Via Newspapers.comThis is one of those odd news items that is difficult to place in any of the usual categories. The “Lancaster (Pennsylvania) Examiner,” August 25, 1875:The Reading Eagle, of Wednesday, contains the following queer and quaint details of a strange affair, to which, it says, Mr. Jacob S. Peters, of Millersville, was an eyewitness. We give the article entire, and let it go for
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.
I’d never heard of the Viennese Lantern until I stumbled upon this postcard. But the colors and the sketches made me curious about an era when restaurants entertained diners with cabaret shows every night featuring chanteuses and violins. Located since 1947 on the ground floor of an Art Deco apartment tower at 242 East 79th […]
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: […]
Charles
Butler, aged 25, owned a farm two miles north of Highgate Centre, Vermont,
eleven miles from St. Albans. He lived there with his lovely 21-year-old wife
Alice. Also in the household were Charles’s elderly father and Edward
Tatro, a 20-year-old French-Canadian farmhand.
Charles
had to go to Highgate Centre on June 6, 1876, and he asked Alice to join him.
She declined, saying she felt
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 →
A wolf in search of a square meal helps himself to a baby; Clintonville, PA.
A one year old baby was taken from its cradle by a wolf, during the absence from the house of its parents, who reside on the mountain near Clintonville, Cambria County, Penn., and no traces of the body or any portion of it have ever been found.
"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