No. 281
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
November 14, 2015

Half-dime Novels and Story Papers.

Satan's sure-ruin traps - half-dime novels, five and ten cent story papers, and low-priced pamphlets
November 14, 2015
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Tag: 1880

A Smuggler Queen.

The beautiful contrabandista lately arrested with five confederates near Deming, New Mexico.

3/8/2022

"He Loves Me; He Loves Me Not."

How Marie Played a Romantic Trick on Her Lover and Brought Him to Time

4/9/2019

To Arctic Enthusiasts!

1/21/2019

The Queen of The May.

A Vegetarian's Fancy.

5/7/2018

A Jealous Husband’s Mistake.

How a Reading, PA., merchant, broke open his wife’s charmer and discovered a supposed lover to be a harmless female cousin.

2/19/2018

Afloat on a Cake of Ice.

Perilous Situation of a Skating Party on the Ohio River Near Zanesville, Ohio.

1/1/2018

The Country Cureall.

Patients serenading the village doctor.

8/7/2017

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

Tennis.

"Who wants to pway me a couple of wattling stwong games?"

6/5/2017

Caught Helping Themselves.

Boston detectives arrest two stylishly-dressed women while in the act of the shoplifting game.

1/9/2017

Seeing in the New Year.

Jolly sport among the giddy Vassar girls, fun in the forecastle, and a lonely New Year’s Eve on the desolate prarie.

12/26/2016

Pretty Stars for the Southern Dives.

Fifteen charming chippies make Rome howl while voyaging to New Orleans, Louisiana.

12/19/2016

Another Steamboat Disaster.

New York City, -- The Steamboat Riverdale blown up, August 28th – Rescuing the passengers.

10/3/2016

Trying to Scare an Old Maid with a Wooden Dutchman.

A wooden Dutchman, rather than no man at all, was what a sensible spinster argued when some practical jokers under took to scare her in Oakland, Cal.

7/11/2016

A Successful Trip.

William Leland, of Buffalo, N. Y., takes a pleasurable dive over the Horseshoe Falls and still lives to be written up.

6/5/2016

A Woman’s Flat-Irony.

Miss Sallie Utterback, of Shoals, Near Vincennes, Indiana, knocks out a man with a waggin’ tongue.

2/2/2016

Absolutely Pure.

The only absolutely pure and full weight desiccated cocoanut manufactured in this country.

12/5/2015

Half-dime Novels and Story Papers.

Satan's sure-ruin traps - half-dime novels, five and ten cent story papers, and low-priced pamphlets for boys and girls.

11/14/2015

Fighting Marines.

Some of Uncle Sam’s land and water police have a genial shindy among themselves at the Navy Yard, Brooklyn, N. Y.

11/5/2015

A Rattling Main.

A desperate week-long challenge battle between Georgia and Arkansas cocks won by F. E. Grist's champion, Richard K Fox.

10/20/2015

Another Amorous Parson.

Westchester County is all agog over the case of the Rev. Mr. White, accused of violently assaulting the sister-in-law of a brother clergyman. We illustrate the scene.

10/6/2015

Collecting Beer Money.

A gang of female rogues, of the East Side, New York, work a little racket of their own.

9/15/2015

Life on a Mississippi Steamboat.

The Story-teller in the Wheel-house of the "Belle Memphis"

9/7/2015

Getting Above his Business.

How a too presumptuous shoe dealer’s attention to a female customer was resented by her male escort.

8/31/2015

Yachting.

Yachting.

8/3/2015

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.

7/20/2015

A Bloody Ruction.

Bayonets and Knives—A Sister’s Influence and Prevention of Murder.

6/12/2015

Defying the Guards.

Downed by Kindness After defying a host of armed keepers, James Driscoll, in the Trenton, N. J. State prison succumbs to a gentle word.

1/12/2015

Merry Christmas!

12/22/2014

Aboriginal Footprints.

11/17/2014

A Substitute for a Wife.

10/27/2014

Killed and Eaten by Hogs.

9/15/2014

They Got Hilariously Full.

Alleged cancan dance indulged in by young male and female swells at Jamestown, New York.

8/12/2014

Independence Day in the Country.

6/28/2014

Progress of Naval Architecture.

6/2/2014

Fatal Soda Fountain Explosion.

5/13/2014

Thimble Rig A La Mode.

3/18/2014

Unmindful of their Attire.

A Fire in the Chicago Opera House creates a stampede among pretty actresses who rush to the street dishabille.

3/11/2014

Illicit Distilleries.

North Carolina - An Illicit Whiskey Still in the Mountains Surprised by Revenue Officers.

2/25/2014

Nature versus Art.

2/18/2014

Tobogganing.

1/7/2014
Via Newspapers.comThe following story goes in that bulging file known as “restless ghosts of murder victims.”  The “Ithaca Journal,” August 12, 1922:Painesville, Ohio, Aug. 12--A "ghost" which farmers living near Paines Hollow say has been haunting them for seven years, is "at rest" today. It disappeared several days ago with the burial of the body of Henry Lipenstick, found in an abandoned
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Strange Company - 8/26/2026
  [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
"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
(Illustrated Police News, April 3, 1886.)Agnes Anastasia Long moved out of her parents’ home in East Attleboro, Massachusetts, in April 1882. With her many male suiters, she was considered the black sheep of the family. Her father had enough of her bad behavior and, according to the Boston Herald, “refused to permit her to darken the threshold of his humble home.”She took a job at Streeter
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Murder By Gaslight - 8/22/2026
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
Fierce Football. | Fighting Marines.

Half-dime Novels and Story Papers.

Modern News Stand

Half-dime Novels and Story Papers.

Satan stirred up certain of his willing tools on earth by the promise of a few paltry dollars to improve greatly in the death-dealing quality of the weekly death-traps, and forthwith came a new series of new snares of fascinating construction, small and tempting in price, and baited with high sounding names. These sure-ruin traps comprise a new variety of half-dime novels, five and ten cent story papers, and low-priced pamphlets for boys and girls.

This class includes the silly, insipid tale, the coarse, slangy story in the dialect of the barroom, the blood-and-thunder romance of border life, and the exaggerated details of crimes, real and imaginary. Some have highly colored sensational reports of real crimes, while others, and by far the larger number, deal with most improbable creations of fiction. The unreal far outstrips the real. Crimes are gilded, and lawlessness is painted to resemble valor, making a bid for bandits, brigands, murderers, thieves, and criminals in general. Who would go to the State prison, the gambling saloon, or the brothel to find a suitable companion for the child? Yet a more insidious foe is selected when these stories are allowed to become associates of the child’s mind and to shape and direct the thoughts.


From: Comstock, Anthony. Traps for the Young. New York: Funk & Wagnalls Company, 1883.