No. 787
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
December 30, 2024

Seeing in the New Year.

Jolly sport among the giddy Vassar girls, fun in the forecastle, and a lonely New Year’s Eve on the
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December 30, 2024
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JAMES BURNS
alias: , BAKER, BIG JIM, BOSTON J1M, etc, HAWKINS, JAMES BOYLE, JOHN BOWEN
SNEAK, BURGLAR

The Undeciphered Death of Paul Rubin

The Rubin ciphertextEighteen-year-old Paul Emanuel Rubin was a sophomore at New York University, where he studied chemistry.  We have contradictory reports about his scholastic success:  His father Samuel said that Paul was an excellent student, while a police detective later told reporters that the teenager was doing so poorly at the University that he was in danger of flunking out.&
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Strange Company - 10/12/2026

Convicts to Maryland, 1773 by Peter Dickson

  [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
Amen.

Artifact #93: Soapy's son, hires attorney to stop the slurring of his father's name.

"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 and Alexander.

 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
On the Russians.

1617: A miller of Manberna, the hangman’s last

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
Life in Leadville. | A Christmas Dream.

Seeing in the New Year.

Seeing in the New Year

Jolly sport among the giddy Vassar girls, fun in the forecastle, and a lonely New Year’s Eve on the desolate prairie. 

“Seeing the New Year in,” is a time-honored custom and is invested with many pleasant ceremonies. Our artist has depicted the sailors telling yarns and drinking grog in the forecastle, and the emigrant on the plains wishing that he was home again by a warm fireside. But the giddy Vassar girls are having the best time of all. A genuine jollification is in progress and as the hands of the clock are on the point of midnight glasses are raised in air and the girls drink success in the New Year and wish a husband apiece to each other.

National Police Gazette, January 10, 1885.

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