Welcome to this week's Link Dump, where it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!A deadly box of chocolates.A brief history of Devil's Island.A suburban Messalina.What may be the oldest story on Earth.A bit of current events weirdness: a mysterious man who keeps showing up at car crashes.A meeting with Napoleon on St. Helena.Christmas and an ancient Roman god.The famed Lincolnshire
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.
At the end of a lovely brownstone row in Bedford-Stuyvesant is an empty space. Enclosed by a chain-link fence, the patchy ground here has been cleared of debris, save for some litter and a pile of wood remnants from a 2022 demolition. When these remnants are finally carted off, it’ll mark the demise of the […]
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: […]
In 1876, Kate Hambrick married Bob Southern in Picken’s County, Georgia. That Christmas, Kate’s father held a party for the community, and against Kate’s wishes, he invited Bob’s former girlfriend, Narcissa Cowan. When the party started, Kate warned Narcissa not to accept or encourage any attention from Bob. Her warnings were disregarded, and as the evening progressed, Bob led Narcissa to the
Soapy STAR notebookPage 14 - Original copy1882Courtesy of Geri Murphy(Click image to enlarge)
OAPY SMITH IN CALIFORNIA♫ California's the place you outta to beSo he loaded up his grip and moved to Grass Valley ♪
This is page 14, dated 1882, the continuation of deciphering Soapy Smith's "star" notebook from the Geri Murphy's collection. A complete introduction to this notebook can be seen on
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 →
Harry Sommerville, of Lexington, Ky., is snatched from his bed by the mistress he had repudiated in order to marry another girl. [more]
A special from Lexington, Ky., Oct. 6, says: Several weeks ago Harry Sommerville, formerly one of Lexington’s most gifted and promising young artists, married Mrs. Belle Payton, widow of a Cincinnati saloon keeper. The match was not suitable to the lady’s relatives, with whom she has been living, and who had Sommerville in their employ, and the new voyagers on the matrimonial sea were driven away. They went to board with another relative of Mrs. Sommerville, but here their troubles multiplied. A few nights ago the wife of Alonzo Barnett, a conductor on the Cincinnati Southern Railroad, drove to Sommerville’s boarding house, and, going to his bedroom, where he and his wife were in bed, she commanded and forced him to get up, dress and go with her. Since then Mrs. Sommerville has never seen her husband, and she has fallen sick with fever, and is now at St. Joseph’s Hospital. It seems that Sommerville had been intimate with the Barnett woman before his marriage, and that as soon as she heard of it she went for him. All parties are well known here.
Reprinted from the National Police Gazette, October 29, 1887
"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