No. 645
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
March 18, 2024

Thimble Rig A La Mode.

March 18, 2014
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Encountering a ghost may be a strange, possibly terrifying experience, but fortunately they are rarely harmful.  However, every now and then there is an account of a spirit that is not just malevolent, but physically dangerous.  One such story was told by folklorist Mary L. Lewes in the December 1912 issue of “Occult Review.”  It concerns a couple named Mr. and Mrs. Caxton. 
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Strange Company - 3/18/2024
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HE DUEL IN ELLEN'S HONOR. Soapy Smith’s grandmotherOn Wednesday, August 9, 1820, an argument between 17-year-old, James Bowe Boisseau (1802-1820) and Robert C. Adams (unknown-1820) vying for the attention of 18-year-old Ellen Stimpson Peniston (1802-1860), took a terrible turn. The happy party in her honor took a tragic turn when the competition for Ellen’s affections ended in a deadly duel,
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Soapy Smith's Soap Box - 1/10/2024
Going to the theater has always been a beloved New York City pastime. But theater became even more thrilling with the advent of open-air rooftop gardens—which hit the scene in the late 1880s with the opening of the rooftop theater at the Casino on Broadway and 39th Street. It wasn’t just the cool breezes that […]
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Ephemeral New York - 3/18/2024
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
Dr. John W. Hughes. Dr. John W. Hughes was a restless, intemperate man whose life never ran smoothly. When his home life turned sour, he found love with a woman half his age. Then, he lost her through an act of deception, and in a fit of drunken rage, Dr. Hughes killed his one true love.Date:  August 9, 1865Location:   Bedford, OhioVictim:  Tamzen ParsonsCause of Death:&
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Murder By Gaslight - 3/16/2024
Included in yesterday’s trip to Fall River was a stop at Miss Lizzie’s Coffee shop and a visit to the cellar to see the scene of the tragic demise of the second Mrs. Lawdwick Borden and two of the three little children in 1848. I have been writing about this sad tale since 2010 and had made a previous trip to the cellar some years ago but was unable to get to the spot where the incident occured to get a clear photograph.  The tale of Eliza Borden is a very sad, but not uncommon story of post partum depression with a heartrending end. You feel this as you stand in the dark space behind the chimney where Eliza ended her life with a straight razor after dropping 6 month old Holder and his 3 year old sister Eliza Ann into the cellar cistern. Over the years I have found other similar cases, often involving wells and cisterns, and drownings of children followed by suicides of the mothers. These photos show the chimney, cistern pipe, back wall, dirt and brick floor, original floorboards forming the cellar ceiling and what appears to be an original door. To be in the place where this happened is a sobering experience. My thanks to Joe Pereira for allowing us to see and record the place where this sad occurrence unfolded in 1848. R.I.P. Holder, Eliza and Eliza Ann Borden. Visit our Articles section above for more on this story. The coffee shop has won its suit to retain its name and has plans to expand into the shop next door and extend its menu in the near future.
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Lizzie Borden: Warps and Wefts - 2/12/2024
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
What it is Coming to in Chicago. | Unmindful of their Attire.

Thimble Rig A La Mode.

thimble rig The way they do it on Rockaway sands—How beauty and skill conspire to make the rural heart and the rural pocket-book sicker and realize the old song, “Beware; Take care; She’s fooling thee!” [more]

A Lovely Law-Breaker.

A three-card monte man plied his illegitimate craft near the steamboat landing at Rockaway on Wednesday, attracting quite a crowd. From time to time he would cast a malevolent glance up the footway and make some remark about a swindling game up there. This attracted a Police Gazette reporter’s attention to another crowd gathered some hundred feet away, which upon close inspection proved to be collected about a woman who was carrying on a thimble-rig game after the most approved fashion. She was a woman of thirty, with a handsome face, but a hard mouth and keen, quick eyes; solitaires sparkled in her ears and on the fingers with which she deftly manipulated the tools of her trade flashed several valuable gems. Her attire was in the latest style and of costly material, and she wore it with the nonchalance of one accustomed to such sumptuary gorgeousness.

A couple of cappers, one an elegantly dressed young fellow, with a three-carat solitaire in his shirt front and its match on his left little finger, and the other an elderly individual in a black suit of a clerical cut, with white cravat and broad brimmed felt hat assisted her. Trade was dull, however, and in spite of the fascination of the rigger and the encouragement of her supporters, only one victim advance to the sacrifice of a $5 note. He went away after creating quite a disturbance, and the three tricksters after a brief colloquy departed toward the nearest hostelry with a negro boy carrying the stand on which the illusive balls had rolled about under the deceptive cups. An ancient personage who smelled too strongly of fish to be mistaken for anything but a native, observed to the reporter:

“It’s just too rich for anything. I was expecting a fight all along, for its bound to come.”

“That countryman did end up rather rough,” assented the reporter.

“Countryman be blowed.” Responded the native, “It’s the monte man down thar I’m talkin’ about. They’s been a row brewin atween them all summer and just wait if you want to see the hair fly.”

“What do you mean?”

“Why his and the woman’s, both. You see they used to be partners, accordin’ to the laws of the State of New York, but she got mashed on that young chap you seen with her. Her and the old man had no end of rows, and last month I seen him lay her out with an umbreler up in the saloon there. The she left him, and the next I knowed was working the thimble game. I guess she done it more to spite him than anything else. She gets as close to where he sets up as she can, and the sight off a woman dealing such a game, tracts the people from him right along. You’d just die laughing to see how mad he gets sometimes. He just rears around, and once he went for the young chap and gev him a turrible whaling. Never seen a man worse laid out, but lo and behold, he came out the next day, all tied up in rags, and they kep’ the game up as lively as ever. It’s as good as a circus and don’t cost noting either unless you’re sucker enough to bet your eyes against her fingers. In which case it’s your own fault and nobody else’s.”

Among the knowing ones at the beach the feud is spoken of with much humor. Rockaway enjoys this year the attention of quite a crop of these speculators on the capital of public credulity whose operations are not sanctioned by the law, and the actors in this little drama are well known to all of them. The fair professor of the thimble rig is said to be an ex-business woman of the class not acknowledged in polite society, who retired to private life some years ago to share her savings with a well-known small gambler upon whom she had chosen to lavish her favor. This gentleman, like all of his class, no sooner found himself prosperous than he proceeded to waste his property after the fashion known to him and this year found it necessary to resume trade or starve. His benefactress backed him in a monte game, with which he opened the season at Rockaway only to find himself supplanted there by a detested rival. The Gazette representative found him on Wednesday afternoon, recuperating for a renewal of his labors on roast clams and beer, and with him he entered into a conversation upon his grievance.

“He’s welcome to her,” he said in conclusion. “Lord knows he’s got all the bad temper and clear cussedness any man need to have for his own benefit. But what I despise is that I taught her the rig itself. I was the boss rigger in this country till I had these her fingers shot off out in Deadwood, and if it hadn’t been for me she wouldn’t know one ball from another. Never you do a good act to any body, especially a woman, young feller. Gemme another beer and a tooth pick.”


Reprinted from the National Police Gazette, October 15, 1881