No. 699
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
April 29, 2025

Done Up by Dizzy Blondes.

A special from Canajoharie, Sept 26, says: Duncan Clark, manager of Clark’s Female Minstrels, will p
June 20, 2016
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Pastor Johann Gottfried Schupart (1677-1729) was one of the leading German Lutherans of his day, becoming Professor of Theology and eventually Rector at Giesing University.  However, the part of his career that has earned him a place in this blog deals with his lengthy battles with a supernatural force that he naturally described as “the devil,” but what we today would call an unusually
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Strange Company - 4/28/2025
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
A scrubby hill, a dollhouse-like chapel, a little boy leaning against a pole, a shack advertising five-cent Coca-Cola ice cream sodas. Are we really in New York City here? Despite the country-ish surroundings in the photo, we sure are in New York—in 1914, at least. Take a look at the street sign showing the cross […]
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Ephemeral New York - 4/28/2025
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
James Fisk Jr. was a robber baron, stock manipulator, and financial fraudster. In spite of this, he was a popular, much-loved public figure. On January 6, 1872, he was assassinated on the staircase of the Grand Central Hotel in New York City by his friend and sometime business partner, Edward “Ned”
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Murder By Gaslight - 4/26/2025
Soapy Smith STAR NotebookPage 19 - Original copy1884Courtesy of Geri Murphy(Click image to enlarge) oapy Smith begins an empire in Denver.Operating the prize package soap sell racket in 1884.This is page 19, the continuation of page 18, and dated April 14 - May 5, 1884, the continuation of deciphering Soapy Smith's "star" notebook from the Geri Murphy's collection. A complete introduction to
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Soapy Smith's Soap Box - 4/3/2025
  [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
A Wild Girl in a Connecticut Swamp. | They Ran a Snide Game.

Done Up by Dizzy Blondes.

Dizzy-Blondes

A special from Canajoharie, Sept 26, says: Duncan Clark, manager of Clark’s Female Minstrels, will probably not visit the Mohawk valley again very soon. 

He was arrested in Utica for conducting an immoral show, in Herkimer and Little Falls he found the opera house for which his agent had contracted barred against him and this morning was severely pounded by members of his company at the Palatine Bridge depot. He endeavored to leave some of the troupe without paying them, and the result was the men and women, seven in number, attacked him in the depot and pounded him most unmercifully. The troupe boarded a train for Johnstown, but only got as far as Fonda, where another free fight was indulged in. Clark’s chief assailants were Lew Reynolds, Wm. Gallagher, A. M. Devere and several women. It is said Clark was cut with a sword by one of the women. At Fonda the troupe were all placed under arrest. Clark is reported dangerously hurt. He is well known in New York theatrical circles.


Reprinted from The National Police Gazette, October 15, 1887.