No. 513
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
March 24, 2020

An Underground Stale-Beer Dive.

March 24, 2020
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Spaces are still available on tomorrow’s Gilded Age Mansion & Memorials RIverside Drive walking tour. We’ll explore the backstory of this winding, scenic drive and the houses and monuments that marked it as millionaire mile that rivaled Fifth Avenue. The forecast is for spring sunshine—join us at 1 pm for an insightful walk on the […]
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Ephemeral New York - 4/25/2026
"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
 Welcome to this Friday's Link Dump!Our host for this week is the one-and-only Goody Two-Shoes!The power of pregnant medieval queens.A possible serial killer in 1890s New York.Decoding some political gossip from medieval Britain.The latest research on the Antikythera Mechanism.Is Shakespeare's grave missing his skull?Solving the mystery of Antarctica's ice.Possible evidence of Noah's
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Strange Company - 4/24/2026
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 Journal, August 5, 1896)Annie Bock and her husband Jacob were spending the summer at Rockaway Beach. On Sunday, August 1, 1896, Annie went back to their flat at 207 E. 21st Street in New York City’s Tenderloin district to pay their monthly rent. She had $300 in the Dry Dock Savings Bank and on Monday morning, she withdrew $50 from the bank and paid the rent with $20. The plan was to
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Murder By Gaslight - 4/25/2026
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
"Assisted Emigrant" | An Irishman and a Yankee Settle a Dispute.

An Underground Stale-Beer Dive.

Stale Beer Dive

An Underground Stale-Beer Dive Late at Night in Mulberry Bend.

The low concert halls and stale-beer dives offer the fullest field for night mission work. These vile places are most often in cellars. The rooms are small, the ceilings low, and the air is always full of the fumes of tobacco and stale beer. The men are thieves, loafers and “crooks” often of the most dangerous order. The women are of the most degraded type. Here beer and spirits are sold in buckets, pails and bottles, and the inmates spend what they have earned, begged, or stolen for these vile drinks. Children are often sent to these places for liquor.


Campbell, Helen, Thomas Wallace Knox, and Thomas Byrnes. Darkness and daylight, or, Lights and shadows of New York life: a woman's pictorial record of gospel, temperance, mission, and rescue work "in His Name" .... Hartford, Conn.: A.D. Worthington, 1897.