Dagworth Hall as it looks todayAs I believe I’ve mentioned before, medieval chronicles are a gold mine for those of us who like our history to be laced with a bit of the bizarre. In between descriptions of wars, plagues, and other notable events, you are apt to suddenly find deadpan accounts of events that can be best described as barking mad. Ralph of Coggeshall was a monk in
Wouldn’t you love to have interviewed Lizzie’s physician, Dr. Nomus S. Paige from Taunton, the jail doctor, ? He found her to be of sane mind and we can now confirm that he had Lizzie moved to the Wright’s quarters while she was so ill after her arraignment with bronchitis, tonsilitis and a heavy cold. We learn that she was not returned to her cell as he did not wish a relapse so close to her trial. Dr. Paige was a Dartmouth man, class of 1861. I have yet to produce a photo of him but stay tuned! His house is still standing at 74 Winthrop St, corner of Walnut in Taunton. He was married twice, with 2 children by his second wife Elizabeth Honora “Nora” Colby and they had 2 children,Katherine and Russell who both married and had families. Many of the Paiges are buried in Mount Pleasant Cemetery in Taunton. Dr. Paige died in April of 1919- I bet he had plenty of stories to tell about his famous patient in 1893!! He was a popular Taunton doctor at Morton Hospital and had a distinguished career. Dr. Paige refuted the story that Lizzie was losing her mind being incarcerated at the jail, a story which was appearing in national newspapers just before the trial. Mt. Pleasant Cemetery, Taunton, courtesy of Find A Grave. 74 Winthrop St., corner of Walnut, home of Dr. Paige, courtesy of Google Maps Obituary for Dr. Paige, Boston Globe April 17, 1919
How did New Yorkers get through sweltering summer days before the invention and widespread use of air conditioning? Well, a lot of it depended on your income bracket. If you were wealthy, you likely waited out the summer at a seaside resort like Newport or on a country estate cooled by mountains or river breezes. […]
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 →
A boatman working near the foot of Little Street in
Brooklyn, on October 3, 1864, saw a package floating on the water. Thinking it
might contain something of value, he took it into his boat. He unraveled the enameled
oilcloth surrounding the package, and inside, covered in sheets of brown paper, was
the trunk of a human body. The head, arms, pelvis, and legs had been cut off
with a saw or sharp
Soapy Smith STAR NotebookPage 20 - Original copy1884Courtesy of Geri Murphy(Click image to enlarge)
oapy Smith's early empire growth in Denver.Operating the prize package soap sell racket in 1884.
This is page 20, the continuation of page 19, and dated May 6 - May 29, 1884, as well as the continuation of pages 18-19, the beginning of Soapy Smith's criminal empire building in Denver, Colorado.&
[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 […]
The sensation of sensations at St. Louis is the arrest of A.B. Wakefield, one of the proprietors of the Grand Opera House. It came about on a warrant sworn to by William Hyde, the editor of the Republican. The accusation is that Wakefield has been circulating statements that Hyde, Chief of Police McDonough and others have been running a gigantic gambling ring and making large sums of money, and that they dictated what houses should run, and shared the profits.
Among the documents that have been collected against Wakefield it may be here mentioned is one that relates to a spicy scandal, in which the Opera House is mixed up. Charles Duffey makes an affidavit that he was employed as an errand boy, etc., at the Opera House by Wakefield, and that when the Strakosch opera was in St. Louis Wakefield one day asked Duffey if there was not some way of seeing into "the dressing-rooms of the stars" was answered in the affirmative; that he could go upon the roof and look down through the skylights.
Duffey then goes on to say that Wakefield had a canvas laid down on the roof of the theatre, so that he could lie down on the canvas, and that he went up of nights and remained there for hours looking at the sights below, and that he continued this practice as long as he (Duffey) stayed there, and that Wakefield sometimes took a friend with him. Duffey makes prominent mention of Kellogg and Cary in his affidavit. There is any amount of information now to be had against Wakefield. Everybody is ready to tell of something in his remarkable history. They say he came to St. Louis as a three-card-monte man, and that he had been operating on steamboats running to New Orleans.
"We follow vice and folly where a police officer dare not show his head, as the small, but intrepid weasel pursues vermin in paths which the licensed cat or dog cannot enter."
The Sunday Flash 1841