No. 550
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
November 17, 2020

Anxious For a Funeral

November 17, 2020
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 Welcome to this week's Link Dump, where our host is this very personable cat from around 1900.  Alas, I have no other information about this photo.A handy reminder that the 19th century seaborne trade wasn't always much fun.10th century priests go to court.The mysterious death of George Proctor.In which an Australian tree just wants to be left alone.The sad life of Marilyn Monroe's
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Strange Company - 9/18/2026
  [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
"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 Song Written in Memory ofThe St. George Murder.(excerpt) In St. George, Me., as you shall hear,It proves to be the fatal year -That Mrs. Meservey, in the prime of life.By a murderer's hand has lost her life....Nathan Hart is the murderer's name,Father and husband think of the shame,Did he forget all woman kind,Seek like a beast some prey to find?...God in His written book doth say, 
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Murder By Gaslight - 9/19/2026
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
A Newspaper Man’s Plight | The Edson Electric Garter.

Anxious For a Funeral

Anxious For a Funeral

Joseph Biberich, of San Francisco, has his wife measured for a coffin before she is dead. [more]

Joseph Biberich, a San Francisco. Cal., man, was arrested the other night for disturbing the peace. Blberich has been married only six months, and his wife lies on her deathbed, cared for by a nurse and attended by kind-hearted neighbors. Biberich got drunk and tried to drive tho nurse from the bedside.Then the police interfered.

The nurse says he has openly threatened to poison his wife, and has pinched and beaten her while she lay powerless in bed. He called in an undertaker and had his wife measured for a coflin. Then be purchased a burial lot and made arrangements for the funeral. His wife has some property which, the nurse says, Biberich wants to get hold of.


The National Police Gazette, October 10, 1891