No. 714
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
August 26, 2025

A Wild Girl in a Connecticut Swamp.

She resides in a swamp near Branford, Conn, and fills the rustics with terror.
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June 28, 2016
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JAMES ANDERSON
alias: EVANS, JIMMIE THE KID
PICKPOCKET

A Car Bombing in Texarkana

There is something particularly sinister about murders that not only go unsolved, but where it is impossible to even find the motive for the killing.  Such an unaccountable act of evil leaves onlookers with the horrified thought, “For all I know, that could have been me…”  The following mystery is one of those cases.36-year-old Daryl Crouch was president of a successful family-owned
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Strange Company - 8/25/2025

It’s Almost August

Stop by this week as we explore what happened the week before the murders, Emma and Lizzie’s getaway to Fairhaven and New Bedford, and new imagery which will help to tell the story. The pears are almost ripe, August 4th is coming fast, and thoughts begin to turn to that house on Second Street once again. Follow us at https://www.facebook.com/lizziebordenwarpsandwefts/ !
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Lizzie Borden: Warps and Wefts - 7/26/2025
Amen.

An East Village restaurant’s ghost sign is a relic of the neighborhood’s Italian immigrant past

By the time Sicilian immigrant Michael Lanza founded his namesake restaurant in 1904, the location he chose on First Avenue between 10th and 11th Streets was shaping into a mini Little Italy. Across the Avenue on 11th Street was Veniero’s, the Italian bakery dating back to 1894. in 1908, specialty grocers Russo’s would open a […]
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Ephemeral New York - 8/25/2025

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

A Horrible Butchery.

Three teenage boys made a shocking discovery in Philadelphia’s East Fairmont Park on December 26, 1888. They were in a secluded area near the reservoir where the Water Department stored pipes. Sitting atop a large steel pipe, one of the boys noticed two coarse gunny sacks inside the three-foot mouth of a nearby pipe. He thought they contained the clothes of a tramp. Another boy took a pocketknife
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Murder By Gaslight - 8/23/2025
On the Russians.

Soapy Smith's "STAR" notebook, 1884, Texas, California: Page #21

Soapy Smith STAR NotebookPage 21 - Original copy1884Courtesy of Geri Murphy(Click image to enlarge) oapy Smith's early trips in Texas, Arizona, California, and the men he met.Operating the prize package soap sell racket in 1884. This is page 21, which appears to be a continuation of pages 19-20, which ends listing cities in Texas, and page 21 continues in Texas. If this is accurate then
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Soapy Smith's Soap Box - 8/22/2025

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
She Stole Her Lover’s Clothes. | Done Up by Dizzy Blondes.

A Wild Girl in a Connecticut Swamp.

She resides in a swamp near Branford, Conn, and fills the rustics with terror.

Wild Girl A special from New Haven, Oct. 28 says: For several weeks past sportsmen who have been hunting in the woods in the vicinity of Branford have from time to time seen a young woman darting about among the trees. She is apparently about sixteen years of age, wears no hat or shoes, and her clothing hangs in tatters about her, barley covering her form. Who she is, where she lives or where she came from is unknown. On several occasions when addressed she replied in incoherent language and ended her sentence with wild, hysterical laughter. Any attempt to approach her is fruitless. She runs like a dear and leaps stone walls and fences in a single bound. Her retreat is believed to be in Towner’s swamp, about two miles from Branford Center, as she seeks refuge there when pursued. It is supposed that the girl has been the inmate of some asylum from which she escaped. The authorities and citizens of Branford are to organize and if possible capture her and place her in some one of the State institutions.

Reprinted from National Police Gazette, November 19. 1887.

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