No. 691
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
February 22, 2025

A Hot Day in New York.

While New York is by no means the hottest city in the country, there have been a few days during the present season when the temperature reached a height altogether incompatible with human comfort.
July 20, 2015
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Tag: Mandelbaum

Mother Mandelbaum's Secrets.

4/23/2013
 Welcome to the latest Link Dump!Our host for this Friday's festivities is the one-and-only BABY.Watch out for the Gown Man!Two violent and puzzling deaths.You know, "radioactive anomaly" are two words you'd rather not see together.Ancient diet tips.A widower's mourning gets...complicated.The saloon cat and Theodore Roosevelt.The CIA's psychic army.There's a lot of ancient writing out there
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Strange Company - 2/21/2025
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
When 721 St. Nicholas Avenue (below, corner house) made its debut in 1891, the formerly sleepy village of Harlem was rapidly becoming part of the urban streetscape. What had been a rural area dotted with estate houses in the 18th century (like Alexander Hamilton’s country retreat, the Grange) became a popular place for wealthy New […]
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Ephemeral New York - 2/17/2025
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
Illustrated Police News, Nov. 10, 1883.Zora Burns was a beautiful and captivating young woman with “…abundant hair of yellow-golden tint clustered about features as perfectly regular as those which Phidias chiseled from the marble of Greece. Her form was grace and symmetry personified, and despite her lack of educational advantages, her natural tact and quickness of intellect atoned in great
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Murder By Gaslight - 2/22/2025
Soapy Smith STAR NotebookPage 16 - Original copy1883Courtesy of Geri Murphy(Click image to enlarge) oapy Smith in Nebraska, Iowa, Denver.This is page 16, dated July-October 1883, the continuation of deciphering Soapy Smith's "star" notebook from the Geri Murphy's collection. A complete introduction to this notebook can be seen on page 1.     These notebook pages have never
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Soapy Smith's Soap Box - 2/11/2025
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
A Plucky Elberon, N. J., Girl | The Glorious 4th.

A Hot Day in New York.

Hot day in New York

While New York is by no means the hottest city in the country, there have been a few days during the present season when the temperature reached a height altogether incompatible with human comfort. There were two such days last week, when the temperature reached ninety-four degrees in the shade, and the sufferings of those exposed to the torrid rays of the sun were intense. On the 23d, especially the heat was most oppressive and man and beast alike succumbed to its influences. The air was moist, no breeze was stirring, and when the noonday sun looked down upon Broadway it saw not one but many thousands of wilted men and women. Among the tenement houses the suffering was great, perhaps than at any time during the summer. The streets were deserted in the middle of the day, and the sweltering thousands labored and drudged in their hot and dismal rooms with no chance of relief. In the evening they swarmed about doorsteps and hallways and filled the streets.

Our illustration strikingly depicts the incidents of one of these hot days—the feverish consultation of the thermometer, the eager quest for comfort on the shady side of the street, the prostration of man and beast by the pitiless heat. Happy are they who in such “torrid times” as these are able to find cool retreats on mountain tops or by the sea or in fragrant forest depths where no ray of sun can ever penetrate.


Reprinted from the National Police Gazette, September 1, 1883