[Note: I published this story on my World of Poe blog back in 2012--13 years ago, ye gods, where does the time go?!--but I thought it had enough of a Strange Company vibe to include it here.]In October of 1845, the corpse of a prostitute named Maria (or Mary Ann) Bickford was found in her Boston boardinghouse lodgings, her throat gruesomely slashed. Her former lover, a wealthy, married man named
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.
Lenox Hill, Murray Hill, Carnegie Hill, Golden Hill—Manhattan used to have a lot of hills, and the island’s once-bumpy topography lent itself to neighborhood names still in use today. (Well, not Golden Hill, but I’m partial to bringing it back.) But one true hill that remains on the streetscape spans Lexington Avenue between 102nd and […]
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: […]
Illustrated Police News, Nov. 10, 1883.Zora Burns was a beautiful and captivating young woman with
“…abundant hair of yellow-golden tint clustered about features as perfectly
regular as those which Phidias chiseled from the marble of Greece. Her form was
grace and symmetry personified, and despite her lack of educational advantages,
her natural tact and quickness of intellect atoned in great
(Click image to enlarge)
LUBFOOT" HALL - CON MANSoapy Smith's mentor? Recently, I saw two Youtube videos on "Soapy" Smith. Both chose to use the old error filled biographies as sources. Sometimes I leave a comment, letting the author and visitors know some of the errors in the videos and letting them know that there are published true histories of Soapy if they so desire. In
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 →
Why she chastised him—A Cincinnati woman gets up a lively street sensation by vigorously thrashing a man on the sidewalk, and explains to the crowd that he was her runaway husband, whom she had industriously sought for that sole purpose.[more]
A well dressed woman drew a crowd together in a Cincinnati street by striking a man across the face several times with a whip, and then finishing the punishment with her fists. She coolly explained that he was her runaway husband whom she had laboriously traced for the sole purpose of whipping him.
Reprinted from The National Police Gazette, October 11, 1879
Surf Swimming at Hawaii, Sandwich Islands. [more]
Faahee, or surf-swimming, is a favorite pastime with the natives of the Sandwich Islands. According to Ellis, a recent writer, “Individuals of all ranks and ages, and both sexes, follow this sport with great avidity. They usually select the openings in the reefs or entrances of some of the hays, where the long, heavy billows rolled in unbroken majesty upon the reef or the shore. They used a small board, which they called papa faahee—swam from the beach to a considerable distance, sometimes nearly a mile—watched the swell of the wave, and when it reached them, they mounted on its summit, and amid the foam and spray rode on the crest of the wave to the shore; sometimes they halted among the coral rocks, over which the waves broke in splendid confusion. When they approached the shore, they slid off the board, which they grasped in the hand, and either fell behind the wave or plunged toward the deep and allowed it to pass over their heads.
“Sometimes they were thrown with violence upon beach, or among the rocks on the edges of the reef. So much at home, however, do they feel in the water, that it is seldom any accident occurs.
“I have often seen among the border of the reef, forming the boundary line to the harbor of Fare in Huahine, from 50 to 100 persons, of all ages, sporting like so many porpoises in the surf that has been rolling with foam and violence toward the land; sometimes mounted on top of the wave, and almost enveloped in spray, at other times plunging beneath the mass of water that has swept like mountains over them, cheering and animating each other ;and by the noise and shouting they made, rendering the roar of the sea and the dashing of the surf comparatively imperceptible.”
Reprinted from Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, April 7, 1866.
"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