No. 64
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
January 17, 2012

A Characteristic Present

January 17, 2012
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 Welcome to this week's Link Dump!The Strange Company HQ staffers wish you pleasant reading!A handy reminder that bees are weird.A look at medieval executioners.The world's oldest dated printed book.A stupid theory about the Salem Witch Trials that refuses to die.The 11th century abbot and the recycled sarcophagus.The duel between W.B. Yeats and Aleister Crowley.The man who made a living
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  [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
 Carlyle Harris and Helen Potts.(The Trial of Carlyle W. Harris for Poisoning His Wife, Helen Potts, at New York.)Helen Potts, a nineteen-year-old student at Miss Comstock’s School in New York City, decided not to join her roommates when they went to hear a concert. Helen was feeling ill, but her boyfriend (secretly her husband), a medical student named Carlyle Harris, had prescribed a
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Murder By Gaslight - 10/17/2026
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
A Plucky Elberon, N. J., Girl | The Sawdust Game

A Characteristic Present

Buffalo Bills Present

Wasington, D.C., October 1886 - Buffalo Bill bestows a Mexican bronco pony on the youthful son of Secretary Lamar, Washington, D.C. [more]

The unusual sight of a cowboy in full costume, wearing a sombrero, and a Mexican bronco pony, was afforded the officials at Washington of Post Office and Interior Departments the other afternoon. The bronco was a present to young Mr. Lamar, son of Secretary Lamar. Buffalo Bill had sent the bronco pony with his compliments, and for awhile the story got abroad that it was a wedding gift to Secretary Lamar, but this was denied. The cowboy, after he dismounted, went into the Interior Department and presented the pony, and they took it around to the department stable.


Reprinted from The National Police Gazette, October 21, 1886.