"The Witches' Cove," Follower of Jan MandijnWelcome to this week's Link Dump!While you read, enjoy some music from the Strange Company HQ orchestra.The Clan-na-Gael murder trial.St Jadwiga of Anjou, who also happened to be King of Poland.Some vintage student confessions.If you like fart jokes, boy, have I got the post for you.This week in Russian Weird looks at the mystery of an alleged spy
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.
Riverside Drive, opened in 1880 and intended to rival to Fifth Avenue as the home of Manhattan’s newly minted millionaires, isn’t just a breathtaking avenue for a stroll. Its mansions and memorials holds secrets and stories. Who was the silent screen actress whose famous paramour bought her a Riverside Drive townhouse close to his family […]
An article I recently wrote for the British online magazine, New Politic, is now available online. The article, “The Criminal Origins of the United States of America,†is about British convict transportation to America, which took place between the years 1718 and 1775, and is the subject of my book, Bound with an Iron Chain: […]
Maggie Thompson, a pretty eight-year-old girl living on Merchant Avenue in Cleveland, Ohio, mysteriously disappeared on May 9, 1889. She was coming from school, just two blocks away, but she never reached her home. Detectives, police constables, and private citizens searched the neighborhood to no avail. They found no trace of Maggie.In early June, Joseph Shovell, who lived seven doors away from
CHIEF OF CONSThe Morning Times(Cripple Creek, Colorado)February 15, 1896Courtesy of Mitch Morrissey
ig Ed Burns robs a dying man?
Mitch Morrissey, a Facebook friend and historian for the Denver District Attorney’s Office, found and published an interesting newspaper piece on "Big Ed" Burns, one of the most notorious characters in the West. Burns was a confidence man and
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 →
The sensation of sensations at St. Louis is the arrest of A.B. Wakefield, one of the proprietors of the Grand Opera House. It came about on a warrant sworn to by William Hyde, the editor of the Republican. The accusation is that Wakefield has been circulating statements that Hyde, Chief of Police McDonough and others have been running a gigantic gambling ring and making large sums of money, and that they dictated what houses should run, and shared the profits.
Among the documents that have been collected against Wakefield it may be here mentioned is one that relates to a spicy scandal, in which the Opera House is mixed up. Charles Duffey makes an affidavit that he was employed as an errand boy, etc., at the Opera House by Wakefield, and that when the Strakosch opera was in St. Louis Wakefield one day asked Duffey if there was not some way of seeing into "the dressing-rooms of the stars" was answered in the affirmative; that he could go upon the roof and look down through the skylights.
Duffey then goes on to say that Wakefield had a canvas laid down on the roof of the theatre, so that he could lie down on the canvas, and that he went up of nights and remained there for hours looking at the sights below, and that he continued this practice as long as he (Duffey) stayed there, and that Wakefield sometimes took a friend with him. Duffey makes prominent mention of Kellogg and Cary in his affidavit. There is any amount of information now to be had against Wakefield. Everybody is ready to tell of something in his remarkable history. They say he came to St. Louis as a three-card-monte man, and that he had been operating on steamboats running to New Orleans.
"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