No. 36
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
July 25, 2011

“I’ve Taken Poison, Maudie!”

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July 25, 2011
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Tag: Burglary

"Burglar Proof" is all Buncombe.

These implements, with nitro-glycerine and a little horse sense, can open any safe - How the up-to-date burglar keeps a little ahead of the safe builder.

8/17/2021

Left His Digits as Souvenirs.

The Misses Franklin, of Glenn Falls, Conn., armed with pistol and axe, put a burglar to flight minus two fingers.

12/12/2016

“For Members Only.”

11/10/2014

Burglars on Bicycles.

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

12/31/2013

It Was a "She."

7/9/2013

Burglary Tools.

2/11/2013
GEORGE F AFFLECK
alias: ADAMS, DAVIS, KID AFFLECK
THIEF, CONFIDENCE MAN

The Haunted Cottage on the Hill

In 1956, author Miriam Allen deFord (1888-1975) described the eerie phenomena she and her husband experienced after they moved into a seemingly innocuous little home, only to realize they were really renting a hefty dose of The Weird:When the owner showed me the little cottage on a hill in Mill Valley, California, nearly forty years ago, she made a strange remark. We were on the sun porch,
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Strange Company - 3/23/2026

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 ghostly remains of a legendary longtime Upper East Side movie theater

Stores come and go; office buildings gain and lose tenants. But the grief really hits when a shuttered movie theater remains empty, stripped of posters, concession signs, even the theater’s name. This is what remains of the Beekman Theater at 1271 Second Avenue, between 65th and 66th Streets. It showed its last film before abruptly […]
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Ephemeral New York - 3/23/2026

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

Maggie Crowley, Found Strangled.

Maggie Crowley(New York American, March 16, 1898)Robert Hoey, coming home from work in the early hours of March 15, 1898, literally tripped over the body of a dead woman in the courtyard of his New York City tenement. The woman had been strangled to death and dragged to the courtyard known in the neighborhood as “Hogan’s Alley.” Four days later, she was identified as Maggie Crowley, a young woman
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Murder By Gaslight - 3/21/2026
On the Russians.

Handsome Joe Tatro

The good-looking thirty-seven year old gentleman handling the reins behind the glossy matched pair pulling the spanking-new carriage drew the attention of more than one feminine eye.  Pacing down French St. at a sharp clip, the lady next to him, dressed neatly in a tailor-made suit with the latest in millinery fashion, smiled up at her coachman. Behind the lace curtains on the Hill section of Fall River, tongues were wagging about the unseemly pair. Lizzie Borden, acquitted of double homici
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Lizzie Borden: Warps and Wefts - 10/16/2025

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
Shot Down in His Office | The Old Shell Game

“I’ve Taken Poison, Maudie!”

Ive taken poison

Cripple Creek, Colorado, November 1896 - Josie Coyle, a well-known young woman, of Cripple Creek, Col, ends her life. A house of ill repute in Poverty Gulch, Cripple Creek, Colo., was the scene of a dramatic suicide early the other morning when Josie Coyle, a popular inmate, ended her troubles with poison. [more]

She had taken a large dose of some drug when she was discovered by one of the other girls who asked her if she felt ill.

“I’ve taken poison, Maudie!” was all she could say and then she died in a few minutes.

The name, Josie Coyle, was an assumed one. The woman was married, her husband, a blacksmith, residing in Denver. She had two children living with their father. Almost the last thing she said was that she hoped they would never know the depth to which their mother had been degraded.

The National Police Gazette, November 28, 1896

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