Welcome to this week's Link Dump!We have tea!A haunted historic cabin.A haunted historic inn.The life of a 15th century Duchess of Milan.The saga of the Los Angeles Breakfast Club.The legacy of Flannery O'Connor.The debate over "recovered memories." I know someone who once went under hypnosis, and "recovered" memories of things that I know for a fact never ever happened. The
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.
The 20th century skyline of Manhattan—dominated by gleaming, crisply defined skyscrapers like the Empire State Building and Chrysler Building—was a frequent subject for photographers of the 1930s and 1940s. “New York Skyline Evening Haze,” 1936 But few have the depth and texture of these muted, murky skyline images by Paul J. Woolf: one of the […]
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 →
National Police Gazette, June 1, 1889.On May 12, 1889, the janitor of the Clifton Boat Club on Staten Island found the body of a young woman floating in the water. Though badly decomposed, Dr. S.A. Robinson identified her as Mary Tobin, who had recently resigned from her job in his office. Mary Tobin’s life was clouded with mysteries and contradictions. She had come to Staten Island from
Soapy Smith STAR NotebookPage 18 - Original copy1884Courtesy of Geri Murphy(Click image to enlarge)
oapy Smith in Denver.Operating the prize package soap sell racket in 1884.This is page 18, the continuation of page 17, and dated March 28 - April 12, 1884, the continuation of deciphering Soapy Smith's "star" notebook from the Geri Murphy's collection. A complete introduction to this notebook
[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 […]
We could hardly have produced a more timely picture than is given to the reader above, of that delightfully exhilarating sport, and that truly manly exercise known as skating. Of late years, American ladies have been practicing this amusement, and the fine pond at Jamaica Plain, Roxbury, at certain seasons presents a most lively and gay appearance, covered with ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, all skimming with magic-like power over the glassy surface of the pond. A good skater cane attain immense speed upon the ice, and sustain himself for miles. In the picture above is represented some of the casualties that the skater is liable to. If awkward, he must pay a severe penalty, sometimes, for his want of skill, and fatal accidents do not unfrequently occur. Now beginners, old hands (or legs) at the business, and the awkward squad are all presented in our picture. On the right foreground one is seen with a servant, arranging his skates; just beyond him is an awkward figure, fearful off a fall; in the middle foreground is seen one whose graceful and confident figure betokens the adept at the business; and on his left is observed an individual struggling to break his forward impetus to spare the tow figures already down upon the ice. We trust that the individual underneath has found a soft place on the ice upon which to fall.
Reprinted from Gleason's Pictorial, January 22, 1853.
"We follow vice and folly where a police officer dare not show his head, as the small, but intrepid weasel pursues vermin in paths which the licensed cat or dog cannot enter."
The Sunday Flash 1841