No. 203
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
May 13, 2014

Fatal Soda Fountain Explosion.

May 13, 2014
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Tag: New Jersey

The Crusade Against the Tramp Evil.

New Jersey - The crusade of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company - against the tramp evil Detectives surrounding a camp of the vagabonds near Rahway.

1/27/2026

The First of the Season.

The Earliest Bath of the Year, at Atlantic City

7/5/2022

The Girls Biffed Each Other

1/19/2021

Great Base Ball Match.

Great baseball match between the Atlantic and Boxford Clubs of Brooklyn.

4/23/2018

Courtship from a Tree.

Young and Ardent Bob Toppin, a Newark, N. J., youth, does some tall climbing in order to meet his sweetheart, pretty Miss Hobbie, a parson’s daughter.

3/13/2017

Mrs. Snyder Pays Her Bet.

She backed Harrison, and had to wheel Henry Singer in a barrow, at Atlantic City, N. J.

11/21/2016

They Ran a Snide Game.

A “friendly” poker scheme exposed at Bogota, N. J., by one of the players squealing.

6/13/2016

A Sleep-Walker’s Act.

Miss Belle Collis, of Newark, N. J., surprises the neighbors by her want of thought.

3/26/2016

Fierce Football.

The great game recently played between teams representing the colleges of Princeton and Yale, on the former's grounds, Thanksgiving Day.

11/23/2015

New Jersey’s Great Wash Day.

Farmers with their wives and buxom daughters enjoy their annual bath in old ocean, at Spring Lake Beach, N. J.

8/18/2015

Hard Knocks and Horsewhips.

Miss Mamie Gannon, of Jersey City, attacks reporter Lenhart with a horsewhip for traducing her character in his newspaper.

8/10/2015

They Are a Bad Lot.

The frightful picture of crime and debauchery which has given notoriety to Mary Jane Cawley’s backwoods dive at Cookstown, N. J.

7/27/2015

Defying the Guards.

Downed by Kindness After defying a host of armed keepers, James Driscoll, in the Trenton, N. J. State prison succumbs to a gentle word.

1/12/2015

Murderous Assault by a Wife on Her Husband.

10/6/2014

Set Fire to the Bed.

9/22/2014

A Minister’s Scrape.

7/21/2014

"Four Aces."

9/25/2012

Spectacular Scenes & Sights Down on the Jersey Coast

Poster for the 1898 Broadway show "Have You Seen Smith?"

7/17/2012

She Was Bug Crazy.

5/22/2012

A Plucky Elberon, N. J., Girl

1/31/2012
Maximilian Pirner, "Funeral of a Fairy"The following tale comes from Dermot MacManus’ 1973 book, “The Middle Kingdom: The Faerie World of Ireland.”  Whether the narrator encountered ghosts, fairies, or, well, something else, it is certainly one of the more unusual alleged encounters with supernatural beings.The next account I have is of a very different kind of being. One might be tempted to
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Strange Company - 10/5/2026
  [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
"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
William H. Devlin(Illustrated Police News, December 22, 1877)Shortly after noon on Monday, December 10, 1877, a man entered the Lowell, Massachusetts, Police Station in a highly excited state. He told Deputy Marshal Favor that he had heard a terrible fight between a husband and wife Saturday night in a tenement on Common Street. Since then, he had heard nothing from the house, and he feared the
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Murder By Gaslight - 10/3/2026
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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Executed Today - 11/13/2020
Decoration Day and its Memories. | A Pointer.

Fatal Soda Fountain Explosion.

Killed by soda water

Killed by Soda Water.
Louis Sorrocco, an Italian, is instantly killed at Pittsburg, PA., by the explosion of a soda fountain. 

A special from Pittsburgh, Pa., Oct. 10, says: Louis Sorrocco, an Italian, was instantly killed this afternoon by the explosion of a soda fountain. He was employed at Louis Cella’s soda water manufactory, on Grand street, and was engaged in charging the fountain with gas when the explosion occurred. Cella was standing beside him as was knocked down, but not seriously injured. The building, a one-story structure, was badly damaged.


Reprinted from "Fatal Soda Fountain Explosion." The National Police Gazette 29 Oct 1887.