No. 627
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
April 26, 2022
alias: JOSEPH WHARRIS
PICKPOCKET, BOARDING-HOUSE THIEF
There are certain people who, for one reason or another, have a way of attracting people who are eager to murder them. What makes the following case stand out is that exactly the opposite appears to have happened: A man was desperate to find someone willing to kill him, and he had a damned hard time achieving that goal.Samuel Resnick was a jeweler in Albany, New York, for nearly thirty
More...
Strange Company - 3/16/2026
"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
More...
Soapy Smith's Soap Box - 10/13/2025
Bond Street today is a pricey place to live. And so it was in the 1830s, when it became one of New York’s most exclusive enclaves. Wealthy residents fleeing the crowded and increasingly commercial neighborhoods below Houston Street sought refuge on this short little street, which only runs two blocks from Broadway to the Bowery. […]
More...
Ephemeral New York - 3/16/2026
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
More...
Executed Today - 11/13/2020
About half past three, the morning of July 2, 1863, a young man on his way to work in Medina, Ohio, saw the home of Shubal Coy in flames. He alerted the neighbors, who came out to douse the flames with water. When the fire was under control, they went inside to look for the Coy family. They found Shubal lying in bed with nine stab wounds in his throat and breast, any one of them capable of
More...
Murder By Gaslight - 3/14/2026
The good-looking thirty-seven year old gentleman handling the reins behind the glossy matched pair pulling the spanking-new carriage drew the attention of more than one feminine eye. Pacing down French St. at a sharp clip, the lady next to him, dressed neatly in a tailor-made suit with the latest in millinery fashion, smiled up at her coachman. Behind the lace curtains on the Hill section of Fall River, tongues were wagging about the unseemly pair. Lizzie Borden, acquitted of double homici
More...
Lizzie Borden: Warps and Wefts - 10/16/2025
[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 […]
More...
Early American Crime - 2/7/2019
The Bloody Century 2
Takes the reader back to 19th-century America in all its gory glory.
