No. 711
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
August 5, 2025

That Settled It.

A Chicago man wants a divorce because his wife sings Salvation hymns, gains his suit by having her g
January 22, 2018
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Tag: Whips

Whipped for Alleged Slander.

Actress Dorothy Morton cowhided in Heucks’ Theatre, Cincinnati, by irate chorus girls.

9/4/2017

A Duel with Whips.

A Duel with Whips. Two hot-blooded Georgians fight till they are raw and their weapons give out and then call it a draw.

7/14/2015
1930s Romania may not have been a paradise for most people, but for a young Bucharest actress named Tita Cristescu, life was pretty darned good.  She was well-connected (her father, Gheorghe Cristescu, was a prominent figure in Romanian politics,) she had a successful theatrical career, and was pretty enough to be named “Miss Romania” of 1933.  Tita was engaged to be married to Hotta
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Strange Company - 8/4/2025
Soapy Smith STAR NotebookPage 20 - Original copy1884Courtesy of Geri Murphy(Click image to enlarge) oapy Smith's early empire growth in Denver.Operating the prize package soap sell racket in 1884. This is page 20, the continuation of page 19, and dated May 6 - May 29, 1884, as well as the continuation of pages 18-19, the beginning of Soapy Smith's criminal empire building in Denver, Colorado.&
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Soapy Smith's Soap Box - 6/1/2025
There’s so much exquisite natural and structural beauty grabbing your attention in Central Park that you probably don’t give the transverse roads much thought. You know the transverse roads. Part of Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux’s 1858 Greensward plan for the park, these four serpentine roads at 65th, 79th, 85th, and 97th Streets are […]
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Ephemeral New York - 8/4/2025
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
 Read the full story here: The Walworth Patricide.
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Murder By Gaslight - 8/2/2025
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
  [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
Puck's Banana-Skin Manual. | Map of the Square and Stationary Earth.

That Settled It.

That settled it

A Chicago man wants a divorce because his wife sings Salvation hymns, gains his suit by having her give an exhibition of her vocal powers in court.

A Chicago man wanted a divorce because his wife persisted in singing Salvation hymns. The Court just laughed at him, and he would have lost his case had not his lawyer summoned the wife to the witness stand and started her singing. At the end of the fifth verse the Court threw up the sponge, and the divorce was granted.

The lawyer and the husband for the first time drank in the strains with delight, but the vocal entertainment was too much for the judge and jury.


Reprinted from National Police Gazette, November 17, 1883.