No. 837
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
October 21, 2025

She Stole Her Lover’s Clothes.

A Cincinnati girl parades the streets in male attire and is yanked in for her temerity and immodesty
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October 21, 2025
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Tag: Massachusetts

Members of the Banjo and Mandolin Clubs.

Mount Holyoke College, 1898-1899.

4/24/2023

A Madman in the Pulpit.

Charles Emmons takes possessions of a Springfield, Mass., church and turns it into a fort.

8/1/2016

The Bicycle Tournament at Springfield, Mass.

Perhaps the most successful bicycle tournament ever held in this country was that which opened at Springfield, Mass., on Tuesday, September 18th, 1883, and continued for three days.

9/29/2015

“For Members Only.”

11/10/2014

Picnic on Marblehead Neck.

8/5/2014

Progress of Naval Architecture.

6/2/2014

Burglars on Bicycles.

Burglars in Massachusetts utilize the flying wheels in their midnight depredations.

12/31/2013

Philanthropist or “Moral Leper?”

4/30/2013

Female Tobacco Chewers.

What a Correspondent Asserts Regarding a Boston Girl.

7/10/2012

Their Name a Misnomer.

2/28/2012

The Female Marine

12/27/2011

Driven by Delusion

Henry Goodwin entered the office of his partner, Albert Swan, pulled out a revolver and shot him.

11/14/2011
JOHN LOVE
alias: JAMES D WELLS
SNEAK, BANK BURGLAR

The Bizarre Murder of Pauline Amsel

"Indian Citizen," November 12. 1914, via Newspapers.comA frightening and inexplicable tragedy hit the normally peaceful town of Durant, Oklahoma in 1914.  According to Jake and Celia Amsel, a well-to-do, respectable couple, at about one-thirty a.m. on the night of November 11, they were awakened by screams emanating from their home’s outdoor sleeping porch.  They were horrified to
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Strange Company - 6/8/2026

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
Amen.

The story of the 19th century factory building hidden within modern Bronx high-rise towers

You can see it peeking out from the Harlem River Drive or through the chain-link fence of the Third Avenue Bridge: a five-story red brick building almost buried behind glass and steel apartment towers. The towers are newish luxury rental residences built on the Bronx side of the Harlem River. Shiny and modern, they bring […]
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Ephemeral New York - 6/8/2026

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

The Conspirators and their Hitman.

In 1830, Joseph Knapp conspired with his brother, John Francis Knapp, to hire a local criminal, Richard Crowninshield, to murder their great uncle, Captain Joseph White, in Salem, Massachusetts. They believed that if the captain died without a will, they stood to inherit a sizable fortune.Read the full story here: "A Most Extraordinary Case"
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Murder By Gaslight - 6/6/2026
On the Russians.

Lizzie causes a sensation

As Mr. Moody for the Prosecution dramatically expounds on hatchets and grisly details, and a glimpse of two skulls in a leather case, Lizzie slumps over in her chair. Was it the heat or the ghastly descriptions?
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Lizzie Borden: Warps and Wefts - 6/7/2026

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
Passion's Panderers. | Miss Eva G. Vallee

She Stole Her Lover’s Clothes.

Stole Her Lover's Clothes

A Cincinnati girl parades the streets in male attire and is yanked in for her temerity and immodesty. [more]


Alice Rowley, a fly young girl of Cincinnati, met and invited Gideon Glen Williams, of the same city, to go to her rooms with her a few days ago. She then proposed that she put on Williams’ clothes and go out and masquerade. This Williams agreed to, provided she would return in a short time. This sweet Alice failed to do, as she was yanked to the station house when about to enter a theatre. At the station she told the sergeant that the owner of the toggery was at her room with nothing but an undershirt on waiting for her return. Williams sat by the stove for more than two hours before his clothes were brought to him from the House of Detention.

National Police Gazette, November 9, 1889

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