No. 236
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
January 06, 2015
Cheating the Liquor Laws.
The ingenious patent which has been got up for use in prohibition states.
January 6, 2015
alias: BILLY PERRY, GRAHAM, WILSON
SNEAK, PICKPOCKET, SHOPLIFTER
The upside to a constantly changing city is the sudden resurfacing of a faded store sign. Case in point: the outline of the “Cards-U-Like” Hallmark store on First Avenue between 75th and 76th Streets. I’m placing it in the late 1970s because of the cute cursive letters, and the earliest newspaper ads I could find […]
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Ephemeral New York - 5/4/2026
"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
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Soapy Smith's Soap Box - 10/13/2025
Welcome to this week's Link Dump!ARE WE HAVING FUN YET?Why you wouldn't want to be punished by a pirate.Why you wouldn't want to see a supervolcano erupt.The mystery of the 115,000 year old human footprints.The mystery of the undersea "Bloop." Related: The ocean contains all sorts of creepy stuff.A chair that may have belonged to Anne Boleyn.How nuns helped create a fertility
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Strange Company - 5/1/2026
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
(New York Evening Journal, March 18, 1898)Around 1
a.m. on September 2, 1896, Samuel Meyers ran out of the tenement at 202 East 29th
Street, screaming, “Murder! Murder! Police! Police!”
Patrolman
Tyler heard his cries and ran to the spot.
“My wife
is murdered!” said Meyers, “Somebody has killed my wife. She’s dead.”
Tyler and another
officer followed Meyers to a second-floor apartment.
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Murder By Gaslight - 5/2/2026
Whatever you believe about the guilt or innocence of Lizzie Borden, I have always believed film makers do a great injustice to the story by not beginning at the beginning- the death on March 26, 1863 of the first Mrs. Borden. In the dying moments of Sarah Morse, Emma takes on the weight of the care of her little sister, not yet three years old. Emma herself was just 12 on March 1st. Emma has seen her mother suffer for a long time, seen her pain and loss of little Alice Esther. Emma is old enough
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Lizzie Borden: Warps and Wefts - 3/26/2026
[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
The Bloody Century 2
Takes the reader back to 19th-century America in all its gory glory.
