No. 677
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
January 31, 2023

$20-Bills on a Cane.

A Merrymaking Party That Carried Matters Too Far in the Theatre.
January 31, 2023
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 Welcome to this week's Link Dump!Our host for this Friday is the handsome mascot (name unknown) of the S.S. Custodian, a cargo ship that was active during the first half of the 20th century.New research into the Battle of Hastings.The wonders of Mayan astronomy.The importance of horses in the Mughal Empire.A famous film of Bigfoot is probably a hoax.  I know, shocker.What it was like
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Strange Company - 3/27/2026
"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
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Soapy Smith's Soap Box - 10/13/2025
Whatever you believe about the guilt or innocence of Lizzie Borden, I have always believed film makers do a great injustice to the story by not beginning at the beginning- the death on March 26, 1863 of the first Mrs. Borden. In the dying moments of Sarah Morse, Emma takes on the weight of the care of her little sister, not yet three years old. Emma herself was just 12 on March 1st. Emma has seen her mother suffer for a long time, seen her pain and loss of little Alice Esther. Emma is old enough
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Lizzie Borden: Warps and Wefts - 3/26/2026
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
National Police Gazette, January 28, 1882Mrs. J.W. Gibbons was away from her home in Ashland, Kentucky, on December 23, 1881. She left behind her 18-year-old son Robert, her 14-year-old daughter Fannie, and 17-year-old Emma Thomas (aka Carico), who was staying with them. Mrs. Gibbons returned the following day to find her home burned to the ground and all three inhabitants dead.Read the full
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Murder By Gaslight - 3/28/2026
Stores come and go; office buildings gain and lose tenants. But the grief really hits when a shuttered movie theater remains empty, stripped of posters, concession signs, even the theater’s name. This is what remains of the Beekman Theater at 1271 Second Avenue, between 65th and 66th Streets. It showed its last film before abruptly […]
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Ephemeral New York - 3/23/2026
  [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
A New Shoplifting Dodge. | In a Deadly Folding-Bed.

$20-Bills on a Cane.

Bills-on-Cane

A Merrymaking Party That Carried Matters Too Far in the Theatre.

About seventy-five members of the Ariel Bowling Club attended the performance at the Academy of Music at Baltimore, Dec. 8, where Pauline Hall and Richard Golden appeared in the "Honeymoon."

Some of the young men had imbibed rather freely in anticipation of the good time that was to follow the show, when the club banquet was to be attended by Miss Hall and the rest of the company. The front seats of the orchestra circle had been reserved for the clubmen, and the performers and the Ariels prepared to have a jolly time with the various bon mots and jokes that were to pass between the actors and the audience.

The hilarious clubmen went a little too far, and then there was trouble. They started in by guying all hands, interrupting the performers, and then started to shying sandwiches, with which they were provided, on the stage. Another crowd would throw a rag baby attached to a string at the performers and then jerk it away.

Finally Mr. Golden grew angry, and walking down to the footlights, said that the behavior was offensive, and that there were others in the theatre besides the clubmen. Miss Hall stepped from the wings to applaud this speech. This made the clubmen angrier.

They kept silence when either Miss Hall or Golden appeared, but applauded uproariously whenever others of the company were on the stage. One of the men insisted on pushing $20 bills on the head of his cane at the chorus girls. This, of course, broke up the arrangements for the evening. The Ariels held the banquet, but the "Honeymooners" did not join in the festivities.


Illustrated Police News, December 23,1893.