No. 870
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
June 16, 2026

Pandemonium in a Tumult.

Raid on the Broadway Concert Saloons, New York.
June 16, 2026
...
...

Via Newspapers.comCalvin is among the literary cats who have been immortalized in prose.  Originally part of the household of Harriet Beecher Stowe, Calvin eventually made his home with author Charles Dudley Warner.  After the cat died, Warner wrote the following biographical essay, which was often republished in various late 19th century newspapers and periodicals.  This
More...
Strange Company - 9/9/2026
  [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 […]
More...
Early American Crime - 2/7/2019
"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
Sadie and Clarence.In April 1894, the murder of Montgomery Gibbs, a successful attorney, caused great excitement in Buffalo, New York. He was found shot to death in a driveway on Delaware Avenue with no clues to the killer’s identity. The police and newspapers investigated the crime, but they had no solid leads, and it remained unsolved. Then, in October, they received a tip that Clarence
More...
Murder By Gaslight - 9/5/2026
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
More...
Executed Today - 11/13/2020
Thrown from a Balcony. | Athletics.

Pandemonium in a Tumult.

Raid

Raid on the Broadway Consort Saloons, New York.

If there Is In New York one spot more Infamous than another, that spot is the section of Broadway on the east aide, between Bleecker and Houston streets. Hell gapes widely here for all who may pass after 7 o'clock in the evening. From Bleecker to Spring Street, there are at least three hundred abandoned females employed in those dens of infamy known to the public as concert saloons. During the last twelve months, this evil has grown to almost gigantic proportions, yet nothing was done to abate it until the evening of the 22d Inst., when sixty-eight concert saloon waiter girls were arrested, together with three or four of the managers and proprietors of the dens.

The girls were found in all these places dressed in "tights," in the fashion of the amazons of the "Black Crook." Gaudy and obscene pictures and temptations of the vilest nature are the only inducements held forth to enter these places, and yet night after night gray-haired men, many of whom are supposed to hold respectable positions in society, may be found here sipping beverages at double the rates charged in an ordinary drinking saloon. Boys, too, of a tender age, seduced by the glare and licentious glitter of these devil's traps, some of them have the bloom and freshness of green fields on their cheeks, with found mothers waiting patiently for their return to their homes, may be side by side with these painted harlots, spending the money which they have filched from employers' tills.

If the clearing out of the pandemonium upon Broadway has been successfully accomplished, the community has reason for joy and gratitude to the police authorities.


Illustrated Police News, February 1, 1872.