No. 718
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
October 24, 2023
alias: DUTCH FRED, FRANK BELMONT, FRE~ERICK BENNETT
PICKPOCKET, BURGLAR
Via Newspapers.comTreasure hunting and ghosts seem to go together like peanut butter and jelly. As an example, peruse this story from the “Bartlesville Examiner,” February 13, 1927:OKMULGEE, Okla. - (AP) -Snake Creek, in Okmulgee county, still believes in her six lively ghosts and sets back to laugh at outsiders when they invade the playground of the spirits. Investigation has failed
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Strange Company - 10/14/2026
[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
"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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Soapy Smith's Soap Box - 10/13/2025
Laura D. Fair and Alexander P. CrittendenA prominent California legislator was sitting with his wife and son on board the Oakland-San Francisco ferryboat El Capitain the evening of November 3, 1870. They did not notice the woman approaching them, dressed entirely in black, wearing a broad-brimmed black hat with a black veil covering her face. From the folds of her dress, the woman
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Murder By Gaslight - 10/10/2026
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
The Bloody Century 2
Takes the reader back to 19th-century America in all its gory glory.
