No. 191
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
February 18, 2014

Nature versus Art.

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February 18, 2014
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Tag: Theft

A Man in a Black Mask.

Disguised as the Devil.

7/1/2025

Caught Helping Themselves.

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

1/9/2017

The Women Screamed.

A gang of pickpockets go through an excursion train near Wabash, Ind.

11/15/2016

A Man under Her Bed.

Had Miss Baker looked under the bed before making her toilet she would have postponed it.

9/26/2016

She Had a High Old Time.

8/13/2013

A Slippery and Subtle Knave – The Bank Sneak.

7/31/2012
FREDERICK LAUTHER
alias: , F R WILSON, FREDDIE LOUTHER
SNEAK, PICKPOCKET

Weekend Link Dump

 Welcome to this week's Link Dump!Oh, God, the Strange Company staffers are bar-hopping again.A case of avenged honor.The most famous dog of the Middle Ages.The legend of King Arthur in Greenland.A Welsh village that became a casualty of WWII.The rise and fall of masquerade balls.In which science proves that stolen french fries taste better.Two newly-discovered sermons by St.
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Strange Company - 6/19/2026

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.

New York’s longest “step street” is this dramatic three-block concrete staircase in the Bronx

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

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

Hannah and Stephen.

 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
On the Russians.

June 14, 1893 Big Day In Court

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

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
Illicit Distilleries. | The Southern Pacific Railway Disaster.

Nature versus Art.

nature vs art

How the deficiencies of one may be remedied by the other, as illustrated in many a boudoir in New York and elsewhere. 

There is a theory to the effect that beauty unadorned is adorned the most. But it won’t go down nowadays. Beauty has got to be adorned, you bet, or she’ll make things warm for the old man at home. We’ve been there, and we know whereof we speak. When she don’t pan out as well as she ought, art comes along and helps her out. If you don’t believe it—but no. It’s impossible. You must believe it, for from false teeth to a wooden leg, there isn’t a household on the continent that don’t know what man’s ingenuity can do to repair or make good for the deficiencies of nature.

 National Police Gazette, May 5, 1883.

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