No. 714
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
August 26, 2025

Heroism of a Society Belle.

The Bravery of charming Miss Jaffray, the daughter of a New York millionaire, saves many lives at Ir
December 28, 2015
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Tag: Allan Pinkerton

Kate Warne.

Kate Warne, America’s first female detective.

5/30/2012

Allan Pinkerton.

The Eye that Never Sleeps.

3/27/2012

The Sawdust Game

The "sawdust game," was a confidence scam that only swindled those who deserved to be swindled.

1/10/2012
There is something particularly sinister about murders that not only go unsolved, but where it is impossible to even find the motive for the killing.  Such an unaccountable act of evil leaves onlookers with the horrified thought, “For all I know, that could have been me…”  The following mystery is one of those cases.36-year-old Daryl Crouch was president of a successful family-owned
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Strange Company - 8/25/2025
Stop by this week as we explore what happened the week before the murders, Emma and Lizzie’s getaway to Fairhaven and New Bedford, and new imagery which will help to tell the story. The pears are almost ripe, August 4th is coming fast, and thoughts begin to turn to that house on Second Street once again. Follow us at https://www.facebook.com/lizziebordenwarpsandwefts/ !
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Lizzie Borden: Warps and Wefts - 7/26/2025
By the time Sicilian immigrant Michael Lanza founded his namesake restaurant in 1904, the location he chose on First Avenue between 10th and 11th Streets was shaping into a mini Little Italy. Across the Avenue on 11th Street was Veniero’s, the Italian bakery dating back to 1894. in 1908, specialty grocers Russo’s would open a […]
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Ephemeral New York - 8/25/2025
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
Three teenage boys made a shocking discovery in Philadelphia’s East Fairmont Park on December 26, 1888. They were in a secluded area near the reservoir where the Water Department stored pipes. Sitting atop a large steel pipe, one of the boys noticed two coarse gunny sacks inside the three-foot mouth of a nearby pipe. He thought they contained the clothes of a tramp. Another boy took a pocketknife
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Murder By Gaslight - 8/23/2025
Soapy Smith STAR NotebookPage 21 - Original copy1884Courtesy of Geri Murphy(Click image to enlarge) oapy Smith's early trips in Texas, Arizona, California, and the men he met.Operating the prize package soap sell racket in 1884. This is page 21, which appears to be a continuation of pages 19-20, which ends listing cities in Texas, and page 21 continues in Texas. If this is accurate then
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Soapy Smith's Soap Box - 8/22/2025
  [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
Pugilistic Females. | A New Wrinkle.

Heroism of a Society Belle.

HeroismThe Bravery of charming Miss Jaffray, the daughter of a New York millionaire, saves many lives at Irvington, N. Y. 

The people of Irvington, N. Y., had tier New Year celebration disturbed by a skating accident which resulted in the death of two boys, both sons of well-known residents often neighborhood. Hamilton’s pond, a sheet of water eight or ten acres in size and dangerously deep, was thought to have a sufficient thickness of ice to be bearing, and consequently a holiday crowd trooped to it. Skating was going on merrily about noon, when some rash youths ventured on an unsafe part of the ice. Their foolhardiness had the usual result. The ice broke, and they as well as others less deserving of a cold bath were plunged into the water.

If it had not been for the forethought of Howard S. Jaffray, the well-known yachtsmen and man of business and the presence of mind of his daughter, a serious accident, involving a large loss of life, could not well have been avoided. Miss Jaffray rushed for a life line, which her father had provided for emergencies of this kind, and her rare presence of mind was the means of saving all of those immersed, excepting two boys. Paul Cannon and Joseph Gibbons.


Reprinted from National Police Gazette, January 19, 1889.