No. 757
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
July 07, 2024
alias: ADAMS, DAVIS, KID AFFLECK
THIEF, CONFIDENCE MAN
Welcome to this week's Link Dump!While you read, feel free to visit our open bar.Watch out for those hypnotic serpents!The murder of the Coy family.A brief history of soap.Cats may wind up curing cancer, which wouldn't surprise me a bit.When you're a spiritualist, you don't care if your fiance is dead.The scientific debate over free will.The pyramids of Mars.A surprisingly modern ancient
More...
Strange Company - 3/20/2026
Bond Street today is a pricey place to live. And so it was in the 1830s, when it became one of New York’s most exclusive enclaves. Wealthy residents fleeing the crowded and increasingly commercial neighborhoods below Houston Street sought refuge on this short little street, which only runs two blocks from Broadway to the Bowery. […]
More...
Ephemeral New York - 3/16/2026
"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
Welcome to this week's Link Dump!While you read, feel free to visit our open bar.Watch out for those hypnotic serpents!The murder of the Coy family.A brief history of soap.Cats may wind up curing cancer, which wouldn't surprise me a bit.When you're a spiritualist, you don't care if your fiance is dead.The scientific debate over free will.The pyramids of Mars.A surprisingly modern ancient
More...
Strange Company - 3/20/2026
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
More...
Lizzie Borden: Warps and Wefts - 10/16/2025
"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
More...
Soapy Smith's Soap Box - 10/13/2025
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
More...
Murder By Gaslight - 3/21/2026
Bond Street today is a pricey place to live. And so it was in the 1830s, when it became one of New York’s most exclusive enclaves. Wealthy residents fleeing the crowded and increasingly commercial neighborhoods below Houston Street sought refuge on this short little street, which only runs two blocks from Broadway to the Bowery. […]
More...
Ephemeral New York - 3/16/2026
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
More...
Lizzie Borden: Warps and Wefts - 10/16/2025
Aquatic Sport on the Virginia Coast.The Bloody Century 2
Takes the reader back to 19th-century America in all its gory glory.
