No. 89
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
June 26, 2012

Torturing a Lover.

June 26, 2012
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Tag: New York City

Miss Eva G. Vallee

The Pretty Female Prisoner, Simulates a Fit and Attempts Suicide in the Central Police Station.

10/14/2025

"Large Days" of the Larkers.

Around the Clock with a Wall Street Youth.

10/7/2025

A Man in a Black Mask.

Disguised as the Devil.

7/1/2025

Night on the Docks.

How the rising of the moon transforms the river-side of the great metropolis from a busy mart of trade to a quiet retreat for the inhabitants of the crowded tenement houses.

3/4/2025

Pick-pockets "Working the Crowd.''

Getting into the Cars at 4th Avenue and 27th Street, New York.

2/4/2025

Wantons' Wiles.

The Bad Girls of Gotham and Their New Schemes for Man-Catching.

9/10/2024

Rogues' Gallery and Mementoes.

New York City Police, 1887.

5/14/2024

The Temptation of the New York St. Anthony.

A terrible struggle for member of "The Finest."

3/13/2024

Crowds Watch the Bicycle Race.

Wheelers break records in the six-day contest in Madison Square Garden, New York.

1/9/2024

A Lunatics Ball.

Ball of lunatics at the Asylum, Blackwell's Island, East River, N. Y.

10/10/2023

The Opium Dens.

New York City - The opium dens in Pell and Mott Streets - How the opium habit is developed.

7/11/2023

Skating in Central Park.

1/10/2023

Snares for the Unwary.

The "Sawed-Door Game" on a Gudgeon.

5/17/2022

Pandemonium in a Tumult.

Raid on the Broadway concert saloons, New York.

4/26/2022

Photography's Abuse by Blackmailers.

The Scheme of a Conscienceless Adventurer in New York - "Chippies" his Accomplices in Trapping Old Sinners into Hush-Money Situations.

9/28/2021

Pedal Advertising.

How two Dizzy Girls Advertised Their Charms and Political Faith.

11/5/2018

A Velocipede Riding-School.

Scene in a velocipede riding-school, New York City.

9/10/2018

Run on Max Greger's Hungarian Wines.

No. 232 Fifth Avenue, corner Twenty-Seventh Street, New York.

7/16/2018

Broadway Omnibus Racing Season.

Opening of the Broadway Omnibus Racing Season of 1884.

6/25/2018

The Lady Flashes Dance.

Dizzy cigarette girls have a most hilarious time in the Lyceum Opera House, this city.

8/21/2017

Their Sex's Worst Foes.

How the gilded vice of the metropolis fishes for its victims in the public streets, and innocent confidence is trapped by the fine feathers which disguise foul birds.

6/26/2017

What a New York Girl Did.

A vain girl makes a fireman wait until she fixes her hair preferring to risk her life rather than appear in public not “made up’; New York.

5/22/2017

An Easy Winner.

Architect John M. Merrick of New York triumphantly finishes his thirtieth canvas-back duck on the thirtieth consecutive day

5/1/2017

Robbing a Corpse.

Mrs. Day is accused of stealing a ring from the finger of dead Sophie Ahrens as she lay in her coffin.

2/27/2017

Another Steamboat Disaster.

New York City, -- The Steamboat Riverdale blown up, August 28th – Rescuing the passengers.

10/3/2016

A Man under Her Bed.

Had Miss Baker looked under the bed before making her toilet she would have postponed it.

9/26/2016

Reward.

The Post Office Department will pay the sum of ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS REWARD, each, for the capture of Joseph Killoran, Harry Russell, and Charles Allen.

7/25/2016

An Irishman and a Yankee Settle a Dispute.

An Irishman and a Yankee Settle a Dispute Across the Breakfast Table at their Boarding House in New York.

7/18/2016

The Kissing Quadrille.

A New Attraction to the Ball Room Invented by a New York Genius for the Benefit of Bashful Men and Ugly Women.

4/26/2016

The Terrific Leap at Niblo’s Garden, From an Aerial Apparatus.

The original and daring aerial representation by Thomas Hanlon, now performed by him every evening at Niblo's Garden.

1/11/2016

Raiding the Joints.

Superintendent Walling makes a raid on a Sixth Avenue opium den and gathers in a motley crowd of smokers.

9/15/2015

A Hot Day in New York.

While New York is by no means the hottest city in the country, there have been a few days during the present season when the temperature reached a height altogether incompatible with human comfort.

7/20/2015

Oscar Wilde Gets a Reception.

Too, too, utterly utter! Remarkable effect of the appearance of Oscar Wilde, the apostle of Aestheticism, on the streets of New York City.

6/24/2015

What it Has Come To.

A scene from feal life in a sixth avenue smoking car—giddy girls who believe in taking a “whiff of the weed” in public as well as in priv

6/22/2015

Concerning Sensational Methods.

There is a class of publications whose lives depend upon their successful appeal to vicious instincts.

6/1/2015

Chorus Girls Fight.

Two of the charming girls who pose as "living pictures" in Rice's "1492" have a wordy war, which ends in a hand-to-hand conflict.

5/18/2015

Mdlle. Carlotta de Berg.

Mdlle. Carlotta de Berg, at the New York Circus, Fourteenth Street.

5/5/2015

Skating in Central Park.

Winter sports in the metropolis—a skating scene in Central Park.

2/9/2015

A Substitute for a Wife.

10/27/2014

The Green-Eyed Monster.

10/14/2014

The Drama of Life,

9/1/2014

Beautiful Forever.

7/29/2014

Scenes from “In the Tenderloin.”

6/16/2014

Collegians at Football.

12/10/2013

Hungry Joe.

The conmen of New York City were noted for their colorful nicknames: "Paper Collar Joe", "Grand Central Pete" Jimmy "the Kid" and the greatest of all "Hungry Joe".

10/20/2013

Lessons in Opium-Smoking.

10/8/2013
Via Newspapers.comThis account of your basic friendly neighborhood monster appeared in the “Mexico Weekly Ledger,” December 13, 1883:MEXICO, Mo., December 8.--The neighborhood of Hopewell Church, near this city, is much excited over the appearance in the locality of a strange creature, which is thought by the credulous to be a ghost, and which is a puzzle at least to the most skeptical. The
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  [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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"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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 A Song Written in Memory ofThe St. George Murder.(excerpt) In St. George, Me., as you shall hear,It proves to be the fatal year -That Mrs. Meservey, in the prime of life.By a murderer's hand has lost her life....Nathan Hart is the murderer's name,Father and husband think of the shame,Did he forget all woman kind,Seek like a beast some prey to find?...God in His written book doth say, 
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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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Ararat: City of Refuge. | Napoleon's Oraculum.

Torturing a Lover.

Torturing A Lover

Louisiana, Sept. 1882 - A masher who fools a Louisiana girl is tied hand and foot, smeared with molasses and laid in the sun to be tortured by flies until he consents to marry.[more]

A Young Masher Fools a Girl in Louisiana and is Taken into Camp.

A young couple arrived in New Orleans on the 20th ult. Who excited some remark.  They were a bride and bridegroom. He was wrapped in bandages, limped and groaned at every motion as if he had been put through a threshing machine and was sore in every joint. She stuck close to him and watched him as a cat does a mouse. He could not make a move but that she was on his heels ready to pounce on him should he attempt to make his escape.

Several attempts were made to interview the young man but they were only partly successful, owing to the watchfulness of the catlike bride. It was ascertained however that he was a drummer for a New York house who had in his journeying through Louisiana scraped an acquaintance with the young woman. He had used all his metropolitan fascinations to such good purpose that she was in the worst sort of predicament. Her pap insisted that the young fellow should marry the girl but he respectfully declined and harnessing up his horse prepared to leave. The old man was no chump, though. He seized on that city chap and with the aid of the girl bound him hand and foot. Then they soused him in a hogshead of molasses and laid him out in the sun for the flies to settle on and torture until he made up his mind to wed. After the old man had secured a parson who lived a few miles away, he and his daughter, armed to the teeth, sat down and covering the dominie with their pistols waited until the young lady’s intended should weaken. He was covered with a swarm of insects who tortured him sore. His struggles and shrieks of agony had no effect on the determined father-in-law and he prospective bride, however. They silenced the parson’s protests and were deaf to the cries of their victim.

At last after enduring a great agony he gave in. The flies were brushed off and just as he was he was wed. Then they washed and dressed him and he insisted on starting for New York at once. His bride went with him for her wedding tour. He threatened to drown her if he recovered the use of his limbs on board the steamer, bug from his “all broke up” appearance there seemed little chance of getting square for two or three months, if ever.

 

From The National Police Gazette, October 21, 1882