No. 708
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
July 10, 2025

Scenes from “In the Tenderloin.”

June 16, 2014
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Via Newspapers.comFamily banshees can come in different forms, I suppose, but a piano is a new one for me.  The “Richmond Independent,” May 1, 1933:The Wetherill family of Continental, O., desire to get rid of their piano, which isn't of the player type. For the third time in less than 12 years, the omen of death has been sounded on the piano. The other night, Mr. and Mrs. Charles Wetherill
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Strange Company - 7/9/2025
Wouldn’t you love to have interviewed Lizzie’s physician, Dr. Nomus S. Paige from Taunton, the jail doctor, ? He found her to be of sane mind and we can now confirm that he had Lizzie moved to the Wright’s quarters while she was so ill after her arraignment with bronchitis, tonsilitis and a heavy cold. We learn that she was not returned to her cell as he did not wish a relapse so close to her trial. Dr. Paige was a Dartmouth man, class of 1861. I have yet to produce a photo of him but stay tuned! His house is still standing at 74 Winthrop St, corner of Walnut in Taunton. He was married twice, with 2 children by his second wife Elizabeth Honora “Nora” Colby and they had 2 children,Katherine and Russell who both married and had families. Many of the Paiges are buried in Mount Pleasant Cemetery in Taunton. Dr. Paige died in April of 1919- I bet he had plenty of stories to tell about his famous patient in 1893!! He was a popular Taunton doctor at Morton Hospital and had a distinguished career. Dr. Paige refuted the story that Lizzie was losing her mind being incarcerated at the jail, a story which was appearing in national newspapers just before the trial. Mt. Pleasant Cemetery, Taunton, courtesy of Find A Grave. 74 Winthrop St., corner of Walnut, home of Dr. Paige, courtesy of Google Maps Obituary for Dr. Paige, Boston Globe April 17, 1919
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Lizzie Borden: Warps and Wefts - 5/24/2025
The history of New York City’s street corner ice cream vendors goes back at least to the late 19th century, when a man with a pushcart would set himself up and wait for the kids to crowd around. The driver of this wagon in an 1895 photo isn’t exactly the ice cream man. He’s the […]
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Ephemeral New York - 7/7/2025
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
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.Read the full story here: The Bedford Murder.
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Murder By Gaslight - 7/5/2025
Soapy Smith STAR NotebookPage 20 - Original copy1884Courtesy of Geri Murphy(Click image to enlarge) oapy Smith's early empire growth in Denver.Operating the prize package soap sell racket in 1884. This is page 20, the continuation of page 19, and dated May 6 - May 29, 1884, as well as the continuation of pages 18-19, the beginning of Soapy Smith's criminal empire building in Denver, Colorado.&
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Soapy Smith's Soap Box - 6/1/2025
  [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 […]
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Early American Crime - 2/7/2019
Photographed as he Died. | Progress of Naval Architecture.

Scenes from “In the Tenderloin.”

Scenes from 'In the Tenderloin'

Scenes from “In the Tenderloin.”

1. Tom Gould at home in the notorious resort “San Souci.” 2. “This one is on me.”
3. A Rowdydowdy Climax. 4. The “Green Goods” Game.
5. “Will some one please oblige?”

[more]

The production in New York of such as play as “In the Tenderloin” has an importance out of all proportion to the merits of the performance. Considered artistically, the production had no merits. The melodrama was bad, the actors were bad, and the audience was such a one as might be expected at the People’s Theatre on the Bowery. It is significant, however, that shrewd managers who know what their public demands should invest money in putting on the boards what is avowedly and attempt to depict the lowest forms of vice to be found in New York. And more significant still is the probability that these far-seeing gentlemen will make handsome earnings!

What is the substance of “In the Tenderloin” ? A succession of living pictures of metropolitan infamy. Throughout the four acts there pass before the audience, in shameless review, ugly specimens of the dregs and slums that taint Manhattan Island. There are thieves, thugs, assassins, fallen women and the brutes who exploit them, gambles, painted men, dive-keepers and the low company the harbor—cunning scoundrels whose trade is to lure men into their dens and despoil them; infamous creatures who traffic in the dishonor of young girls, “green goods” men, confidence men –all the foul brood of carrion birds that gorge themselves in the moral cesspools of a sinful city. Such is the “play” this high-minded “playwright,” Mr. E. E. Price, has “constructed” ! Such is the play that will possibly make a “barrel of money” for the philanthropists who have mounted it !


Reprinted from The Illustrated American, January 5, 1895.