No. 868
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
June 02, 2026

A Female Card Sharp.

A female gambler detects an opponent cheating and rakes in the pot.
June 2, 2026
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Tag: Banjo

Members of the Banjo and Mandolin Clubs.

Mount Holyoke College, 1898-1899.

4/24/2023

A Surmise.

Take your gun with you if you're going to play on that banjo.

10/15/2018
Join us on our Facebook page as we begin counting down the days to August 4th and all of the events leading up to the day. https://www.facebook.com/lizziebordenwarpsandwefts
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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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"Norwich Evening News," February 3, 1970, via Newspapers.comIf you’re at all familiar with my Twitter/X or Facebook feeds, you know that I periodically share old newspaper reports about the seemingly endless varieties of mayhem carried out by goats.  (Why do I do this?  It’s just how I roll, I guess.)  So, you can imagine how delighted I was to learn of the following story, which
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Murder By Gaslight - 7/4/2026
Bare arms, visible ankles, a more relaxed waistline—the most fashionable “bathing dresses” of 1868 allowed a woman to strip off her day-to-day corsets, feather hats, and petticoats and luxuriate in the freedom of the seaside. This ad for what were also called “bathing costumes” came from Godey’s Lady’s Book, an influential periodical that helped shape […]
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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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Early American Crime - 2/7/2019
Athletics. | Rip Roaring Fun.

A Female Card Sharp.

Female-gambler

A female gambler detects an opponent cheating and rakes in the pot.

She was the boss. She carried a revolver in her bustle and a pack of cards in her pocket, and she can beat any ordinary player out of a cool hundred in twenty minutes of draw poker. She is a scientific disciple of Schenck, and hails from Milwaukee. She appeared in Chicago a short time since and gave out that she had $25,000 pug on a game of draw. A couple of the knowing ones soon sought her out, and in a very short time, they were engaged over a green covered table in a lively game. She held an ace and four kings, but her opponent kept raising until she had planked her last dollar. Then laying her hand down on the table and placing a small sized bowie-knife over the same, she loosened a revolver in her girdle and then called her opponent’s hand. He hesitated a moment, and she seized his waist and turned his hand to view—it contained four aces and a king. The female relative of Schenck cast on the gambler a look of scorn as they gathered up the spoils, and revolver in hand, ordered him out of his chair where lay the card he had discarded for the extra ace. She departed from Chicago with her pile doubled, and in Jean Richter’s words, we might say “Honor women. They strew celestial roses on the pathway of our terrestrial life.


Illustrated Police News, July 6, 1876.