No. 197
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
March 31, 2014

Abducted by a Woman.

March 31, 2014
...
...

Tag: Crime

Garrotting.

To Choke.

8/12/2025

What it is Coming to in Chicago.

3/24/2014

Mother Mandelbaum's Secrets.

4/23/2013

Beauty as a Shield.

Beauty Conquers avarice and outlawry "We won't rob this house to-night."

7/24/2012

Allan Pinkerton.

The Eye that Never Sleeps.

3/27/2012

Hospital Horrors.

3/20/2012

Inspector Thomas F. Byrnes.

3/4/2012

Driven by Delusion

Henry Goodwin entered the office of his partner, Albert Swan, pulled out a revolver and shot him.

11/14/2011

Whipped By Women

11/8/2011

Anxious For a Funeral

10/23/2011

Trixie Got the Best of It.

Two Little Gem Theatre, Buffalo, N. Y., Soubrettes have a scrap on account of a man.

10/8/2011

The Astor Place Riot

8/15/2011

The Swindling Beggar

7/11/2011
 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
More...
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 […]
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
 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
More...
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 →
More...
Executed Today - 11/13/2020
Dr. Scott's Electric Corset. | What it is Coming to in Chicago.

Abducted by a Woman.

Abducted by a Woman

Harry Sommerville, of Lexington, Ky., is snatched from his bed by the mistress he had repudiated in order to marry another girl. 


A special from Lexington, Ky., Oct. 6, says: Several weeks ago Harry Sommerville, formerly one of Lexington’s most gifted and promising young artists, married Mrs. Belle Payton, widow of a Cincinnati saloon keeper. The match was not suitable to the lady’s relatives, with whom she has been living, and who had Sommerville in their employ, and the new voyagers on the matrimonial sea were driven away. They went to board with another relative of Mrs. Sommerville, but here their troubles multiplied. A few nights ago the wife of Alonzo Barnett, a conductor on the Cincinnati Southern Railroad, drove to Sommerville’s boarding house, and, going to his bedroom, where he and his wife were in bed, she commanded and forced him to get up, dress and go with her. Since then Mrs. Sommerville has never seen her husband, and she has fallen sick with fever, and is now at St. Joseph’s Hospital. It seems that Sommerville had been intimate with the Barnett woman before his marriage, and that as soon as she heard of it she went for him. All parties are well known here.


National Police Gazette, October 29, 1887