No. 733
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
January 30, 2024

Danced on a Billiard Table.

Danced on a Billiard Table to Banjo Music.
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January 30, 2024
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WILLIAM FALE
alias: BROOKS
HOTEL THIEF, SLEEPING-CAR WORKER

The Ceremony on Clonmillan Hill

Maximilian Pirner, "Funeral of a Fairy"The following tale comes from Dermot MacManus’ 1973 book, “The Middle Kingdom: The Faerie World of Ireland.”  Whether the narrator encountered ghosts, fairies, or, well, something else, it is certainly one of the more unusual alleged encounters with supernatural beings.The next account I have is of a very different kind of being. One might be tempted to
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Strange Company - 10/5/2026

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
Amen.

Artifact #93: Soapy's son, hires attorney to stop the slurring of his father's name.

"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

A Cursed Murderer in Lowell, Mass.

William H. Devlin(Illustrated Police News, December 22, 1877)Shortly after noon on Monday, December 10, 1877, a man entered the Lowell, Massachusetts, Police Station in a highly excited state. He told Deputy Marshal Favor that he had heard a terrible fight between a husband and wife Saturday night in a tenement on Common Street. Since then, he had heard nothing from the house, and he feared the
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Murder By Gaslight - 10/3/2026
On the Russians.

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
An Unequal Match. | Taking a Criminal's Measure.

Danced on a Billiard Table.

Danced-on-a-Billiard-Table

A swell society woman of Buffalo broke away from her fastenings the other night, and after she had imbibed several drinks, she dropped into a resort where really good women do not go. There, she kept her little racket up, and as she was a liberal spender, no objection was made to anything she did. She capped the climax, however, when she climbed on a billiard table and danced the “buck” to music furnished by a negro banjoist, who was playing for the drinks. She finally got too gay and took a pair of curtains out of the place. For that, she was arrested, and the next morning, her husband got her out of court by paying a fine.

National Police Gazette, January 9, 1897.

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