No. 698
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
April 18, 2025

A Way Out of the Sunday Difficulty.

Baffled Policeman, - Bedad, I can't arrest a machine!
October 22, 2018
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 Welcome to the latest Link Dump!Our host for this week stole a pig, and away did run!Reptiles are smarter than you might think.The many lives of Anne Frank.Scientists may have found Noah's Ark.  Or maybe not.  We shall see.Solving the mystery of a missing mountain climber.The Easter Bunny's controversial history.1891 sea combat in the Pacific.Science has found a way for humans to
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Strange Company - 4/18/2025
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 Titanic claimed several well-known New Yorkers, some with pedigreed last names like Astor and Guggenheim. But perhaps the most famous passengers who perished after the ship met its fate in the North Atlantic on April 14, 1912 were Isidor and Ida Straus. Their devotion to each other in the last hours of their lives […]
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Ephemeral New York - 4/14/2025
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, December 29, 1888.Franklin Asbury Hawkins murdered his mother on October 29, 1887, and dumped her body, beaten and shot, by the side of the road in Islip, Long Island. 22-year-old Hawkins was angered that his mother objected to his desire to marry Hattie Schrecht, a servant girl. Hawkins was easily convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to be hanged in December
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Murder By Gaslight - 4/12/2025
Soapy Smith STAR NotebookPage 19 - Original copy1884Courtesy of Geri Murphy(Click image to enlarge) oapy Smith begins an empire in Denver.Operating the prize package soap sell racket in 1884.This is page 19, the continuation of page 18, and dated April 14 - May 5, 1884, the continuation of deciphering Soapy Smith's "star" notebook from the Geri Murphy's collection. A complete introduction to
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Soapy Smith's Soap Box - 4/3/2025
  [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
Ringling Bros.' World's Greatest Shows! | A Surmise.

A Way Out of the Sunday Difficulty.

Sunday Difficulty


Reprinted from Puck, June 1, 1887.

Canadian-Customs

"Madam, is there anything dutiable in this bag?"

Custom Inspections on the Canadian Frontier.

To be rudely awakened from one’s slumber at anytime, and under any circumstances, is harrowing, but to be shaken into a doubtful wakefulness by a grim official in order that your baggage may be examined for the purpose of ascertaining if you are concealing contraband or dutiable articles in you impediments, is the worst form of awaking: a clear exemplification of adding insult to injury. On the border line which divides Canada from the United States the unhappy traveler is subjected to the “uncanny” hands of the vigilant and lynx-eyed Custom House officer, a creature in whose leathern bosom no spark of human sympathy remains. Remorselessly and with wooden visage he informs you, in a dull sing-song, that you most expose the contents of your baggage to his gimlet gaze. What matters it to him that you protest—that you solemnly assert that you have nothing to declare? He has a certain duty to perform, and this duty he means to get through, not caring a whit for the outraged feelings of the rudely awakened sleeper. Elderly ladies of excitable and fretful temperament are his daintiest morsels. To their protests, examinations and treats of vengeance, he turns the deafest of ears. Funny old gentlemen ,he calmly sits upon. Irate youths he harries. Tearful maidens he treats with disdain. He is a fiend of the most exasperating type—unendurably exasperating, he never affords the satisfaction of “talking back.”


Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, February 10, 1883.