No. 856
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
March 17, 2026
An Irishman and a Yankee Settle a Dispute.
An Irishman and a Yankee Settle a Dispute Across the Breakfast Table at their Boarding House in New
March 17, 2026
alias: ADAMS, DAVIS, KID AFFLECK
THIEF, CONFIDENCE MAN
If you’ve ever rounded the corner at Second Avenue and East 13th Street, then you’ve probably been charmed by it—a lilliputian-size confection of a house with a bright red front door and mansard roof. Adding to the whimsy is the fact that the little brick dwelling, with its wrought-iron fence and supersize upper floor windows, […]
More...
Ephemeral New York - 3/23/2026
"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
More...
Soapy Smith's Soap Box - 10/13/2025
Welcome to this week's Link Dump!While you read, feel free to visit our open bar.Watch out for those hypnotic serpents!The murder of the Coy family.A brief history of soap.Cats may wind up curing cancer, which wouldn't surprise me a bit.When you're a spiritualist, you don't care if your fiance is dead.The scientific debate over free will.The pyramids of Mars.A surprisingly modern ancient
More...
Strange Company - 3/20/2026
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
More...
Executed Today - 11/13/2020
Maggie Crowley(New York American, March 16, 1898)Robert Hoey, coming home from work in the early hours of
March 15, 1898, literally tripped over the body of a dead woman in the
courtyard of his New York City tenement. The woman had been strangled to death
and dragged to the courtyard known in the neighborhood as “Hogan’s Alley.” Four
days later, she was identified as Maggie Crowley, a young woman
More...
Murder By Gaslight - 3/21/2026
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
More...
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 […]
More...
Early American Crime - 2/7/2019
The Bloody Century 2
Takes the reader back to 19th-century America in all its gory glory.
