No. 463
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
April 09, 2019

"He Loves Me; He Loves Me Not."

How Marie Played a Romantic Trick on Her Lover and Brought Him to Time.
April 9, 2019
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Tag: 1870s

Cool Break for Liberty.

Two Prisoners Handcuffed Together Jump from a Hotel Window in their Night Clothes and Escape.

4/7/2026

Sketches on the Rail.

Characters Found on a Passenger Train.

3/24/2026

Miss Eva G. Vallee

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

10/14/2025

A Man in a Black Mask.

Disguised as the Devil.

7/1/2025

The New City of Leadville.

A gambling saloon on one of the main streets of Leadville.

6/24/2025

Pick-pockets "Working the Crowd.''

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

2/4/2025

A Pair of Colorado Dianas.

The Sensation They Made in Leadville Streets.

11/4/2024

Bucking the Tiger

In a Cheyenne gambling Saloon.

10/7/2024

The Scandal Which Agitates St. Louis.

Astounding Revelations of a Low Cunning and Vile Curiosity in One of the Proprietors of the Grand Opera House.

7/23/2024

A Pullman Parlor Car.

Interior of a Pulman Parlor Car on the Pennsylvania Railroad.

7/16/2024

Knocked Dead by a Meteor.

A Remarkable Casualty which Overtook a Hoosier While Asleep in His Bed.

7/1/2024

Wrestling Match on a Canadian Steamer.

On the St. Lawrence River.

4/16/2024

Rival Monarchs.

3/21/2023

Expensive Blowing in Congress.

Uncle Sam: Come, ye gas-bags, both blue and gray, - Start yourselves on you homeward way.

2/21/2023

Female Wrestling Match in Nevada.

Two female athletes at Virginia city Nevada, indulge in a wrestling match for the championship.

11/8/2022

Interior of a Pullman Parlour Car.

The Smoking Saloon.

9/20/2022

A Female Gambling House in Boston.

They call it the "retreat" because of its charming privacy and apparent obscurity.

5/31/2022

Pandemonium in a Tumult.

Raid on the Broadway concert saloons, New York.

4/26/2022

Her Striped Stockings.

Bound to be in style - The expedient of a carriage painter's daughter at Vallejo, Cal., to obtain striped stockings.

11/30/2021

Forex news live

Two female athletes at Virginia City, Nevada, indulge in a wrestling match for the championship.

11/9/2021

Disguised as the Devil.

A Man in a Black Mask, Disguised as the Devil.

10/19/2021

A Charming Female Vaccinator.

Young gentlemen of Boston submitting their arms to a charming female vaccinator.

8/30/2021

A Man's Head Blown to Atoms.

A man's head blown to atoms by the explosion of a beer barrel on Long Island.

8/30/2021

Desperate Duel.

Desperate Duel between Ladies of Rank, at Santa Cruz.

6/22/2021

The Summer Exodus.

Commencement of the Heated Term—Swells and Belles at the Mountains and on the Sea Shore.

6/15/2021

The Deathly Opium-Drug.

The Demon Work of the Chinese Poppy Poison.

4/27/2021

Vaccination from a Beauty.

Idiotic freak of some young men at Los Angeles.

3/9/2021

Homeward Bound.

Vacationers leaving Lake George, New York, 1879.

5/7/2019

Up the Hudson.

9/18/2018

The Cure for Broken Hearts.

8/27/2018

Why She Pummeled 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.

4/17/2017

Take a Chance?

Many a one, who otherwise would not contribute a dime, will take a chance in a lottery.

9/9/2014

Mother Mandelbaum's Secrets.

4/23/2013

The Pawn-Ticket Game.

Pawn tickets make bad collateral.

3/5/2013

Vive Le Sport!

1/15/2013

The Grand Saloon.

Of The Palace Steamer Drew.

11/27/2012

Comstockery.

Anthony Comstock was on a personal mission to protect America from vice.

5/1/2012

Allan Pinkerton.

The Eye that Never Sleeps.

3/27/2012

New York Society Classified.

11/27/2011

Belles of the Bowling Alley.

The athletic diversions of an association of dashing damsels in their club rooms in Chicago. 

6/6/2011

The Cardiff Giant

Cardiff, New York, October 16, 1869.

4/10/2011

Bank Heist

The Audacity of a Professional Thief.

4/3/2011
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Early American Crime - 2/7/2019
Saloons and Houses of Ill-Fame. | Rip Roaring Fun.

"He Loves Me; He Loves Me Not."

How Marie Played a Romantic Trick on Her Lover and Brought Him to Time.

Here's a young girl of romantic temperament who yet would not sit like Patience on a monument smiling at grief or pine in a green and yellow melancholy until her lover made up his mind to declare his ear­nest Intentions. Oh, no; she was one of your right sort who didn't believe in picking a rose to pieces leaf by leaf in a garden while interrogating blind luck whether he loved her or loved her not. She was a New Orleans girl and her name was Marie Ravineau. He was a house painter and a good hearted fellow with everything admirable about him except that he would not talk right out. His name was Henry L. Jackson.

Well, On the 29th ult.. Henry was sitting on a swinging scaffold made by a horizontally placed ladder hung from the roof by ropes attached to either end. He was painting the front of a four story house. Marie went me up to that roof, swing herself down the rope to the ladder and with a knife began to hack at the ropes.

"Does he love me?" said she, "Oh, say you do."           

But Henry didn't cackle worth a cent. Then she cut a strand of the rope, saying, "He loves Me," then another strand, “He loves me not,” and thus alternating her assertions until there remained but one little strand. Then the painter eagerly protested his love and she fell in his arms. The last strand broke and the pair clutching the rounds of the now vertical ladder were suspended in mid-air ten minutes before they could be rescued.

The painter’s mind seems quite unbalanced by the shock but Marie vows they shall not commit him to the lunatic asylum until she is married. That’s what she started out to do and she’s going to accomplish it. That’s a woman that trifles will not throw off, you bet.


Reprinted from National Police Gazette, June 10, 1882.