No. 788
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
January 07, 2025

Life in Leadville.

Rev. De Witt Talmage Sampling its Wickedness.
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January 7, 2025
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Tag: Bio

Hungry Joe.

The conmen of New York City were noted for their colorful nicknames: "Paper Collar Joe", "Grand Central Pete" Jimmy "the Kid" and the greatest of all "Hungry Joe".

10/20/2013

Undercover Lunatic.

5/26/2013

The Diamond King.

J. I. Lighthall, better known as the Diamond King, was a charismatic showman and a master of marketing, but he was also a dedicated healer.

12/4/2012

Kate Warne.

Kate Warne, America’s first female detective.

5/30/2012

Allan Pinkerton.

The Eye that Never Sleeps.

3/27/2012

Another Voice for Cleveland.

12/13/2011

Duel of the Divas.

The question of who was more beautiful, Lillian Russel or Lola Montez was settled by two cowpokes in the Nevada desert in the 1890s.

5/30/2011

Voodoo Queen Marie

For over forty years, beginning around 1830, Marie Laveau was the most powerful and most feared woman in New Orleans.

3/21/2011

“Daredevil” Steve Brodie

2/17/2011
CHARLES R TITUS
alias: DOCTOR THOMPSON
FORGER

Weekend Link Dump

 Welcome to this week's Link Dump!Meanwhile, the Strange Company HQ staffers are hoping to make the 2028 U.S. Olympics gymnastics team.Navigating the Pacific, ancient Polynesian style.How to make a medieval king fall in love with you.  Although, considering what most medieval kings were like, I'm not sure that you'd want this.A murder that was "solved," but remains unresolved.The "Oz
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Strange Company - 9/4/2026

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

John and Eva.

 When John Keys and Eva Dickenson were married in Cincinnati on August 21, 1890, they told their relatives that they planned to honeymoon on the Atlantic coast, but John had another plan. He purchased an Ohio River shanty-boat and planned a slow trip downriver to St. Louis. It would not be their last deception; in fact, what transpired on that fateful journey would remain forever shrouded in
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Murder By Gaslight - 8/29/2026
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
Brotherly Love. | Seeing in the New Year.

Life in Leadville.

Talmage

Rev. De Witt Talmage Sampling its Wickedness
He Goes the Rounds Among the Gamblers and the Girls
He Receives Lessons in Faro, Keno Poker, etc.

Rev. De Witt Talmage, on the 28th ult., repeated in Leadville, Colorado, his astonishing performance in New York a year or so ago, making a personal Inspection of the slums and by-ways, and privately visiting the dance-houses and gambling halls, and viewing the light therein presented for the purpose, as Mr. Talmage explains, of qualifying himself to flourish in the faces of his hearers the firebrand freshly snatched from the hotbed of iniquity. 

Illustrated Police News, August 14, 1880.

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