No. 788
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
January 07, 2025

Life in Leadville.

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

Disguised as the Devil.

A Man in a Black Mask, Disguised as the Devil.

10/19/2021

Robbing a Corpse.

Mrs. Day is accused of stealing a ring from the finger of dead Sophie Ahrens as she lay in her coffin.

2/27/2017

Robbed of Her Tresses.

1/14/2014

Mother Mandelbaum's Secrets.

4/23/2013

Insane Criminal Escapes.

1/27/2013

Beauty as a Shield.

Beauty Conquers avarice and outlawry "We won't rob this house to-night."

7/24/2012

Hospital Horrors.

3/20/2012

Bank Heist

The Audacity of a Professional Thief.

4/3/2011
JAMES McMAHON
alias:
BURGLAR, RIVER THIEF

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.comCalvin is among the literary cats who have been immortalized in prose.  Originally part of the household of Harriet Beecher Stowe, Calvin eventually made his home with author Charles Dudley Warner.  After the cat died, Warner wrote the following biographical essay, which was often republished in various late 19th century newspapers and periodicals.  This
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Strange Company - 9/9/2026

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
Amen.

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

"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

Sadie and Clarence.

Sadie and Clarence.In April 1894, the murder of Montgomery Gibbs, a successful attorney, caused great excitement in Buffalo, New York. He was found shot to death in a driveway on Delaware Avenue with no clues to the killer’s identity. The police and newspapers investigated the crime, but they had no solid leads, and it remained unsolved. Then, in October, they received a tip that Clarence
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Murder By Gaslight - 9/5/2026
On the Russians.

1617: A miller of Manberna, the hangman’s last

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
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.

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