No. 808
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
April 08, 2025

A Terrible Axe Duel.

Two Texas Wood-Choppers Dismember and Mutilate Each Other.
April 8, 2025
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Tag: Holiday

St. Valentine's Day.

St Valentine's Day.

2/12/2018

Turkey Shooting.

About the beginning of October, turkeys, young and old, move from their breeding districts towards the rich bottom lands near the Ohio and the Mississippi.

11/20/2017

July 4.

So this is your birthday again. Well, bless my soul! Columbia, you will be as tall as your father soon.

7/3/2017

The Valentine.

The subjoined engraving, the design of which is from the graceful pencil of Rowse, is more eloquent than words.

2/12/2017

New Years in the Wings.

The fairy of the enchanted realm entertains her subjects in an earthly way.

12/29/2014

Merry Christmas!

12/22/2014

Independence Day in the Country.

6/28/2014

Decoration Day and its Memories.

5/19/2014

Uncle Sam's Thanksgiving Dinner.

11/26/2013

The St. Patrick's Day Parade.

3/5/2013

Happy New Year!

1/1/2013
The Brooklyn Bridge is celebrating its 143rd birthday on May 24, the day Gilded Age New Yorkers could finally walk across this wondrous span and celebrate the uniting of Brooklyn and Manhattan. Over close to a century and a half, the Brooklyn Bridge has taken the honor of the city’s most painted and photographed structure. […]
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Ephemeral New York - 5/18/2026
"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 the latest Link Dump!This week, we are honored to be visited by some genuine royalty.That time someone stole 80,000 pounds of butter.The complicated medieval legal term, "raptus."The Roman Woman of Spitalfields.How medieval Europeans ate before contact with the Americas.You never know what you'll find in medieval latrines.  Other than the obvious, of course.You never know
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Strange Company - 5/15/2026
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
Maggie Crowley.(New York Journal, March 16, 1898.)On March 15, 1898, a woman was found strangled to death in the courtyard of a New York City tenement.  She was the seventh strangulation victim in the Tenderloin district over the previous four years. What made this case different was that even before the victim was identified, the police had a suspect in custody. Some believed he was
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Murder By Gaslight - 5/16/2026
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
She Was a Child of Nature. | An Actress Used a Pistol.

A Terrible Axe Duel.

axe-duel

A terribly savage duel with axes took place the other day In the Trinity bottom, near Dallas, Texas, between two wood-choppers, Haskell and Haynes. The latter had his arm nearly cut off, and Haskell his shoulder badly hacked. Each man struck his antagonist repeatedly with his weapon, and both were bathed in blood and terribly hacked and mangled. it is thought that neither of them can survive.


Illustrated Police News, February 22, 1879.