No. 196
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
March 24, 2014

What it is Coming to in Chicago.

March 24, 2014
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 Welcome to this week's Link Dump!And you're just in time for afternoon tea!A flying horse in Staffordshire.A mysterious murder-suicide.New York's war against banana peels.The houseplant that can count.Fun and games in medieval London.Hitler's dress rehearsal for war.A coded letter from Napoleon has finally been deciphered.A woman is cleared of being a witch.  Three hundred years after
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Strange Company - 10/9/2026
  [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 […]
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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
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Soapy Smith's Soap Box - 10/13/2025
 Laura D. Fair and Alexander P. CrittendenA prominent California legislator was sitting with his wife and son on board the Oakland-San Francisco ferryboat El Capitain the evening of November 3, 1870. They did not notice the woman approaching them, dressed entirely in black, wearing a broad-brimmed black hat with a black veil covering her face. From the folds of her dress, the woman
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Murder By Gaslight - 10/10/2026
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
Abducted by a Woman. | Thimble Rig A La Mode.

What it is Coming to in Chicago.

Chicago

Suggestions for an evening costume. [more]

“The respectable citizens of Chicago are making an effort to rescue the city from the control of the disorderly classes. It is doubtless to-day the worst governed of the large cities in the country, and the effort to rescue it from those who have disgraced its name has been none too soon.” - N. Y. Tribune.

Quoted in Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, March 31, 1883.