No. 702
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
May 19, 2025

Life in Leadville.

Rev. De Witt Talmage Sampling its Wickedness.
January 7, 2025
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Tag: Clergy

Turning the Tables.

A Parson returns unexpectedly and detects the Deacon escaping from his apartment.

4/2/2024

Dangerous Characters.

No Tramps nor Parsons Admitted.

6/29/2021

Courtship from a Tree.

Young and Ardent Bob Toppin, a Newark, N. J., youth, does some tall climbing in order to meet his sweetheart, pretty Miss Hobbie, a parson’s daughter.

3/13/2017

The Pastor Kissed Her.

That is the allegation made against Dominie Hall of the Methodist Church at Livermore, Ky., by Miss May.

11/28/2016

Another Amorous Parson.

Westchester County is all agog over the case of the Rev. Mr. White, accused of violently assaulting the sister-in-law of a brother clergyman. We illustrate the scene.

10/6/2015

The Minister Was Coltish.

The Rev. G. W. Kling, pastor of the Crawford M. E. Church at West Marietta, O., is in a peck of trouble.

6/8/2015

A Minister’s Scrape.

7/21/2014

She Had a High Old Time.

8/13/2013

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
Which still-standing mansion on Riverside Drive has a basement tunnel leading to the Hudson River? Who was the not-yet-famous American writer who sat on a rock outcropping every day to gaze at the waterfront? Why are there no brownstones on Riverside Drive, and no stores, either? How did a Medieval heroine end up memorialized in […]
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Ephemeral New York - 5/16/2025
Included in yesterday’s trip to Fall River was a stop at Miss Lizzie’s Coffee shop and a visit to the cellar to see the scene of the tragic demise of the second Mrs. Lawdwick Borden and two of the three little children in 1848. I have been writing about this sad tale since 2010 and had made a previous trip to the cellar some years ago but was unable to get to the spot where the incident occured to get a clear photograph.  The tale of Eliza Borden is a very sad, but not uncommon story of post partum depression with a heartrending end. You feel this as you stand in the dark space behind the chimney where Eliza ended her life with a straight razor after dropping 6 month old Holder and his 3 year old sister Eliza Ann into the cellar cistern. Over the years I have found other similar cases, often involving wells and cisterns, and drownings of children followed by suicides of the mothers. These photos show the chimney, cistern pipe, back wall, dirt and brick floor, original floorboards forming the cellar ceiling and what appears to be an original door. To be in the place where this happened is a sobering experience. My thanks to Joe Pereira for allowing us to see and record the place where this sad occurrence unfolded in 1848. R.I.P. Holder, Eliza and Eliza Ann Borden. Visit our Articles section above for more on this story. The coffee shop has won its suit to retain its name and has plans to expand into the shop next door and extend its menu in the near future.
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Lizzie Borden: Warps and Wefts - 2/12/2024
 Welcome to this Friday's Link Dump!Our hosts for this week are some Caledonian visitors.Bad company in 1950s Los Angeles.The life and work of Dante Gabriel Rossetti.The failed attempt to get Canada to fight for the colonies in the American Revolution.Early newspaper reporting about the Loch Ness Monster.The origins of England's common law rule.Napoleon's traveling bookcase.Legends of the
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Strange Company - 5/16/2025
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
  Bertha Levy entered the house at 111 Prince Street, Manhattan, just before 10:00 a.m. on January 18, 1880. She was a hairdresser, and she had an appointment with Annie Downey, who lived on the second floor. No one responded to her knocks, and the door was locked. The owner of the house did not have a key to the room. Fearing the worst, they summoned the police; the Eighth Precinct Station
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Murder By Gaslight - 5/17/2025
Soapy Smith STAR NotebookPage 19 - Original copy1884Courtesy of Geri Murphy(Click image to enlarge) oapy Smith begins an empire in Denver.Operating the prize package soap sell racket in 1884.This is page 19, the continuation of page 18, and dated April 14 - May 5, 1884, the continuation of deciphering Soapy Smith's "star" notebook from the Geri Murphy's collection. A complete introduction to
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Soapy Smith's Soap Box - 4/3/2025
  [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 […]
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Early American Crime - 2/7/2019
Brotherly Love. | Seeing in the New Year.

Life in Leadville.

Talmage

Rev. De Witt Talmage Sampling its Wickedness
He Goes the Rounds Among the Gamblers and the Girls
He Receives Lessons in Faro, Keno Poker, etc.

Rev. De Witt Talmage, on the 28th ult., repeated in Leadville, Colorado, his astonishing performance in New York a year or so ago, making a personal Inspection of the slums and by-ways, and privately visiting the dance-houses and gambling halls, and viewing the light therein presented for the purpose, as Mr. Talmage explains, of qualifying himself to flourish in the faces of his hearers the firebrand freshly snatched from the hotbed of iniquity. 


Illustrated Police News, August 14, 1880.