No. 635
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
December 2, 2023

Welcome to The National Night Stick

Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America
February 16, 2011
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 "The Witches' Cove," Follower of Jan MandijnWelcome to the first Link Dump of December!The Strange Company HQ staffers are already starting on the Christmas parties.The "Shankhill Butchers."The history of Christmas puddings.In which we learn that Napoleon had planned to spend his retirement in New Orleans.  Oops.Vintage Christmas gift ideas.The adventures of a Victorian sailor boy.A
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Strange Company - 12/1/2023
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Soapy Smith in Leadville, ColoradoJuly 21, 1880Soapy and partner, rear, between carriagesCourtesy Kyle Rosene collection(Click image to enlarge) Soapy Smith's stereo-view photographLeadville, Colorado, July 21, 1880Where was it taken?WHERE IN LEADVILLE WAS THIS TAKEN?(Click image to enlarge)     Those who have read Alias Soapy Smith: The Life and Death of a Scoundrel may
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Soapy Smith's Soap Box - 9/14/2023
On a busy day in 1951, a hot dog vendor found himself captive to a hawker of cheap jewelry who set up shop across from his rickety food cart decorated with American flags. Horses still worked the side streets of the city. Stray dogs waited for food scraps to fall to the pavement. TV antennas […]
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Ephemeral New York - 11/27/2023
An article I recently wrote for the British online magazine, New Politic, is now available online. The article, “The Criminal Origins of the United States of America,” is about British convict transportation to America, which took place between the years 1718 and 1775, and is the subject of my book, Bound with an Iron Chain: […]
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Early American Crime - 12/17/2021
The morning of February 5, 1895, Dr. John E Rader was found murdered in the house of Mrs. Catherine McQuinn in Jackson, Kentucky. Catherine told police they were drinking whiskey with her paramour Tom Smith and when Tom passed out, Dr. Rader assaulted her. She shot him in self-defense. Catherine could have committed the murder; she was a rough, course woman with a bad reputation. But the
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Murder By Gaslight - 12/2/2023
On October 16, 1900, the Fall River Daily Herald reported an incident at Maplecroft. Lizzie took a tumble from a step ladder while adjusting a picture on the wall. Dr. Stephen Masury Gordon set the broken wrist. Dr. Gordon lived at 165 Rock St. and was a Harvard graduate. One has to wonder why Lizzie did not have one of the servants or her handy man doing the chore. Dr. Gordon
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Lizzie Borden: Warps and Wefts - 10/12/2023
“Daredevil” Steve Brodie | Western Train Robbers' Ways in New York State.

Welcome to The National Night Stick

Chorus-Girls-Panic

Crime, eccentricity, and the sporting life—that covers a lot of ground. Very simply, The National Night Stick is a history of America’s dark side.  Modeled after the “flash press” of the 19th Century, the Night Stick will deliver stories of the rogues, libertines, conmen, mountebanks and political grafters who made America what it is. Like the National Police Gazette, whose stunning illustrations brought criminals, prizefighters, and tight-clad chorus girls to every barbershop in America, The National Night Stick will endeavor to continually shock and dazzle the reader.

Crime
We will present all facets of 19th century crime. “Rogue's Corner” features a weekly mug-shot and criminal biography of a noted ne’er-do-well from the pages of Inspector Thomas Byrnes’s  Professional Criminals of America (aka Rogues’ Gallery.) We will also include a link Murder by Gaslight, the definitive site for 19th Century American Murder. And more often than not, the feature stories will include a bit of larceny.

Crush Collision

Eccentricity
We will bring you the big ideas that came from an era in America when anything seemed possible—not the ideas that led to progress and invention, but dangerous ideas like train wrecks as entertainment, secret societies and private armies, religious movements that failed miserably and political machines that were all too successful.

The Sporting Life
We will visit those utterly disreputable but raucously joyous institutions found in every American city: saloons, vaudeville houses, dime museums, boxing rings, gambling hells, opium dens, and brothels.

 As The Sunday Flash said in 1841:

"We follow vice and folly where a police officer dare not show his head, as the small, but intrepid weasel pursues vermin in paths which the licensed cat or dog cannot enter.”

 

Welcome to the National Night Stick!