No. 697
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
April 11, 2025

Raiding the Joints.

Superintendent Walling makes a raid on a Sixth Avenue opium den and gathers in a motley crowd of smo
September 15, 2015
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 Welcome to this week's Link Dump!We'll even get poetic.Some home decor from the Tudor era.Leigh Hunt, the critic that royalty just couldn't shut up.This week in Russian Weird:  An alien revenge massacre in Siberia?  And the CIA figures in all this.  Because of course they do.Related: An astronomer struggles with the UFO mystery.A "layer-out" of the dead.Princetonians saved "
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Police Officers Farson and Conway were patrolling the neighborhood of Orleans and Washinton Streets in Memphis, Tennessee, on the night of April 28, 1890, when they heard a cry of,” Help! Murder!” They hurried to the source and opened the door to find a woman lying on the floor with a heavy-set man over her with a death grip on her throat. They arrested the man and took him to Central Station,
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Raiding the Joints.

Raiding the Joints

Superintendent Walling makes a raid on a Sixth Avenue opium den and gathers in a motley crowd of smokers.[more]

Superintendent Walling has made up his mind to rid the city of opium joints, and last Saturday made a successful raid upon on of the dens on Sixth Avenue. Seven women and twenty-four men were marched to the police station. Monday morning they were arraigned at Jefferson Market. They were all young and well dress. The men looked like well-to-do clerks. Superintendent Walling told Justice O’Reilly that he would like to have examples made of the prisoners, as the smoking of opium was an evil that should be stopped. The Justice thought so too and had separate complaints drawn against each prisoner. It was 1 o’clock in the afternoon before all the complaints were made out, and the young man in the plaid suit was called to the bar. He said his name was Joseph Burnett, and he was charged with a misdemeanor in keeping and maintaining an opium joint. He said he was not guilty and that he knew nothing of the business that was carried on in the rear of his restaurant. He was held in $1,000 bail.


Reprinted from the National Police Gazette, January10, 1885.