No. 824
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
August 12, 2025
alias: JAMES D WELLS
SNEAK, BANK BURGLAR
The following article is from the Sioux City Dispatch and gives a good idea of Lizzie’s day during the trial. It was said, perhaps due to her recovering from bronchitis, that she slept up on the second floor of the Warden’s house after her first night in the infirmary. and not on the cell block. .
More...
Lizzie Borden: Warps and Wefts - 6/6/2026
"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!I'm sure our host this week needs no further introduction. The caption says it all.A medieval anti-war satire.Mysterious meat shower? Or vulture vomit?The paranormal side of the Cold War.Ernest Hemingway, boxing, and, uh, salad dressing.The man who blew up a nuclear power station.Mystery in a medieval tomb.More proof that scientists have way too
More...
Strange Company - 6/5/2026
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
In 1830, Joseph Knapp conspired with his brother, John Francis Knapp, to hire a local criminal, Richard Crowninshield, to murder their great uncle, Captain Joseph White, in Salem, Massachusetts. They believed that if the captain died without a will, they stood to inherit a sizable fortune.Read the full story here: "A Most Extraordinary Case"
More...
Murder By Gaslight - 6/6/2026
Say what you want about Robert Moses. But as Parks Commissioner in the 1930s, he opened 11 new public municipal pools across the five boroughs—helping residents keep cool and resist the lure of swimming in the East or Hudson River, which amazingly people used to do. Moses, a swim fan himself, also championed and helped […]
More...
Ephemeral New York - 6/1/2026
[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 […]
More...
Early American Crime - 2/7/2019
The Bloody Century 2
Takes the reader back to 19th-century America in all its gory glory.
