Via Newspapers.comIntroduce me to a ghostly hamster who looks out for her favorite sports team, and you have pretty much made my day. The “Reading Evening Post,” May 3, 1996:Forget Uri Geller, Reading Football Club were saved from relegation by a dead hamster buried in the goal mouth. Royals fan Vicky Lowe is convinced the spirit of her heroic pet played a part in Reading's 3-0
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.
There’s a stone fortress with a battlement-like central tower and a double staircase entrance at the corner of Riverside Drive and 140th Street. As striking as this fortified castle is when you encounter it from the sidewalk, viewing it from the West Side Highway helps you truly absorb its out-of-place Medieval feel. Five stories high […]
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 […]
Sly Things On the Quiet"—Life in the Basement and the Bedroom.
The story of the queer incidents occurring in the relations of servant and master, chambermaid or kitchen cook and her "missus" is vividly set forth by our artists. There is no occasion to indicate to the observing reader the very palpable difference which exists in the styles of female servants as preferred by the old man and the young ones of a household, as compared with the style of female servant which is acceptable to the "old lady." Youth and beauty, comeliness of feature, symmetry of form, plumpness of figure, a small foot and a shapely and suggestive ankle—none of these things commend the applicant for a situation as servant to the favor of the "missus." On the other hand, attractive qualities of personal form are to her the most serious of objections. The older, the uglier, the more ill-shapen and juiceless the applicant, the more she is likely to obtain employment and find favor. Give the old man and the boys a chance, which they obtain occasionally, to make a selection of a house-girl, and you'll surely see the most luscious and bewitching creature obtainable duly brought home and installed in state, and it is very certain that there hasn't been any great amount of inquiry into her capacity for work or her knowledge of her duties. In a man's eyes, a servant girl answers if she's only pretty and complacent.
Other aspects of life up stairs in the chambers, life down stairs in the basement, and life on the stairways are graphically set forth by our artists. The stolen kiss on the stairway, the little "buzz" with the chambermaid engaged in her duties, the high old times which the old man or his sons have with "our girl" when the old lady is out for an evening, the high times which reign in the basement when the family is away for the summer. Why explain all this to the hundred thousand or two of POLICE NEWS readers, who all know just how it is themselves? Life and human nature are the same the world over, in high life and low life. The "belles of the kitchen" are no better and, certainly, no worse than their female superiors in station. They have all the virtues of their sex and no more of the vices than their mistresses. It needs no text or description to tell the story—our illustrations vividly convey the idea, and whatever is lacking. the reader's only knowledge and observation will readily supply.
"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