No. 877
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
July 28, 2026

Squabbling Socialists.

New York professors of piracy have a little domestic unpleasantness among themselves.
July 28, 2026
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Via Newspapers.comThe following story goes in that bulging file known as “restless ghosts of murder victims.”  The “Ithaca Journal,” August 12, 1922:Painesville, Ohio, Aug. 12--A "ghost" which farmers living near Paines Hollow say has been haunting them for seven years, is "at rest" today. It disappeared several days ago with the burial of the body of Henry Lipenstick, found in an abandoned
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Strange Company - 8/26/2026
  [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
(Illustrated Police News, April 3, 1886.)Agnes Anastasia Long moved out of her parents’ home in East Attleboro, Massachusetts, in April 1882. With her many male suiters, she was considered the black sheep of the family. Her father had enough of her bad behavior and, according to the Boston Herald, “refused to permit her to darken the threshold of his humble home.”She took a job at Streeter
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Murder By Gaslight - 8/22/2026
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
His Peep Ends Disastrously. | A Somnambulistic Feat.

Squabbling Socialists.

Squabbling-Socialists Trouble Among the Socialists.

An angry Socialist made himself obnoxious to his brethren who assembled in a saloon in East Fifth street the other night. The chairman, Anton Rabble, was denouncing the member of the Union League Club for declaring Anarchists should be suppressed, when the angry Socialists arose and said:

“I’m not going to be led by the nose any longer.”

“What is this?” said the others, turning around and looking at the speaker.

“Before I pay in my dues to-night I want to know what becomes of the money,” continued the latter. “We are not paid anything when we are sick. For the past six months I and the others have been paying $1 a week. Now, who gets this money? Is it Most?”

“Shut up!” “Hit him in the head!” “The man is mad!” “Kick him out!” shouted the others.

“I’ll brain the first man that touches me with his glass,” exclaimed the man, “I only ask a simple question. There ought to be no difficulty in explaining where the money goes.”

The chairman and treasurer looked queerly at each other, but did not answer.

“I have a wife and five children to support,” continued the man, “We have been living meagerly for the past six months. I became a member of your club on your promises that Most would make a change. The Astors and the Vanderbilts will never divide, I’m afraid.

“You must have patience,” said the chairman.

“I’m sick of waiting any longer. Mr. Chairman, if I’m not too impertinent, I would like to know what you work at.”

“I am a cigarmaker,” was the reply.

“And where do you work?”

“What is that your business?” said the chairman angrily.

“It is my business. I know that you haven’t done a stroke of work for the past six months. I take that back. You did work two days when your wife had you arrested for abandonment. Then you worked for two days on the island before you obtained your release on bail. You have not done any work since, but live on our money."

The chairman became so excited that he fell into a fit, and the meeting ended in an uproar. The man who raised the trouble won five members to his side, and they left the place together.


National Police Gazette, June 5, 1886.