No. 607
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
December 21, 2021

So Far from Home

The Pearl Bryan Murder.
December 21, 2021
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Tag: Police Gazette

Garrotting.

To Choke.

8/12/2025

Circumstances Alter Cases.

The Gallant 'Cop' on the Crossing - Old and Ugly vs. Young and Pretty.

11/4/2024

A Sleep-Walker’s Act.

Miss Belle Collis, of Newark, N. J., surprises the neighbors by her want of thought.

3/26/2016

“For Members Only.”

11/10/2014

Murderous Assault by a Wife on Her Husband.

10/6/2014

Set Fire to the Bed.

9/22/2014

A Minister’s Scrape.

7/21/2014

Thimble Rig A La Mode.

3/18/2014

Unmindful of their Attire.

A Fire in the Chicago Opera House creates a stampede among pretty actresses who rush to the street dishabille.

3/11/2014

A New Shoplifting Dodge.

A female thief who carries a baby in her arms and made its flowing skirts a cover for stolen goods

12/3/2013

Hallow Eve Sports.

The cool reception that some frolicsome young Doylestown girls gave to a verdant beau who was not posted as to the manners and customs of the Pennsylvania Dutch

10/27/2013

She Had a High Old Time.

8/13/2013

Shooting at the Elevated.

After-dinner pistol practice at the trains that rush by windows

5/7/2013

Blood on the Moon.

4/16/2013

George Dixon’s Victory over Australian Billy.

2/26/2013

Vive Le Sport!

1/15/2013

John L. Sullivan Saved by a Neck.

11/6/2012

A Fiendish Husband’s Desperate Deed.

10/16/2012

Serpent and Dove.

10/2/2012

A One Legged Baseball Club.

9/11/2012

Beauty as a Shield.

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

7/24/2012

Female Tobacco Chewers.

What a Correspondent Asserts Regarding a Boston Girl.

7/10/2012

Torturing a Lover.

6/26/2012

Hospital Horrors.

3/20/2012

Being Initiated.

3/13/2012

It Was Another Kind of Cat.

2/21/2012

A New Gag.

Her health drunk by a young lawyer in slipper-full of champagne.

2/7/2012

A Plucky Elberon, N. J., Girl

1/31/2012

Whipped By Women

11/8/2011

Rum on Tap.

Kyana, Indiana, 1890 - The women of Kyana, Ind., go to the railroad depot and demolish a cargo of liquor.

8/29/2011

Hid the Girls' Skirts

8/22/2011

Shot Down in His Office

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

8/8/2011

“I’ve Taken Poison, Maudie!”

7/25/2011

Recruiting For Sin's Army

7/5/2011

Sparking in Tompkins Square

Cupid in Tompkins Square

6/28/2011

Terrible Struggle with Flame and Flood

The burning of the steamer John H. Hanna near Plaquemine, Louisiana, by which thirty lives were lost

6/20/2011

Belles of the Bowling Alley.

The athletic diversions of an association of dashing damsels in their club rooms in Chicago. 

6/6/2011

A Newspaper Man’s Plight

Denver Col., October 1892 – Correspondent Jake Hirsh cowhided by indignant Lizzie Gonzales, an actress, in Denver.

5/22/2011

Hazing at the Stock Board

How the battering-ram process is applied by the bulls and bears to while away the idle hours of the dull season.

5/8/2011

The Girls Biffed Each Other

4/16/2011

Did the Naughty Midway Dance

Pretty Ida Lawrence gets arrested while entertaining some hackmen in Cincinnati, O.

3/28/2011

Chorus Girls in a Panic.

An unruly horse causes great excitement in the Metropolitan Opera House, this city.

3/14/2011
Via Newspapers.comHere is yet another example of that popular supernatural staple, “a vision of murder.”  The “New Orleans States,” February 19, 1911:SYDNEY, Feb. 18. — A most mysterious story comes from Perth, West Australia. The mysterious disappearance of a girl named Ethel Harris led a representative of a Perth newspaper to make an investigation, which had sensational results.He
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Strange Company - 5/13/2026
"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
John Sloan was a Village resident and something of a voyeur in the early 1900s, discreetly watching from his window or walking nearby streets in search of scenes to commit to canvas. He never lacked material, finding inspiration in the ordinary: a woman hanging laundry, men drinking in McSorley’s saloon, the elevated train snaking through […]
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Ephemeral New York - 5/11/2026
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
"Diamond Flossie" Murphy.(New York Journal, March 18, 1898.)Flossie Murphy was a flamboyant character, notorious in the demi-monde of New York City’s Tenderloin. She had a fondness for diamond jewelry, which she wore conspicuously, earning her the nickname, “Diamond Flossie.” But when she was found on the floor of her room on April 22, 1897, with a rope tied around her neck and all her jewelry
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Murder By Gaslight - 5/9/2026
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
Taking a Criminal's Measure. | Nothing But Wind!

So Far from Home

her struggle (Illustration from: The Mysterious Murder of Pearl Bryan, Or, The Headless Horror. Cincinnati: Barclay & Co., 1896.)

Yes. they drove far from the city,

To a place so far from home,

There they left her body lying

Headless and all stained with blood

Pearl Bryan (traditional ballad)


New Book!

So Far from Home
The Pearl Bryan Murder
by Robert Wilhelm

FrontCoverWeb2The headless corpse of a young woman, discovered in the woods of Northern Kentucky in February 1896, disrupted communities in three states. The woman was Pearl Bryan, daughter of a wealthy farmer in Greencastle, Indiana, and her suspected killers, Scott Jackson and Alonzo Walling, were dental students in Cincinnati, Ohio. How Pearl Bryan died so far from home is an enduring mystery.

 
It was the age of yellow journalism when sensational murder cases drove newspaper circulation, and daily papers competed to print the most gruesome details and explicit illustrations. Local crimes became national news, and readers followed the daily progress of police investigations and murder trials as if they were serialized mysteries. The murder of Pearl Bryan in 1896, featuring a headless body, remorseless villains, and threats of civil unrest, fit the bill perfectly. So Far from Home: The Pearl Bryan Murder revisits the story as it unfolded in the daily press.
 
Available at Amazon.