No. 675
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
January 24, 2023

In a Deadly Folding-Bed.

January 24, 2023
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Via Newspapers.comOn this blog, I’ve covered what many Fortean experts like to call “Anomalous Falls From the Sky,” but this is a new one for me.  Lousy actors and criminals in the stocks used to get pelted with tomatoes, but it’s a bit unusual for modern-day suburbanites to get such treatment.  The following is from a syndicated 1998 Dave Barry column which summarizes the incident.&
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Strange Company - 8/19/2026
  [Editor’s note: Guest writer, Peter Dickson, lives in West Sussex, England and has been working with microfilm copies of The Duncan Campbell Papers from the State Library of NSW, Sydney, Australia. The following are some of his analyses of what he has discovered from reading these papers. Dickson has contributed many transcriptions to the Jamaica […]
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Early American Crime - 2/7/2019
"As his son I am proud of hisefforts to succeed in life"Jefferson Randolph Smith IIIArtifact #93-2Jeff Smith collection(Click image to enlarge) oapy's son hires a legal firm to stop the defamation of his father's name. At age 30, Jefferson Randolph Smith III, Soapy and Mary's oldest son, was protecting his father's legacy and his mother's reputation from "libel" and scandal. He was also
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Soapy Smith's Soap Box - 10/13/2025
 Ida Quinlan and Sophia Grant.Mrs. Ida Quinlan went out to buy a pair of stockings at around 9:00 on the night of February 1, 1896, leaving her baby in the care of her sister, Mrs. Sophia Grant. She took a streetcar to the store several miles away and returned to the house at around 11:00. Entering the sitting room, she was surprised to find the drawers of the chiffoniers pulled out and
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Murder By Gaslight - 8/15/2026
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
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Executed Today - 11/13/2020
$20-Bills on a Cane. | Thrilling Railroad Accident.

In a Deadly Folding-Bed.

Deadly Folding-Bed Two sleeping girls are imprisoned and one of them is nearly killed at Louisville, KY. 

Miss Lena Summers and Miss Nellie Mitchell were caught in a folding-bed recently in the fashionable boarding-house of Mrs. H.L. Mitchell, in Broadway, at Louisville, Ky. Miss Mitchell was not much hurt, but Miss Summers was unconscious when rescued, and has not yet regained her senses. No bones were broken, but her face is swelled, and the doctors believe she has sustained internal injuries that may prove dangerous. The accident happened about 2 o’clock in the morning. The house was aroused by the smothered shrieks of the girls. The bed was let down with difficulty, but in time to save them from suffocation. The girls had been asleep at the time, and the cause of the bed’s queer action cannot bue surmised. It is the second time it has acted in this way. Si months ago it flew up while occupied by a Miss Johnson, who was, however, rescored unhurt but badly scared. The bed is of the ordinary pattern.


Reprinted from the National Police Gazette, December 8, 1894