
Alleged bout between Annie Russell and Elizabeth Sullivan, two pretty clerks in Buffalo, N. Y.
Dry goods store. An impromptu pugilistic fight is alleged to have occurred between two women in the big dry goods store of Barnes, Hengerer & Co., at Buffalo, N.Y., a few days ago. Annie Russell and her husband and Elizabeth Sullivan were employed there. The two women, it is said, had some words, when Annie hit Elizabeth a stinging blow on the nose. Miss Sullivan responded in true pugilistic style, and blows were exchanged scientifically. Mr. Russell acted as referee until his wife began to get the worst of the fight, when he tried to save her. There was no hair pulling, but there would have been had not Detective Morganstein broken into the ring formed by the other employees and arrested the combatants. Both women were badly punished. All that was lacking to make a real fight was the money.
National Police Gazette, November 17, 1888.

The pictures-taking process that police authorities have so successfully applied to the apprehension of rogues has received a new application at the West End In Boston, where a photographer has by means of a camera caught a guilty wife and her paramour dead to rights. A professional man on Court Street has for some time believed himself entitled to a divorce on the score of his wife's unfaithfulness. He was willing to separate from her without scandal or publicity providing he could prove her guilt. He confided his suspicious and desires to a friend in the photograph business, who suggested that if he could "catch them with the camera, that would settle it." There would be no disputing the wife's guilt provided she and her paramour could be photographed, at the proper moment, without their knowledge, and there would be no necessity for a "scare" such as usually follows a husband's discovery of a wife's liaison. Get him a place so that he would bring his camera to bear without being observed, and the photographer was confident that he could secure the evidence. The husband got the standpoint he wanted by renting the room next to his own suite, and sending a man to put in a stove pipe collar in the wail under pretense that it was by the landlord's orders and for the accommodation of a new tenant, who proposed to run a stove, and who could obtain no connection with the chimney in his own room. The wife was unsuspicious, and after a week of close shadowing the husband and the photographer realized by onto side indications that it was time to bring the camera to bear thought the stove pipe hole. They did it, and secured very fair pictures, easily recognizable in court or elsewhere as portraits. It is needless, perhaps, to say that the sitters were not postured exactly for the picture taking ordeal, nor were they in the attitude in which they would care to be handed down to posterity. The husband, however, has in his possession a negative and several prints from it, which the wife and her paramour understand that there is no evadIng as an evidence of their criminality. The case Is a new illustration signalizing the value of photography as a means of detection and conclusive testimony.
Illustrated Police News, February 26, 1881.


