No. 868
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
June 02, 2026

A Female Card Sharp.

A female gambler detects an opponent cheating and rakes in the pot.
June 2, 2026
...
...

Tag: Theatre

A Bevy of Stage Beauties.

Five footlight fairies, whose faces and forms charm audiences in London, Paris and New York.

2/22/2022

A Wine-Inspired Wager.

A Female Who Was Not Allowed to Exhibit Her Terpsichorean Abilities.

5/28/2018

A Scene not on the Bills.

Actor Ricardo’s bluff jump from the stage to the audience at the Grand Opera House, Columbus, Ohio.

10/17/2016

Floating Circus.

Spaulding & Rogers’s Floating Circus Palace.

4/11/2016

She Swallowed Her Teeth.

Mrs. Dunsford, of Reading, Pa., meets with a mishap in a theatre.

2/15/2016

Chorus Girls Fight.

Two of the charming girls who pose as "living pictures" in Rice's "1492" have a wordy war, which ends in a hand-to-hand conflict.

5/18/2015

New Years in the Wings.

The fairy of the enchanted realm entertains her subjects in an earthly way.

12/29/2014

Scenes from “In the Tenderloin.”

6/16/2014

Naughty Anthony.

10/23/2012

Spectacular Scenes & Sights Down on the Jersey Coast

Poster for the 1898 Broadway show "Have You Seen Smith?"

7/17/2012

Trixie Got the Best of It.

Two Little Gem Theatre, Buffalo, N. Y., Soubrettes have a scrap on account of a man.

10/8/2011

The Astor Place Riot

8/15/2011
William Bell Scott, Woman Startled by the Ghost of a Girl by a MirrorSecond marriages can be awkward, especially when the ex-spouse has issues with their former partner entering into a new union.  If said ex-spouse happens to be dead, you know your domestic life has well and truly entered Strange Company territory.In her 1974 book “Haunted East Anglia,” Joan Forman described an unsettling
More...
Strange Company - 6/15/2026
"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
Getting around the western Bronx by foot means encountering hilly streets, lots of hilly streets. The pitched terrain comes from ridges of bedrock formed millions of years ago extending into Northern Manhattan. Back in the early 1900s when the Bronx was undergoing urbanization, all these hills posed a challenge to transit engineers, since some roads […]
More...
Ephemeral New York - 6/15/2026
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
More...
Executed Today - 11/13/2020
 Stephen Pettus gave Hannah Southworth a glass of drugged champagne and had his way with her while she was unconscious. Hannah became pregnant and for years after, she badgered Pettus to acknowledge that he had ruined her. When all legal means were exhausted, she avenged her honor by shooting him in the back on a Brooklyn street.Read the full story here: Avenging Her Honor.
More...
Murder By Gaslight - 6/13/2026
Be sure to stop by our Facebook page tomorrow for a Prosecution Marathon of witnesses. Here are the witnesses for Wednesday, June 14th, Day 9 Rufus Hilliard, City Marshal, Mayor John Coughlin, Mrs. Hannah Gifford (seamstress and dressmaker), Anna Borden ( wealthy socialite who was on Lizzie’s grand tour of Europe, distantly related to Lizzie), Lucy Collett (watching the office of Dr. Chagnon day of the murder), Thomas Bowles ( handyman who once rented a room from Addie Churchill and was wa
More...
Lizzie Borden: Warps and Wefts - 6/13/2026
  [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
Athletics. | Rip Roaring Fun.

A Female Card Sharp.

Female-gambler

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

She was the boss. She carried a revolver in her bustle and a pack of cards in her pocket, and she can beat any ordinary player out of a cool hundred in twenty minutes of draw poker. She is a scientific disciple of Schenck, and hails from Milwaukee. She appeared in Chicago a short time since and gave out that she had $25,000 pug on a game of draw. A couple of the knowing ones soon sought her out, and in a very short time, they were engaged over a green covered table in a lively game. She held an ace and four kings, but her opponent kept raising until she had planked her last dollar. Then laying her hand down on the table and placing a small sized bowie-knife over the same, she loosened a revolver in her girdle and then called her opponent’s hand. He hesitated a moment, and she seized his waist and turned his hand to view—it contained four aces and a king. The female relative of Schenck cast on the gambler a look of scorn as they gathered up the spoils, and revolver in hand, ordered him out of his chair where lay the card he had discarded for the extra ace. She departed from Chicago with her pile doubled, and in Jean Richter’s words, we might say “Honor women. They strew celestial roses on the pathway of our terrestrial life.


Illustrated Police News, July 6, 1876.