No. 29
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
June 20, 2011
Terrible Struggle with Flame and Flood
The burning of the steamer John H. Hanna near Plaquemine, Louisiana, by which thirty lives were lost
June 20, 2011
alias: JOSEPH WHARRIS
PICKPOCKET, BOARDING-HOUSE THIEF
When plans were announced in 1906 for the Hendrik Hudson apartment building, newspapers eagerly reported its unusually luxurious features. “The facade in scheme would be that of an Italian villa,” wrote New York Times, calling out the limestone, brick, and terra cotta building materials to be used for this new 8-story residence at 380 Riverside […]
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Ephemeral New York - 3/16/2026
"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
Welcome to this week's Link Dump!Happy Friday the 13th!The languages of ancient humans.Dodo birds actually tasted pretty good. Unfortunately for them.An ancient coin that tells of a massive slave rebellion.The long war against the Barbary pirates.Traces of a mysterious ancient religion.An extinct marsupial turns up alive and well.The miniatures that served as Tudor love tokens.In
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Strange Company - 3/13/2026
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
About half past three, the morning of July 2, 1863, a young man on his way to work in Medina, Ohio, saw the home of Shubal Coy in flames. He alerted the neighbors, who came out to douse the flames with water. When the fire was under control, they went inside to look for the Coy family. They found Shubal lying in bed with nine stab wounds in his throat and breast, any one of them capable of
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Murder By Gaslight - 3/14/2026
The good-looking thirty-seven year old gentleman handling the reins behind the glossy matched pair pulling the spanking-new carriage drew the attention of more than one feminine eye. Pacing down French St. at a sharp clip, the lady next to him, dressed neatly in a tailor-made suit with the latest in millinery fashion, smiled up at her coachman. Behind the lace curtains on the Hill section of Fall River, tongues were wagging about the unseemly pair. Lizzie Borden, acquitted of double homici
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Lizzie Borden: Warps and Wefts - 10/16/2025
[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
The Bloody Century 2
Takes the reader back to 19th-century America in all its gory glory.
