No. 40
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
August 08, 2011

Shot Down in His Office

Ruined and Despondent Ronald Kennedy, a Philadelphia speculator, kills broker Charles H. Page, and then commits suicide.
More...
August 8, 2011
...
...

Tag: Newsboys

Oscar Wilde Gets a Reception.

Too, too, utterly utter! Remarkable effect of the appearance of Oscar Wilde, the apostle of Aestheticism, on the streets of New York City.

6/24/2015

Street Arabs and Gutter-Snipes.

Waifs and strays of a great city - A group of homeless New York Newsboys.

6/11/2012
GEORGE F AFFLECK
alias: ADAMS, DAVIS, KID AFFLECK
THIEF, CONFIDENCE MAN

The Haunted Cottage on the Hill

In 1956, author Miriam Allen deFord (1888-1975) described the eerie phenomena she and her husband experienced after they moved into a seemingly innocuous little home, only to realize they were really renting a hefty dose of The Weird:When the owner showed me the little cottage on a hill in Mill Valley, California, nearly forty years ago, she made a strange remark. We were on the sun porch,
More...
Strange Company - 3/23/2026

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
More...
Soapy Smith's Soap Box - 10/13/2025
Amen.

The ghostly remains of a legendary longtime Upper East Side movie theater

Stores come and go; office buildings gain and lose tenants. But the grief really hits when a shuttered movie theater remains empty, stripped of posters, concession signs, even the theater’s name. This is what remains of the Beekman Theater at 1271 Second Avenue, between 65th and 66th Streets. It showed its last film before abruptly […]
More...
Ephemeral New York - 3/23/2026

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 →
More...
Executed Today - 11/13/2020

Maggie Crowley, Found Strangled.

Maggie Crowley(New York American, March 16, 1898)Robert Hoey, coming home from work in the early hours of March 15, 1898, literally tripped over the body of a dead woman in the courtyard of his New York City tenement. The woman had been strangled to death and dragged to the courtyard known in the neighborhood as “Hogan’s Alley.” Four days later, she was identified as Maggie Crowley, a young woman
More...
Murder By Gaslight - 3/21/2026
On the Russians.

Handsome Joe Tatro

The good-looking thirty-seven year old gentleman handling the reins behind the glossy matched pair pulling the spanking-new carriage drew the attention of more than one feminine eye.  Pacing down French St. at a sharp clip, the lady next to him, dressed neatly in a tailor-made suit with the latest in millinery fashion, smiled up at her coachman. Behind the lace curtains on the Hill section of Fall River, tongues were wagging about the unseemly pair. Lizzie Borden, acquitted of double homici
More...
Lizzie Borden: Warps and Wefts - 10/16/2025

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 […]
More...
Early American Crime - 2/7/2019
The Astor Place Riot | “I’ve Taken Poison, Maudie!”

Shot Down in His Office

Shot down in his office

Philadelphia, PA, August 13, 1893 – Ruined and Despondent Ronald Kennedy, a Philadelphia speculator, kills broker Charles H. Page, and then commits suicide.

Charles H. Page, of the firm of E. D. Page & Brother, stockbrokers, 132 South Fourth Street, Philadelphia, Pa, was recently shot and instantly killed in his office by Ronald Kennedy, a customer, who had been dealing in margins with the firm for two years. Kennedy then placed th pistol to his own head and sent a bullet into his brain.

The murderer and suicide is said to have lost between $15,000 and $20,000 since he began dealing with the firm, and despondency over the losses is supposed to have caused the crime.

Mr. Page was shot while reading the reports of the “ticker.”

Reprinted from The National Police Gazette, August 13, 1893

Turn to Page 1