No. 650
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
May 4, 2024

Her Striped Stockings.

November 30, 2021
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 "The Witches' Cove," Follower of Jan MandijnWelcome to the first Link Dump of May 2024!We're still wondering:  "What the hell was Oumuamua?"We're still wondering: "What the hell was the Dover Demon?"We're still wondering: "Where the hell is the Mongolian Death Worm?"Watch out for those blood-sucking Capelobos!The days when you could take a hippie bus from London to Calcutta.The grave
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Strange Company - 5/3/2024
Included in yesterday’s trip to Fall River was a stop at Miss Lizzie’s Coffee shop and a visit to the cellar to see the scene of the tragic demise of the second Mrs. Lawdwick Borden and two of the three little children in 1848. I have been writing about this sad tale since 2010 and had made a previous trip to the cellar some years ago but was unable to get to the spot where the incident occured to get a clear photograph.  The tale of Eliza Borden is a very sad, but not uncommon story of post partum depression with a heartrending end. You feel this as you stand in the dark space behind the chimney where Eliza ended her life with a straight razor after dropping 6 month old Holder and his 3 year old sister Eliza Ann into the cellar cistern. Over the years I have found other similar cases, often involving wells and cisterns, and drownings of children followed by suicides of the mothers. These photos show the chimney, cistern pipe, back wall, dirt and brick floor, original floorboards forming the cellar ceiling and what appears to be an original door. To be in the place where this happened is a sobering experience. My thanks to Joe Pereira for allowing us to see and record the place where this sad occurrence unfolded in 1848. R.I.P. Holder, Eliza and Eliza Ann Borden. Visit our Articles section above for more on this story. The coffee shop has won its suit to retain its name and has plans to expand into the shop next door and extend its menu in the near future.
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Lizzie Borden: Warps and Wefts - 2/12/2024
It doesn’t look like much, just another semi-vacant commercial building—this one on the southeast corner of 106th Street and Third Avenue—now occupied by a Duane Reade. But give it a closer look, and Art Deco decorative touches come in to view, like the patterns in the light bricks and small geometric shapes above the first […]
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Ephemeral New York - 4/29/2024
An article I recently wrote for the British online magazine, New Politic, is now available online. The article, “The Criminal Origins of the United States of America,” is about British convict transportation to America, which took place between the years 1718 and 1775, and is the subject of my book, Bound with an Iron Chain: […]
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Early American Crime - 12/17/2021
On December 19, 1857, Nathan Newhafer slipped while crossing the Andrews Street Bridge in Rochester, New York. He fell into the Genesee River, was swept over High Falls, and disappeared. Newhafer was the president of Rochester’s Jewish Synagogue, and his congregation offered a reward for the recovery of his body. The following day, searchers found a man’s corpse on the shore of Falls Field. His
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Murder By Gaslight - 5/4/2024
CHIEF OF CONSThe Morning Times(Cripple Creek, Colorado)February 15, 1896Courtesy of Mitch Morrissey ig Ed Burns robs a dying man?      Mitch Morrissey, a Facebook friend and historian for the Denver District Attorney’s Office, found and published an interesting newspaper piece on "Big Ed" Burns, one of the most notorious characters in the West. Burns was a confidence man and
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Soapy Smith's Soap Box - 4/2/2024
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
The “Prisoners’ March.” | Illicit Distilleries.

Her Striped Stockings.

Striped-Stockings

The other day a groceryman at Vallejo, Cal., gave a large party, at which the daughter of the carriage painter who lived next door created a decided sensation. It was not that she was more handsomely attired than the other ladies present, but that when she gyrated in the "dance of death" she was observed to display the only pair of pink silk stockings in the room. She left the house for a few minutes at the expiration of the dance, and in the next waltz exhibited a pair of light blue dittoes. An hour later her crushed and exasperated female friends beheld' these supplemented by further hose of a delicate chocolate shade. And so it went on, until her miserable rivals determined to follow her the next time she disappeared. They traced her to her father's paint-shop in the backyard, where she was discovered brush in hand and about ornamenting her nether extremities with a final artistic coat of light salmon. The exulting spies rushed back with the damaging news, but it was too late. The men were all too tight to understand, the music had gone home and the lights were being put out. Thus it is that fraud and duplicity triumph, honest simplicity walks around with a darn on its calf and a hole in its heel.

 

Illustrated Police News, November 3, 1877.