No. 635
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
November 30, 2023

The Last Dip of the Season.

Water witches who frolic with Neptune, no matter how cold his embrace.
September 3, 2013
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Tag: Newspaper

Life in Boston and New York.

Masthead of the short-lived flash press newspaper Life in Boston and New York.

1/12/2021

"Jack the Inkslinger."

Public Morality Must Suffer at the Hands of Our Newspaper Scandalmongers.

11/13/2018

Concerning Sensational Methods.

There is a class of publications whose lives depend upon their successful appeal to vicious instincts.

6/1/2015
Via Newspapers.comThis tale of a haunted British pub (there are a remarkable number of them) appeared in the “Regina Leader-Post,” July 26, 1930:GLOSSOP--A ghost that rings a bell on the tap-room table and hammers on the tap-room door, and other strange happenings, are mystifying the landlord of the Bull's Head, a 800-year-old public horse near Charlesworth. Mr. S. Onslow, the landlord, said that
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Strange Company - 11/29/2023
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Soapy Smith in Leadville, ColoradoJuly 21, 1880Soapy and partner, rear, between carriagesCourtesy Kyle Rosene collection(Click image to enlarge) Soapy Smith's stereo-view photographLeadville, Colorado, July 21, 1880Where was it taken?WHERE IN LEADVILLE WAS THIS TAKEN?(Click image to enlarge)     Those who have read Alias Soapy Smith: The Life and Death of a Scoundrel may recall seeing the
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Soapy Smith's Soap Box - 9/14/2023
On a busy day in 1951, a hot dog vendor found himself captive to a hawker of cheap jewelry who set up shop across from his rickety food cart decorated with American flags. Horses still worked the side streets of the city. Stray dogs waited for food scraps to fall to the pavement. TV antennas […]
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Ephemeral New York - 11/27/2023
An article I recently wrote for the British online magazine, New Politic, is now available online. The article, “The Criminal Origins of the United States of America,” is about British convict transportation to America, which took place between the years 1718 and 1775, and is the subject of my book, Bound with an Iron Chain: […]
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Early American Crime - 12/17/2021
James L. Daniels returned to Hillman, Alabama, from a trip to Birmingham, the night of December 26, 1890. While he was there, he purchased a hideous mask and thought it would be a good joke to put on the mask and frighten the family of his brother-in-law, Joe Tarpley. He knocked on their door and Tarpley answered. Not knowing it was Daniels, Tarpley told the masked man to go away. Instead,
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Murder By Gaslight - 11/25/2023
On October 16, 1900, the Fall River Daily Herald reported an incident at Maplecroft. Lizzie took a tumble from a step ladder while adjusting a picture on the wall. Dr. Stephen Masury Gordon set the broken wrist. Dr. Gordon lived at 165 Rock St. and was a Harvard graduate. One has to wonder why Lizzie did not have one of the servants or her handy man doing the chore. Dr. Gordon
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Lizzie Borden: Warps and Wefts - 10/12/2023
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 engaged as a carrier of wine, because he and his brother, with the help of […]
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Executed Today - 11/13/2020
Crazed by Politics. | Terrible Struggle with Flame and Flood.

The Last Dip of the Season.

Last Dip of the Season

Water witches who frolic with Neptune, no matter how cold his embrace.

Westchester Water Witches

They Won’t Have a Man Around, and Still Enjoy Themselves—Diving as a Fine Art, With a Special View to the Exhibition of Pink Flesh and Pretty Hosiery.

The fair dwellers in some of the charming country sites on the shores of Long Island Sound have invented a means of enjoying themselves, whose novelty will probably recommend it whenever it becomes known before the season is over. In the course of a yachting cruise down the sound last week a Police Gazette artist enjoyed an admirable opportunity to obtain the sketch presented with this number.

The pictures explains itself. A long and elastic spring-board is flown from the gallery of a boathouse, itself built over deep water, so far out as to afford ample profundity for safe diving. The plank itself is some fifteen feet above the surface of the water and straight in advance of its end a light cork buoy is enclosed. The door of the boat house in the rear is open, giving the diver a run of some twenty feet for a start.

The result, seen for the first time, is, to say the least, startling.

An elegant figure clad in a tight-fitting bathing suit of the most improved French model, bounds out of the dark doorway, makes three or four leaps on the swaying plank and is then shot high in the air, a mere flash of striped hosiery and pink flesh, descending a parabola and landing, if she knows how to preserve her balance, with her pointed hands, into the water, clearing the surface like an arrow and vanishing at last in a little circle of boiling foam. The object of the divers is to leap beyond the anchored buoy as far as possible, and a regular record is kept of the distance of the leaps. After rising to the surface the fair swimmers paddle back through the piles on which the boat house is sustained and ascend a comfortable ladder to the club-room, for it is, again.

The boat house is the meeting place of the “Westchester Divers," as they call themselves, who consist of numerous wealthy ladies of the vicinity, with a sprinkling of well-known actresses and professionals in operatic walks.

It is a veritable female paradise, no men being admitted to the hospitalities of the establishment. “We can’t keep you away in your boat, of course,” observed the smiling president to the artist. “But we won’t permit you to land, and you are always glad to get over to the Point where they have excellent lager beer on tap. Are you not thirsty?” The artist considered the hint an excellent one, and took it. He is sorry to say, however that the charming president of the “Westchester Divers” is either no judge or she has never read Sapphire.


Reprinted from The National Police Gazette, October 9, 1880.