No. 696
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
March 30, 2025

Peeped at the Bride.

A little incident that marred actor Lawrence Hanley’s wedding night in Terre Haute, Ind.
April 3, 2017
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 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
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Strange Company - 3/28/2025
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
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 […]
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Ephemeral New York - 3/24/2025
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
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
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Murder By Gaslight - 3/29/2025
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
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Soapy Smith's Soap Box - 3/11/2025
  [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
Pugilists in Petticoats. | A Needed Addition to the Park Police of Every City.

Peeped at the Bride.

Peeped at the Bride

A little incident that marred actor Lawrence Hanley’s wedding night in Terre Haute, Ind.[more]

Lawrence Hanley, the tragedian, and Miss Edith Lemmert, his leading lady, were married the other night at the Terre Haute, Ind., House, the Rev. F. S. Dunham, pastor of the Episcopal Church of Albion, N. Y. officiating. Clarence H. Taylor, Mr. Hanley's leading man, was groomsman, and Miss Louise Ingersoll, also of the company, attended the bride. After the ceremony, there was a wedding supper served at the hotel.

The bride is the daughter of Paul Lemmert, of Los Angeles, Cal., and was born in Cincinnati. She has been with Mr. Hanley two years playing "Juliet" and other leading parts.

An unpleasant Incident occurred I a few hours after the ceremony. Rooms. 68 and 69 adjoin each other, Mr. and Mrs. Hanley occupied one of theme rooms. and J. E. Kahlo. a drummer for a Chicago millinery house, the other. While Mr. Henley was down stairs in the hotel office Mrs. Hanley got into a bathtub. She was suddenly startled to find that the man who occupied the next room was peeping in on her through a place in the transom which he had scraped the paint. Then he knocked and asked what time it was.

Mrs. Hanley informed her husband of their neighbor’s actions and he demanded admittance to the next room. Not being let in, he broke in the door, and dragging the drummer out of bed by a leg, was proceeding to administer a severe drubbing to him, when the night clerk, hearing the noise, dispatched a. policeman up stairs, who prevented what might have been serious hostilities. Kahlo was on his knees begging for his life when the policeman arrived.

The affair caused much excitement. The policeman took both Mr. Hanley and the drummer to Police Headquarters, Mrs. Hanley accompanying her husband baud. After hearing their statements they were both discharged. The drummer threatened to file an affidavit for assault against Mr. Hanley, but as the feeling was very pronounced against him he did not do so.


Reprinted from National Police Gazette, November 11, 1893.