, and the artist finds himself with a ready-made baby on his hands, whose name and origin are unknown to him.The Bloody Century 2
Takes the reader back to 19th-century America in all its gory glory.
