No. 510
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
April 13, 2021

Giving the New Room a Lively Opening.

A Tenderfoot's experience in introducing the first billiard table in Arriba County, N. M.
April 13, 2021
...
...

Soapy Smith STAR NotebookPage 24 - Original copy1884Courtesy of Geri Murphy(Click image to enlarge) oapy Smith's "STAR" notebook page 24, 1882 and 1884, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Portland. Steamer Ancon. This post is on page 24, the last of the "STAR" notebook pages I have been deciphering and publishing for the last two years, since July 24, 2023. The page is two separate notes dated 1882
More...
Soapy Smith's Soap Box - 9/17/2025
Stop by this week as we explore what happened the week before the murders, Emma and Lizzie’s getaway to Fairhaven and New Bedford, and new imagery which will help to tell the story. The pears are almost ripe, August 4th is coming fast, and thoughts begin to turn to that house on Second Street once again. Follow us at https://www.facebook.com/lizziebordenwarpsandwefts/ !
More...
Lizzie Borden: Warps and Wefts - 7/26/2025
Via Newspapers.comSome author--I can’t recall who he or she was--once wrote that it made no sense that ghosts were always seen fully clothed.  Shouldn’t they all be naked?  That writer would be pleased with the following news item from the “Springfield News Sun,” August 22, 1999:BAGHDAD, Iraq - Ghost stories are pretty common around the old Iraqi city of Haditha. Still, when the ghosts
More...
Strange Company - 9/17/2025
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
More...
Executed Today - 11/13/2020
One Week Only! The Bloody Century Half Price!
More...
Murder By Gaslight - 9/16/2025
Deep roots anchor P.J. Clarke’s, the restaurant and bar occupying a Civil War–era brick building with its top two floors sheered off at Third Avenue and 55th Street. Converted into a tavern in 1884 when Irish laborers held a large presence in the developing neighborhood, the building was bought by Irish immigrant Patrick “Paddy” J. […]
More...
Ephemeral New York - 9/15/2025
  [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 […]
More...
Early American Crime - 2/7/2019
Serpent and Dove. | Woman Kicks Second Husband Out.

Giving the New Room a Lively Opening.

Lively-Opening

"I have a room now in Arriba county, N. M., and, a few days ago, a party that had come down from Callego canon took possession of my bar and room and run it for twenty-four hours. They drank all the liquor I had in stock, broke up several chairs, ripped a hole in a billiard table cloth and set an English Cattle Company superintendent and a cowboy to doing a prize dance on the billiard table. I kicked a little at this for fear, they'd break the slate bed of the table and It would take me weeks to get another. They stood me off with a gun, and served notice on me to keep cool and let my hair grow and they'd settle the score. They left me a tough-looking place, but they didn't kick a bit over the itemized bill I brought them of $190 for what they'd drank and smashed and had the use of. They were satisfied, they said, if I was, and they'd settle if the house would set 'em up. I opened the last three quarts of champagne in the county—three I'd been keeping for a girl, and set 'em up for 'em handsome, and they squared the score and went off peaceful as lambs It is a good country if you know how to take people there, and not be too fresh.”


From Illustrated Police News, February 27, 1886.