No. 569
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
June 21, 2022

Knife and Chloroform Duel.

How a Doctor Kept a Morphine Fiend from Killing Him With a Long-Bladed Surgical Instrument.
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June 21, 2022
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JAMES HOPE
alias: OLD MAN HOPE
BANK BURGLAR

Artifact #91: Soapy Smith's son James commencement exercises, circa 1897-1904.

Artifact #91James Joseph SmithCommencement ExercisesJeff Smith collection(Click image to enlarge) ames Joseph SmithCommencement Exercises for Soapy Smith's youngest son, circa 1897-1904.The document has no date, but advertises the piano as being furnished by the Val A. Reis Music Company of St. Louis, which had a store open between 1891-1908, thus, I am guessing that James was between the age
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Soapy Smith's Soap Box - 10/10/2025

18th anniversary for Warps & Wefts

New to Warps & Wefts? We’ve been online since 2007 with hundreds of articles, posts, over a thousand images, animations, colorizations, newspaper coverage and clippings of the murders and trial day by day, cartoons, AI and imagined imaging, videos, profiles of important people in the case, on the road field trip vlogs and much more. We post every day on Facebook, usually 6-10 posts on various topics so everyone can find something to enjoy reading- why? Because we want a bit of the Borden case every day! We sign off every night around 10 p.m. and upload every morning around 9 a.m. Visit our Facebook and Youtube channel links below. Please do like and follow our Facebook page  Send us your questions! No Patreons or monetization ever. No detail too small to be considered. Stop by to see us- we learn something new every day!  https://www.facebook.com/lizziebordenwarpsandwefts/ https://www.youtube.com/@LizzieBordenWarpsandWefts See less Comments Author Lizzie Borden Warps &
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Lizzie Borden: Warps and Wefts - 9/26/2025
Amen.

Weekend Link Dump

 It's time for this week's Link Dump!Please make yourselves at home.A Maine ghost ship.The once-famed Lyon Quintuplets.Ermengarde de Beaumont, Queen of Scots.A brief history of the word "yclept."The man they just couldn't imprison.It sounds like Shackleton's "Endurance" was a bit of a lemon."The idea that many panhandlers are secretly wealthy is, I'm sure, just an urban myth."  Fun fact
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Strange Company - 10/10/2025

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

The Richardson McFarland Tragedy.

On the afternoon of November 25, 1869, Daniel McFarland walked into the office of the New York Tribune and there shot and killed Albert Richardson, a Tribune editor. Richardson had planned to marry Daniel McFarland’s ex-wife, Abby Sage McFarland. The facts of the murder were irrefutable, but the trial that followed focused instead on the behavior of Abby McFarland. Was her adultery an attack on
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Murder By Gaslight - 10/4/2025
On the Russians.

The tenement is a menace to all, according to a dark and blunt illustration from 1901

There’s no mistaking the message of this darkly graphic illustration, which appeared in the satirical periodical Puck in March 1901. “The tenement—a menace to all,” the tagline says. Death hovers over the triumphant spirits of alcoholism, prostitution, gambling, opium dens, and other social evils, which escape like noxious vapors through the unlit tenement windows. Its […]
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Ephemeral New York - 10/6/2025

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
Independence Day in the Country. | Done Up by Dizzy Blondes.

Knife and Chloroform Duel.

Subduing-Crazy

A young man with the sallowness of complexion that betokens the excessive use of morphine called at the office of Dr. W.O. Wilcox in San Francisco, April 12, and commanded the physician to give him one "shot" of the drug. The fiend was armed with a surgeon's knife, the blade of which was six inches long, and he volunteered to cut the doctor's heart out.

Dr. Wilcox dashed part of the contents of a six-ounoe bottle of chloroform in the face of the fiend as he made a lunge with the knife. This stopped the wild man for an instant, and the doctor saturated a handkerchief. As the fiend sprang at him a second time the physician pressed the handkerchief to the fellow's nostrils. The fiend sank to the floor and the doctor gave him a "shot" of morphine.

When the fiend regained consciousness he informed the doctor that he had had a really charming visit, adding as he left the office that he would call again, would not forget the number, and would speak a good word for the house. Dr. Wilcox says the next "shot" he gives the fellow will be powder and ball.

Illustrated Police News, May 4, 1895.

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