No. 600
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
March 30, 2023

Society Women Turn Burglars.

A Widow and Her Pretty Daughter Caught Thieving in Men’s Attire in Tecumseh, Mich.
April 13, 2015
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Tag: Scandal

"Jack the Inkslinger."

Public Morality Must Suffer at the Hands of Our Newspaper Scandalmongers.

11/13/2018

A Minister’s Scrape.

7/21/2014

Philanthropist or “Moral Leper?”

4/30/2013

A New Gag.

2/7/2012

Another Voice for Cleveland.

12/13/2011
Via Newspapers.comThis week, we visit a haunted house that has a bit of Mystery Blood thrown in.  The "Glen Elder Sentinel," August 20, 1903:A remarkable ghost sensation is disturbing the serenity of St. Peter Port, Guernsey, where a local photographer has just vacated his residence on the ground that he and members of his family have been terrified by supernatural visitations. The photographer
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Strange Company - 3/29/2023
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When Patrick  H. Doherty joined the Fall River Police Department in 1885, he might have been astounded to learn that he would be involved one day in two notorious murder cases- both involving hatchets and axes.  Patrick Doherty was born in Peoria, Illinois on August 10, 1859 to John and Mary Walsh Doherty.  Later the family moved east to Fall River, and we find Patrick Doherty living at 104 Columbia St. (off South Main) and working as a laborer for a time employed by Fall River Iron Works and the Fall River Line steamboat company.  He married Honora (Nora) E. Coughlin on April 25, 1887 at the age of 28, when he was employed at the Fall River Police Department as a patrolman.  The couple would have seven children:  Charles T., Frank., Grace, Robert, Helene, Margaret (called Marguerite), and John. Doherty, (as were several other patrolmen), was promoted to the rank of captain after their work in the case of the century, the Borden Murders of 1892.  Doherty had arrived at #92 after George Allen on the morning of the murders, and was very quickly in the thick of the action, questioning Lizzie upstairs, looking at the bodies with Dr. Dolan, running down to Smith’s pharmacy with Officer Harrington  to question Eli Bence, prowling the cellar for weapons with Medley, Fleet and Dr. Bowen, and making note of Lizzie’s dress.  Doherty stayed on the job on watch at the Borden house until he was relieved at 9 p.m.  When it came time for the inquest, it was Doherty who slipped down to 95 Division St. to collect Bridget, who had been staying with her cousin, Patrick Harrington after the murders.  He would testify at the Preliminary and the 1893 trial in New Bedford. In the midst of the excitement in New Bedford as Lizzie’s trial was about to get underway, yet another hatchet killing took over the front page, the murder of Bertha Manchester on May 30th.  It was a brutal attack to rival the Borden’s with the weapon being most likely a short-handled axe or possibly a hatchet. Doherty went out to the Manchester place with Marshal Hilliard, Captains Desmond, and Connors and Inspector Perron  on June 6th with the  suspect, Jose Correa de Mello, who revealed his hiding place for the stolen  watch taken from the victim and her purse at that time.  De Mello served time and then was sent back to the Azores, banned from stepping upon U.S. soil again. The Dohertys moved to 1007 Rock St. in 1897 and Patrick was pleased to walk his daughter Margaret (Marguerite) down the aisle in 1913. Patrick Doherty retired from the force in 1915 and succumbed to interstitial nephritis on June 28, 1915.. He, and some of his children are buried in St. Patrick’s Cemetery in Fall River. Resources: Ancestry.com, Parallel Lives,: A Social History of Lizzie A. Borden and her Fall River, Find-a-Grave.com. and Yesterday in Old Fall River: A Lizzie Borden Companion Fall River Globe June 28, 1915
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Lizzie Borden: Warps and Wefts - 3/3/2023
Bernard Gussow was born in Russia in 1881. But by 1900 he’d made it to the Lower East Side, where he was described as an “East Side artist” in a New York Times article about paintings he displayed at an art show at the Educational Alliance settlement house on East Broadway. [“Subway Steps”] Gussow would […]
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Ephemeral New York - 3/27/2023
An article I recently wrote for the British online magazine, New Politic, is now available online. The article, “The Criminal Origins of the United States of America,” is about British convict transportation to America, which took place between the years 1718 and 1775, and is the subject of my book, Bound with an Iron Chain: […]
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Early American Crime - 12/17/2021
 17-year-old James E. Nowlin murdered George Codman in a Massachusetts stable in January 1887. Then he took an axe and chopped Codman’s body into pieces. As he traveled home in a sleigh, he threw the pieces into the snow along the road.Read the full story here: Massachusetts Butchery.
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Murder By Gaslight - 3/25/2023
Roped-inOmaha Daily BeeJune 25, 1884(Click image to enlarge)  OSSIBLE VICTIM OF THE JEFFERSON R. SMITH GANG.  Omaha Daily Bee June 25, 1884 COLORADO. Col. Fletcher, a tourist from Boston, was roped-in by the bunko men of Denver and relieved of $1,000. NOTES: $1,000.00 in 1884 is the equivalent of $33,472.95 in 2023. According to the Rocky Mountain News there were at least two,
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Soapy Smith's Soap Box - 3/12/2023
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 engaged as a carrier of wine, because he and his brother, with the help of […]
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Executed Today - 11/13/2020
Surf Swimming at Hawaii, Sandwich Islands. | Amateur Photography.

Society Women Turn Burglars.

Society Women Burglars

A Widow and Her Pretty Daughter Caught Thieving in Men’s Attire in Tecumseh, Mich. [more]

Mrs. Alice Church, a comely widow, thirty-eight years of age, and Bessie Church her daughter, eighteen years of age, were arrested recently in Tecumseh, Mich. In the act of committing a burglary. They were dressed in men’s clothes.

The two women moved in the best society, were members of the church, active in charitable work and eminently respectable as to conduct. The women confess their guilt, stat that they have committed a score of burglaries and will gladly accept any punishment that is meted out to them. It was at first believe that they were insane, but that theory has been abandoned.

Mrs. Church and her daughter have live in Tecumseh several years. Both dressed well and the girl is not only unusually bright, but quite handsome. They numbered among their friends nearly all the best people in Tecumseh. They lived modestly and stated that their income came from the life insurance of the late Mr. Church. Mrs. Church was popular with the beaux of the town, but it was observed that she froze them with dignity when they became too demonstrative.

Early in the summer the home of a prominent family was entered one evening and some jewelry and wearing apparel were taken. No trace of the burglars could be discovered. About the time the incident was dropping out of the public mind another house was entered. Some money and jewelry was taken from this house, and, as before, the family were absent the evening of the occurrence. The station was watched and all the roads out of town guarded, but now burglars were arrested. The town police were puzzled.

The burglaries followed each other in quick succession during July and August. The whole town was excited. Strangers were eyed with suspicion and citizens lay in ambush night after night without accomplishing anything.

All the houses were entree in the same manner through the back door or a window opening on a porch. Occasionally groceries and food were taken. This led to the belief that the burglars were tramps. There was a secession of night work during September but early this month the burglaries resumed. The houses were entered usually during the absence of a family, but in many instances houses were robbed in which several men were sleeping.

Last week the home of the late Judge Stacey, occupied by Mrs. Stacy and her daughter, was broken into and robbed of goods valued at $500. A reward was offered and a score of amateur detectives set to work and beyond arresting a few trams who were clearly innocent nothing came of it.

Relatives then decided to take turns watching the house. About 1 o’clock the other morning one of the watchers observed what he supposed were two men approaching the house. He got a shotgun and waited. The burglars lifted a window and boldly entered. The man with the shotgun decided to wait until they entered the dining-room, when he could get a better light on the targets. The tow figures entered the dining-room, and as the watcher aimed the gun the light fell on the face of Widow Church. He could barely believe his eyes. It was Mrs. Church and her daughter dressed up in men’s clothes.

He lowered the gun, approached and arrested both. They screamed, but recovered their composure, and in the presence of Mrs. Stacy confess to all the burglaries.

The women had a preliminary examination, at which the whole town was present. They were held for trial. It is said that they stole to keep form starving, and that a false pride prevented them from telling their friends of their condition.


Reprinted from National Police Gazette, November 4, 1893.