Welcome to this week's Link Dump, where our staffers will premiere "Strange Company: The Musical."The Thames of Old London.The family that slays together...Yet another "insurance murder."Van Gogh in Paris.A very tragic family.Los Angeles' first policewoman.Britain's most ghostly places.A planet's gruesome death.So, let's talk Danish Protest Pigs.An English "major UFO scare."The case for
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.
I’m thrilled to let everyone know that Ephemeral New York’s Gilded Age Riverside Drive walking tours are back and officially on the schedule this spring—and ready for sign-ups! More tours are planned through the year, but these are the first three of the season. Click the link for more information and how to get tickets. […]
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: […]
A driverless horse and wagon wandered aimlessly in the prairie
between Fort Gibson and Tahlequah in Indian Territory on December 3, 1883. Jim
Merrill heard the wagon come up to his front gate and went out to investigate.
In the bed of the wagon, he found the body of Arch Casey with a large bullet
hole in his left breast. The wagon tracks were clearly visible in the dirt. They
followed a
Soapy Smith STAR NotebookPage 18 - Original copy1884Courtesy of Geri Murphy(Click image to enlarge)
oapy Smith in Denver.Operating the prize package soap sell racket in 1884.This is page 18, the continuation of page 17, and dated March 28 - April 12, 1884, the continuation of deciphering Soapy Smith's "star" notebook from the Geri Murphy's collection. A complete introduction to this notebook
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 →
The Queer blunder made by the assistant of an undertaker in a house of mourning, Bridgeport, Conn. [more]
In a town near Bridgewater, Conn., death entered an estimable household at midnight, and an undertaker from the city was summoned by telegraph. On arriving at the house the undertaker sent his assistant to an upper chamber to prepare the corpse. Taking her box of bandages, sponges, &c., the assistant went, as she thought, to the room indicated, but instead she entered the room of a young lady, a member of the bereaved family, who had fallen sound asleep from exhaustion caused by her constant attention at the sick bed. The attendant had an old-fashioned tallow dip, which she set on the stand, and depositing her box on the bed by the side of the sleeping beauty she began operations. Takin a soft sponged she carefully washed the face observing, what was not unusual, that the flesh was still warm. The young lady slept on, but when a fine-toothed comb was drawn through some tangled crimps of her hair she awoke with a suddenness that upset bot the attendant and the box of implements. Both ladies gave a shriek that could have been heard blocks away, and as soon as a match could be struck, for the candle had been overturned and extinguished, explanations followed. The attendant believed the corpse had come to life, and the awakened damsel thought she had been disturbed by a burglar. The household below was aroused, and they followed the undertaker in quick succession to the scene of the disturbance. Although the death had cast a gloom over the household there was a quiet laugh when the situation was explained.
Reprinted from The National Police Gazette, October 9, 1886.
Why she chastised him—A Cincinnati woman gets up a lively street sensation by vigorously thrashing a man on the sidewalk, and explains to the crowd that he was her runaway husband, whom she had industriously sought for that sole purpose.[more]
A well dressed woman drew a crowd together in a Cincinnati street by striking a man across the face several times with a whip, and then finishing the punishment with her fists. She coolly explained that he was her runaway husband whom she had laboriously traced for the sole purpose of whipping him.
Reprinted from The National Police Gazette, October 11, 1879
"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