No. 112
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
October 16, 2012

A Fiendish Husband’s Desperate Deed.

October 16, 2012
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Tag: Gambling

A Female Card Sharp.

A female gambler detects an opponent cheating and rakes in the pot.

6/2/2026

The New City of Leadville.

A gambling saloon on one of the main streets of Leadville.

6/24/2025

Bucking the Tiger

In a Cheyenne gambling Saloon.

10/7/2024

The Scandal Which Agitates St. Louis.

Astounding Revelations of a Low Cunning and Vile Curiosity in One of the Proprietors of the Grand Opera House.

7/23/2024

"Bet Anything You've Got."

Jim Tuttle startles a faro bank party, at Gold Hill, Neb.

12/13/2022

A Female Gambling House in Boston.

They call it the "retreat" because of its charming privacy and apparent obscurity.

5/31/2022

A Woman Gambler in Nevada.

She Bucks the Tiger and Quits $200 Ahead.

3/29/2022

Forex news live

Two female athletes at Virginia City, Nevada, indulge in a wrestling match for the championship.

11/9/2021

Renewed Activity of "The Finest."

The Police Succeed in Breaking Up Another Gambling Establishment.

5/14/2018

They Ran a Snide Game.

A “friendly” poker scheme exposed at Bogota, N. J., by one of the players squealing.

6/13/2016

Take a Chance?

Many a one, who otherwise would not contribute a dime, will take a chance in a lottery.

9/9/2014

Thimble Rig A La Mode.

3/18/2014

New York Society Classified.

11/27/2011

The Old Shell Game

7/18/2011

The Bunco Game

The term “bunco” has come to mean to any type of swindle, but in the 19th century it usually referred to a confidence game involving crooked gambling.

5/17/2011
Via Newspapers.comOn this blog, I’ve covered what many Fortean experts like to call “Anomalous Falls From the Sky,” but this is a new one for me.  Lousy actors and criminals in the stocks used to get pelted with tomatoes, but it’s a bit unusual for modern-day suburbanites to get such treatment.  The following is from a syndicated 1998 Dave Barry column which summarizes the incident.&
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Strange Company - 8/19/2026
  [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
 Ida Quinlan and Sophia Grant.Mrs. Ida Quinlan went out to buy a pair of stockings at around 9:00 on the night of February 1, 1896, leaving her baby in the care of her sister, Mrs. Sophia Grant. She took a streetcar to the store several miles away and returned to the house at around 11:00. Entering the sitting room, she was surprised to find the drawers of the chiffoniers pulled out and
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Murder By Gaslight - 8/15/2026
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
Naughty Anthony. | Serpent and Dove.

A Fiendish Husband’s Desperate Deed.

Fiendish Husband

Jealous Jack Scanlin murderously assaults his wife and badly injurers her in Oneonta, N. Y.

 

Jealousy led to a dastardly attempt at murder in Oneonta, N. Y., recently. Jack Scanlin, who for some days past has been stopping at the house of Mrs. Detta Hough, where, also, his wife is, whom he  has not been living with recently, arose from his bed and going to the room occupied by his wife and Mrs. Hough attacked the two women. Mrs. Hough he struck upon the head with a heavy stone. He then grabbed his wife, and with some sharp instrument with which he was armed, cut and slashed her about the face and neck in a horrible manner. Mrs. Hough, who had escaped from the fiend, rushed from the house and gave the alarm. Scanlin was arrested and lodged in jail. He says that William R. Jamison, a young man who lived in the Hough house, was the cause of the deed. Jamison denies that anything improper existed between he and Mrs. Scanlin. The doctors state the woman cannot live.

 

Reprinted from The National Police Gazette, October 15, 1892.