No. 691
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
February 24, 2025

The Deathly Opium-Drug.

The Demon Work of the Chinese Poppy Poison.
April 27, 2021
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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
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Murder By Gaslight - 2/22/2025
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 […]
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Ephemeral New York - 2/24/2025
(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
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Soapy Smith's Soap Box - 2/23/2025
[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
More...
Strange Company - 2/24/2025
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 […]
More...
Ephemeral New York - 2/24/2025
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.
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Lizzie Borden: Warps and Wefts - 2/12/2024
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
More...
Murder By Gaslight - 2/22/2025
[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
More...
Strange Company - 2/24/2025
(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
More...
Soapy Smith's Soap Box - 2/23/2025
His Mouth Full of Ivory. | Serpent and Dove.

The Deathly Opium-Drug.

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