Via Newspapers.comGhosts may be alarming, but they’re usually not hazardous to your health. This following tale may be an exception. The “Altoona Times,” October 27, 1884:New York, October 25.--Dr. Charles C. King, of Buffalo, who is now here, tells a curious story. A month ago two men entered his office. One said he was suffering from a physical injury inflicted by a ghostly
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.
Soapy Smith's "star" notebookPage 11 - original copy1882Courtesy of Geri Murphy(Click image to enlarge)
OAPY SMITH'S "STAR" NOTEBOOKPart #11 - Page 11 This is part #11 - page 11, dated 1882. This is a continuation of deciphering Soapy Smith's "star" notebook from the Geri Murphy's collection. A complete introduction to this notebook can be seen on page 1. &
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: […]
Myron Buel.“He possesses an expressionless and almost idiotic countenance.” Illustrated Police News.Myron Buel was called “The Boy Murderer,” though he was 20
years old when he committed the crime. He was charged with the murder of Catherine
Richards in Plainfield, New York, on June 25, 1878. The following February he
was tried and convicted of first-degree murder.
Buel
On the northwest corner of First Avenue at First Street, on the border of the East Village and the Lower East Side, is a handsome red-brick tenement. Five stories high (with a two-story, beach house–like penthouse on the roof, but that’s a subject for another post), it’s a typical, well-kept building likely on this corner […]
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 Show Manger’s Faithless Wife—Her Paramour Dumped into the Mississippi, and the Guilty Woman Landed in the Woods.
A "summer snap" manager has been moving up the Mississippi from St. Louis for the last fortnight, exhibiting at various landing places on his way Northward. His domestic experiences on the trip led to a very dramatic scene just below Cairo, last week, in which the full strength of the company participated. The manager's wife, a comely and vivacious woman, considerably younger than her lord in years, had given cause for gossip in the show troupe by her evident partiality for the society of the treasurer of the show. There was no effort by either to conceal their liking for each other, and with reckless disregard of appearances, they were found frequently closeted together in different state rooms, with the door-key turned to shut out intruders. The manager was slow to suspicion, and when suspicion was no longer impossible to others, he remained in doubt. Representations by various members of the company as to improprieties of conduct they had witnessed did not convince him. "The broken pitcher goes to the well once too often," the Spaniards say, and the guilty wife and her paramour, regardless of warnings and their own knowledge that they were under surveillance, made the most of all their opportunities for intercourse. The patient husband of the guilty woman at last "got on to the racket dead." A Mississippi steamer is too narrow a field for a liaison to remain long and undiscovered. The wife and the treasurer were found in a position which left no room for doubt of their criminality, and the wrath of the wronged husband knew no bounds. Ordering the steamer headed for a lonely waste of forest on the Missouri shore, he summoned the show troupe together, told them plainly and with tears running freely down his cheeks, the story of his wrongs and the convincing character of the evidence lie had obtained. He ordered the band to play a dirge, and as the boat run her nose into shore, he put out the gang-plank and made the guilty woman go ashore across it. At the same time he pitched her paramour over the steamer's side into the river. "Now set her out into the channel," said the manager to the pilot.
"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