No. 783
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
December 03, 2024

Photography as an Aid to Divorce.

The Process Applied to a Guilty Woman and Her Paramour.
December 3, 2024
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Tag: Stabbing

A Duel on Horseback.

Two rivals for the affections for an Arkansas belle fight a desperate battle with knives and are horribly mangled, near Bear Creek.

10/30/2017

Gambler Vs. Cook.

James Toohey, a Covington, Neb., scullion, gets awfully mad and fatally stabs a man about town named Erwin.

4/18/2016

A Bloody Ruction.

Bayonets and Knives—A Sister’s Influence and Prevention of Murder.

6/12/2015

He May Be Lynched.

Miss Lily Dunkley, a Miles City, Mont., girl, refuses to marry Charles Snyder and he tries to kill her.

3/30/2015

He May Be Lynched.

Miss Lily Dunkley, a Miles City, Mont., girl, refuses to marry Charles Snyder and he tries to kill her.

3/10/2015

Stabbed for not Buying Drinks.

Fresh Young Fellow Gets Six Inches of Cold Steel at a Sporting Resort, Seattle, Wash.

3/28/2013
 Welcome to this week's Link Dump!Meanwhile, the Strange Company HQ staffers are hoping to make the 2028 U.S. Olympics gymnastics team.Navigating the Pacific, ancient Polynesian style.How to make a medieval king fall in love with you.  Although, considering what most medieval kings were like, I'm not sure that you'd want this.A murder that was "solved," but remains unresolved.The "Oz
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Strange Company - 9/4/2026
  [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
 When John Keys and Eva Dickenson were married in Cincinnati on August 21, 1890, they told their relatives that they planned to honeymoon on the Atlantic coast, but John had another plan. He purchased an Ohio River shanty-boat and planned a slow trip downriver to St. Louis. It would not be their last deception; in fact, what transpired on that fateful journey would remain forever shrouded in
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Murder By Gaslight - 8/29/2026
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
Gambling for a Child. | The Bloody Century 2.

Photography as an Aid to Divorce.

Divorce-photo

The pictures-taking process that police authorities have so successfully applied to the apprehension of rogues has received a new application at the West End In Boston, where a photographer has by means of a camera caught a guilty wife and her paramour dead to rights. A professional man on Court Street has for some time believed himself entitled to a divorce on the score of his wife's unfaithfulness. He was willing to separate from her without scandal or publicity providing he could prove her guilt. He confided his suspicious and desires to a friend in the photograph business, who suggested that if he could "catch them with the camera, that would settle it." There would be no disputing the wife's guilt provided she and her paramour could be photographed, at the proper moment, without their knowledge, and there would be no necessity for a "scare" such as usually follows a husband's discovery of a wife's liaison. Get him a place so that he would bring his camera to bear without being observed, and the photographer was confident that he could secure the evidence. The husband got the standpoint he wanted by renting the room next to his own suite, and sending a man to put in a stove pipe collar in the wail under pretense that it was by the landlord's orders and for the accommodation of a new tenant, who proposed to run a stove, and who could obtain no connection with the chimney in his own room. The wife was unsuspicious, and after a week of close shadowing the husband and the photographer realized by onto side indications that it was time to bring the camera to bear thought the stove pipe hole. They did it, and secured very fair pictures, easily recognizable in court or elsewhere as portraits. It is needless, perhaps, to say that the sitters were not postured exactly for the picture taking ordeal, nor were they in the attitude in which they would care to be handed down to posterity. The husband, however, has in his possession a negative and several prints from it, which the wife and her paramour understand that there is no evadIng as an evidence of their criminality. The case Is a new illustration signalizing the value of photography as a means of detection and conclusive testimony.


Illustrated Police News, February 26, 1881.