No. 837
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
October 21, 2025

She Stole Her Lover’s Clothes.

A Cincinnati girl parades the streets in male attire and is yanked in for her temerity and immodesty
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October 21, 2025
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Tag: Burglary

"Burglar Proof" is all Buncombe.

These implements, with nitro-glycerine and a little horse sense, can open any safe - How the up-to-date burglar keeps a little ahead of the safe builder.

8/17/2021

Left His Digits as Souvenirs.

The Misses Franklin, of Glenn Falls, Conn., armed with pistol and axe, put a burglar to flight minus two fingers.

12/12/2016

“For Members Only.”

11/10/2014

Burglars on Bicycles.

Burglars in Massachusetts utilize the flying wheels in their midnight depredations.

12/31/2013

It Was a "She."

7/9/2013

Burglary Tools.

2/11/2013
JAMES BURNS
alias: , BAKER, BIG JIM, BOSTON J1M, etc, HAWKINS, JAMES BOYLE, JOHN BOWEN
SNEAK, BURGLAR

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.comBring on the Mystery Fires!  The (Napoleon, Ohio) “Democratic Northwest,” January 6, 1890:In regard to the mysterious fires that have visited the home of W. F. Miller, and which have been noted in the Advertiser, a Bairdstown friend sends us the following, which we are sure our readers will peruse with interest:The first of the series of unaccountable fires that have
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Strange Company - 10/7/2026

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

A Cursed Murderer in Lowell, Mass.

William H. Devlin(Illustrated Police News, December 22, 1877)Shortly after noon on Monday, December 10, 1877, a man entered the Lowell, Massachusetts, Police Station in a highly excited state. He told Deputy Marshal Favor that he had heard a terrible fight between a husband and wife Saturday night in a tenement on Common Street. Since then, he had heard nothing from the house, and he feared the
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Murder By Gaslight - 10/3/2026
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
Passion's Panderers. | Miss Eva G. Vallee

She Stole Her Lover’s Clothes.

Stole Her Lover's Clothes

A Cincinnati girl parades the streets in male attire and is yanked in for her temerity and immodesty. [more]


Alice Rowley, a fly young girl of Cincinnati, met and invited Gideon Glen Williams, of the same city, to go to her rooms with her a few days ago. She then proposed that she put on Williams’ clothes and go out and masquerade. This Williams agreed to, provided she would return in a short time. This sweet Alice failed to do, as she was yanked to the station house when about to enter a theatre. At the station she told the sergeant that the owner of the toggery was at her room with nothing but an undershirt on waiting for her return. Williams sat by the stove for more than two hours before his clothes were brought to him from the House of Detention.

National Police Gazette, November 9, 1889

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