No. 868
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
June 02, 2026

A Female Card Sharp.

A female gambler detects an opponent cheating and rakes in the pot.
June 2, 2026
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Tag: Texas

What Led to a Divorce.

What a Husband Discovered, and How a couple were separated.

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The Diamond King.

J. I. Lighthall, better known as the Diamond King, was a charismatic showman and a master of marketing, but he was also a dedicated healer.

12/4/2012

Beauty as a Shield.

Beauty Conquers avarice and outlawry "We won't rob this house to-night."

7/24/2012

Crush Collision!

Crush, Texas, September 15, 1896

2/24/2011
"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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"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
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
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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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
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
  [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
| Rip Roaring Fun.

A Female Card Sharp.

Female-gambler

A female gambler detects an opponent cheating and rakes in the pot.

She was the boss. She carried a revolver in her bustle and a pack of cards in her pocket, and she can beat any ordinary player out of a cool hundred in twenty minutes of draw poker. She is a scientific disciple of Schenck, and hails from Milwaukee. She appeared in Chicago a short time since and gave out that she had $25,000 pug on a game of draw. A couple of the knowing ones soon sought her out, and in a very short time, they were engaged over a green covered table in a lively game. She held an ace and four kings, but her opponent kept raising until she had planked her last dollar. Then laying her hand down on the table and placing a small sized bowie-knife over the same, she loosened a revolver in her girdle and then called her opponent’s hand. He hesitated a moment, and she seized his waist and turned his hand to view—it contained four aces and a king. The female relative of Schenck cast on the gambler a look of scorn as they gathered up the spoils, and revolver in hand, ordered him out of his chair where lay the card he had discarded for the extra ace. She departed from Chicago with her pile doubled, and in Jean Richter’s words, we might say “Honor women. They strew celestial roses on the pathway of our terrestrial life.


Illustrated Police News, July 6, 1876.