No. 796
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
February 11, 2025

This Soubrette Played Faro.

To win a bet she played in the "combination" at Butte Mont.
February 11, 2025
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Via Newspapers.comThe following story goes in that bulging file known as “restless ghosts of murder victims.”  The “Ithaca Journal,” August 12, 1922:Painesville, Ohio, Aug. 12--A "ghost" which farmers living near Paines Hollow say has been haunting them for seven years, is "at rest" today. It disappeared several days ago with the burial of the body of Henry Lipenstick, found in an abandoned
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Strange Company - 8/26/2026
  [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
(Illustrated Police News, April 3, 1886.)Agnes Anastasia Long moved out of her parents’ home in East Attleboro, Massachusetts, in April 1882. With her many male suiters, she was considered the black sheep of the family. Her father had enough of her bad behavior and, according to the Boston Herald, “refused to permit her to darken the threshold of his humble home.”She took a job at Streeter
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Murder By Gaslight - 8/22/2026
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
Concert Saloons Changed to Skating Rinks. | Pick-pockets "Working the Crowd.''

This Soubrette Played Faro.

A Woman's Flat-Irony

Miss Sallie Utterback, of Shoals, Near Vincennes, Indiana, knocks out a man with a waggin’ tongue.

James Ritchey a traveling man, had been accused of making many adverse remarks concerning Miss Sallie Utterback, a domestic at the Commercial Hotel, in Shoals, Ind., besides writing her an insulting letter. Miss Utterback had always borne a good reputation. Few days ago Ritchey called on her to apologize for the injury he had done. He was met at the door by the young lady, who hurled a smoothing iron at him, striking him over the right eye and cracking his skull. Miss Utterback continued the attack in her fury, and would perhaps have killed him if it had not been for the hotel proprietor, who took her away. Ritchey is in a bad condition.


Reprinted from National Police Gazette, 11/30/1889.