No. 338
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
December 12, 2016

Left His Digits as Souvenirs.

The Misses Franklin, of Glenn Falls, Conn., armed with pistol and axe, put a burglar to flight minus
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December 12, 2016
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Tag: Rhode Island

On The Beach at Newport, Rhode Island.

On the Beach at Newport, Rhode Island.

9/3/2018

Two Giddy Girls.

Sent up Eight Years for Smoking Cigars in Public.

5/27/2014

Gold from Seawater!

In 1898, the Reverend Prescott F. Jernegan founded the Electrolytic Marine Salts Company to extract gold from seawater. When the gold ran out, so did Rev. Jernegan, taking the company’s capital.

7/16/2013
ISAAC VAIL
alias: OLD IKE
CONFIDENCE

Accident, Suicide, or Murder? The Aeileen Conway Riddle

When someone is suddenly, inexplicably murdered, such cases can be very difficult to solve.  When law enforcement is unable to decide if a person’s violent death is a result of murder, accident, or even suicide, you generally have a mystery where finding a solution is virtually impossible.  Such was the tragic case of a seemingly normal housewife.Fifty-year-old Aeileen Conway lived with
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Strange Company - 4/6/2026

Artifact #93: Soapy's son, hires attorney to stop the slurring of his father's name.

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Soapy Smith's Soap Box - 10/13/2025
Amen.

Once a 19th century carriage house for elite racehorses, now the Carriage House Lofts on West 150th Street

I wonder what the proprietor of the Speedway Livery & Boarding Stables would have thought about his handsome brick building transforming from a home for pricey horses to a pricey home for people? This four-story, Romanesque-style stable at 457 West 150th Street was no ordinary boarding place for teams of working drays. The name of […]
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1617: A miller of Manberna, the hangman’s last

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Jack the Strangler.

New York Journal, March 18, 1898. When the news of London’s 1888 Whitechapel Murders, attributed to “Jack the Ripper,” crossed the Atlantic, Americans were instantly fascinated. The vision of a dark, elusive killer, mutilating women without motive, was morbidly titillating, and the name Jack the Ripper fired the popular imagination. In the nascent age of yellow journalism, no one was more
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On the Russians.

Remembering Sarah Morse Borden

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Convicts to Maryland, 1773 by Peter Dickson

  [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
Pretty Stars for the Southern Dives. | December 1860.

Left His Digits as Souvenirs.

Left his Digits

The Misses Franklin, of Glenn Falls, Conn., armed with pistol and axe, put a burglar to flight minus two fingers. 

Two girls frustrated a burglary the other night at the home of Col. Daniel Franklin, a retired merchant of Glen Falls, a thriving village four miles north of Plainfield, Conn. Col Franklin was away. The only persons at home were Mrs. Franklin who is an invalid, and her daughters, Emma and Matilda. They were startled some time after midnight by the noise of somebody breaking in at the rear of the house.

Emma took a revolver from the bureau, Matilda got an axe, and together they stole downstairs just in time to find a big ruffian climbing into a window.

The burglar had one hand on the sill. Matilda raised the axe and quickly brought it down on the hand, while Emma fired two shots. With a cry of pain the burglar dropped out of sight.

A light was struck in a few moments, and underneath the window were found two fingers which had been cut off near the hand.

The pistol shots aroused the neighborhood and search was made fore the burglar, but no trace of him was found.

Reprinted from National Police Gazette, December 10, 1892

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