No. 794
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
January 28, 2025
alias: JOSEPH WHARRIS
PICKPOCKET, BOARDING-HOUSE THIEF
There are certain people who, for one reason or another, have a way of attracting people who are eager to murder them. What makes the following case stand out is that exactly the opposite appears to have happened: A man was desperate to find someone willing to kill him, and he had a damned hard time achieving that goal.Samuel Resnick was a jeweler in Albany, New York, for nearly thirty
More...
Strange Company - 3/16/2026
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
There are certain people who, for one reason or another, have a way of attracting people who are eager to murder them. What makes the following case stand out is that exactly the opposite appears to have happened: A man was desperate to find someone willing to kill him, and he had a damned hard time achieving that goal.Samuel Resnick was a jeweler in Albany, New York, for nearly thirty
More...
Strange Company - 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
"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
About half past three, the morning of July 2, 1863, a young man on his way to work in Medina, Ohio, saw the home of Shubal Coy in flames. He alerted the neighbors, who came out to douse the flames with water. When the fire was under control, they went inside to look for the Coy family. They found Shubal lying in bed with nine stab wounds in his throat and breast, any one of them capable of
More...
Murder By Gaslight - 3/14/2026
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
More...
Soapy Smith's Soap Box - 10/13/2025
For years, an old buck, the leader of the deer herd in the North Woods of the Adirondack region, has maintained an absolute and malicious tyranny of the younger members of his own sex. His treatment rankled, and the other day they made a combined attack upon him, and a boy, the son of Edward Martine, a guide, finally mounted the buck’s back, and experienced for six miles what is probably the liveliest race through thick woods and deep snow which ever fell to the lot of a youth of his years. He was glad enough when the buck came to a stand-still from exhaustion, and happier still when a rescuing party following the buck’s trail on snow-shoes brought him out to a place of shelter.The Bloody Century 2
Takes the reader back to 19th-century America in all its gory glory.
