No. 607
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
December 21, 2021

So Far from Home

The Pearl Bryan Murder.
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December 21, 2021
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Tag: College

A Great Game of Football.

Fair college students engage in a rough-and-tumble chase after the pigskin.

11/7/2023

Revelry Rampant.

The orgies indulged in by Yale students and their female friends.

8/15/2023

Members of the Banjo and Mandolin Clubs.

Mount Holyoke College, 1898-1899.

4/24/2023

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

Collegians at Football.

12/10/2013

Hid the Girls' Skirts

8/22/2011
EDW'D FAIRBROTHER
alias: DOCTOR ST CLAIR, DR EDW'D S WEST
HOTEL, BOARDING-HOUSE THIEF

The Plum Tree Hanging

I’ve noticed that in recent years, Halloween decorations have grown increasingly macabre.  In my neighborhood, at least, grinning Jack o’lanterns and innocuous ghosts are being replaced by ghoulish skeletons (both human and animal,) gravestones, knife-wielding devils, and various other ugly monstrosities.  Last year, a house near me put in their yard such a revolting handmade display of
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Strange Company - 10/26/2026

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

The Three Hangings, Lycoming County.

This week, we feature a guest post by Don Everett Smith Jr., author of The Goffle Road Murders of Passaic County (History Press, 2011).   In a previous post on Murder by Gaslight, “Revisiting the Goffle Road Murders,” Don presented an excerpt from his book. This week’s post, “The Three Hangings, Lycoming County,” examines the 1880 murder of Andrew Miller in Lycoming County, Pennsylvania
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Murder By Gaslight - 10/24/2026
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
Taking a Criminal's Measure. | Nothing But Wind!

So Far from Home

her struggle (Illustration from: The Mysterious Murder of Pearl Bryan, Or, The Headless Horror. Cincinnati: Barclay & Co., 1896.)

Yes. they drove far from the city,

To a place so far from home,

There they left her body lying

Headless and all stained with blood

Pearl Bryan (traditional ballad)

New Book!

So Far from Home
The Pearl Bryan Murder
by Robert Wilhelm

FrontCoverWeb2The headless corpse of a young woman, discovered in the woods of Northern Kentucky in February 1896, disrupted communities in three states. The woman was Pearl Bryan, daughter of a wealthy farmer in Greencastle, Indiana, and her suspected killers, Scott Jackson and Alonzo Walling, were dental students in Cincinnati, Ohio. How Pearl Bryan died so far from home is an enduring mystery.

 
It was the age of yellow journalism when sensational murder cases drove newspaper circulation, and daily papers competed to print the most gruesome details and explicit illustrations. Local crimes became national news, and readers followed the daily progress of police investigations and murder trials as if they were serialized mysteries. The murder of Pearl Bryan in 1896, featuring a headless body, remorseless villains, and threats of civil unrest, fit the bill perfectly. So Far from Home: The Pearl Bryan Murder revisits the story as it unfolded in the daily press.
 
Available at Amazon.

 

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