No. 631
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
May 16, 2022

They Ran a Snide Game.

A “friendly” poker scheme exposed at Bogota, N. J., by one of the players squealing.
May 16, 2022
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Tag: 1880

A Smuggler Queen.

The beautiful contrabandista lately arrested with five confederates near Deming, New Mexico.

3/8/2022

"He Loves Me; He Loves Me Not."

How Marie Played a Romantic Trick on Her Lover and Brought Him to Time

4/9/2019

To Arctic Enthusiasts!

1/21/2019

The Queen of The May.

A Vegetarian's Fancy.

5/7/2018

A Jealous Husband’s Mistake.

How a Reading, PA., merchant, broke open his wife’s charmer and discovered a supposed lover to be a harmless female cousin.

2/19/2018

Afloat on a Cake of Ice.

Perilous Situation of a Skating Party on the Ohio River Near Zanesville, Ohio.

1/1/2018

The Country Cureall.

Patients serenading the village doctor.

8/7/2017

July 4.

So this is your birthday again. Well, bless my soul! Columbia, you will be as tall as your father soon.

7/3/2017

Tennis.

"Who wants to pway me a couple of wattling stwong games?"

6/5/2017

Caught Helping Themselves.

Boston detectives arrest two stylishly-dressed women while in the act of the shoplifting game.

1/9/2017

Seeing in the New Year.

Jolly sport among the giddy Vassar girls, fun in the forecastle, and a lonely New Year’s Eve on the desolate prarie.

12/26/2016

Pretty Stars for the Southern Dives.

Fifteen charming chippies make Rome howl while voyaging to New Orleans, Louisiana.

12/19/2016

Another Steamboat Disaster.

New York City, -- The Steamboat Riverdale blown up, August 28th – Rescuing the passengers.

10/3/2016

Trying to Scare an Old Maid with a Wooden Dutchman.

A wooden Dutchman, rather than no man at all, was what a sensible spinster argued when some practical jokers under took to scare her in Oakland, Cal.

7/11/2016

A Successful Trip.

William Leland, of Buffalo, N. Y., takes a pleasurable dive over the Horseshoe Falls and still lives to be written up.

6/5/2016

A Woman’s Flat-Irony.

Miss Sallie Utterback, of Shoals, Near Vincennes, Indiana, knocks out a man with a waggin’ tongue.

2/2/2016

Absolutely Pure.

The only absolutely pure and full weight desiccated cocoanut manufactured in this country.

12/5/2015

Half-dime Novels and Story Papers.

Satan's sure-ruin traps - half-dime novels, five and ten cent story papers, and low-priced pamphlets for boys and girls.

11/14/2015

Fighting Marines.

Some of Uncle Sam’s land and water police have a genial shindy among themselves at the Navy Yard, Brooklyn, N. Y.

11/5/2015

A Rattling Main.

A desperate week-long challenge battle between Georgia and Arkansas cocks won by F. E. Grist's champion, Richard K Fox.

10/20/2015

Another Amorous Parson.

Westchester County is all agog over the case of the Rev. Mr. White, accused of violently assaulting the sister-in-law of a brother clergyman. We illustrate the scene.

10/6/2015

Collecting Beer Money.

A gang of female rogues, of the East Side, New York, work a little racket of their own.

9/15/2015

Life on a Mississippi Steamboat.

The Story-teller in the Wheel-house of the "Belle Memphis"

9/7/2015

Getting Above his Business.

How a too presumptuous shoe dealer’s attention to a female customer was resented by her male escort.

8/31/2015

Yachting.

Yachting.

8/3/2015

A Hot Day in New York.

While New York is by no means the hottest city in the country, there have been a few days during the present season when the temperature reached a height altogether incompatible with human comfort.

7/20/2015

A Bloody Ruction.

Bayonets and Knives—A Sister’s Influence and Prevention of Murder.

6/12/2015

Defying the Guards.

Downed by Kindness After defying a host of armed keepers, James Driscoll, in the Trenton, N. J. State prison succumbs to a gentle word.

1/12/2015

Merry Christmas!

12/22/2014

Aboriginal Footprints.

11/17/2014

A Substitute for a Wife.

10/27/2014

Killed and Eaten by Hogs.

9/15/2014

They Got Hilariously Full.

Alleged cancan dance indulged in by young male and female swells at Jamestown, New York.

8/12/2014

Independence Day in the Country.

6/28/2014

Progress of Naval Architecture.

6/2/2014

Fatal Soda Fountain Explosion.

5/13/2014

Thimble Rig A La Mode.

3/18/2014

Unmindful of their Attire.

A Fire in the Chicago Opera House creates a stampede among pretty actresses who rush to the street dishabille.

3/11/2014

Illicit Distilleries.

North Carolina - An Illicit Whiskey Still in the Mountains Surprised by Revenue Officers.

2/25/2014

Nature versus Art.

2/18/2014

Tobogganing.

1/7/2014
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
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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
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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 […]
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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
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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.
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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
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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 […]
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Early American Crime - 2/7/2019
Threatening an Umpire. | Snares for the Unwary.

They Ran a Snide Game.

A Snide Game

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

Some months ago there moved into a neat cottage at Bogota, N. J., on the east side of the Hackensack River, opposite Hackensack, N. J., a family who introduced themselves as the Larkins.

When Mrs. Larkins and her daughters, Julie, Clytie and Bell, first settled in Bogota the were regular in their attendance upon worship in the "old church on the green,” where their presence was at once remarked, and they were classed as inhabitants of ultra sweldom by the staid Dutch worshippers, who cling to the belief of their forefathers that gaudy colors and silks and satins are an abomination. But it has just leaked out that Mrs. Larkins has been running a little game of draw in her quiet little cottage.

It now appears that “Mrs. Larkins: and her “family” were reaping a rich reward from the visitors among whom were at least three well-known local poker experts, who are known to have been regular in their visits Saturday nights. The handsome “father” of the house is said to have been a professional gambler, who plucked the larger game, while the callow youth were left to the fair but expert misses.

Under such circumstances it would be impossible to say how long the pleasures of the place might have been enjoyed had it not been for the rashness of one young man, who, while presumably headed with wine, imagined that the fair Clytie held one card too many at a moment when the inducement was a jackpot of generous amount. Clytie smilingly protested her innocence, but the youth lost his temper, and so far forgot himself as to impeach her veracity in a word of four letter preceded by a powerful adjective. When a constable wen with a warrant to pull the house he found in large black letters “To Let” on the door.


Reprinted from National Police Gazette, January 4, 1890.