The Scottish-born James Oliphant worked as a surgeon in Newcastle. In 1755, he married one Margaret Erskine, and the pair went on to have two children. From all appearances, the family was one of solid 18th century middle-class respectability.This seemingly ordinary household took a very dark turn in May of 1764. One of Oliphant’s two maidservants unexpectedly became so ill she had to quit her
When Patrick H. Doherty joined the Fall River Police Department in 1885, he might have been astounded to learn that he would be involved one day in two notorious murder cases- both involving hatchets and axes. Patrick Doherty was born in Peoria, Illinois on August 10, 1859 to John and Mary Walsh Doherty. Later the family moved east to Fall River, and we find Patrick Doherty living at 104 Columbia St. (off South Main) and working as a laborer for a time employed by Fall River Iron Works and the Fall River Line steamboat company. He married Honora (Nora) E. Coughlin on April 25, 1887 at the age of 28, when he was employed at the Fall River Police Department as a patrolman. The couple would have seven children: Charles T., Frank., Grace, Robert, Helene, Margaret (called Marguerite), and John. Doherty, (as were several other patrolmen), was promoted to the rank of captain after their work in the case of the century, the Borden Murders of 1892. Doherty had arrived at #92 after George Allen on the morning of the murders, and was very quickly in the thick of the action, questioning Lizzie upstairs, looking at the bodies with Dr. Dolan, running down to Smith’s pharmacy with Officer Harrington to question Eli Bence, prowling the cellar for weapons with Medley, Fleet and Dr. Bowen, and making note of Lizzie’s dress. Doherty stayed on the job on watch at the Borden house until he was relieved at 9 p.m. When it came time for the inquest, it was Doherty who slipped down to 95 Division St. to collect Bridget, who had been staying with her cousin, Patrick Harrington after the murders. He would testify at the Preliminary and the 1893 trial in New Bedford. In the midst of the excitement in New Bedford as Lizzie’s trial was about to get underway, yet another hatchet killing took over the front page, the murder of Bertha Manchester on May 30th. It was a brutal attack to rival the Borden’s with the weapon being most likely a short-handled axe or possibly a hatchet. Doherty went out to the Manchester place with Marshal Hilliard, Captains Desmond, and Connors and Inspector Perron on June 6th with the suspect, Jose Correa de Mello, who revealed his hiding place for the stolen watch taken from the victim and her purse at that time. De Mello served time and then was sent back to the Azores, banned from stepping upon U.S. soil again. The Dohertys moved to 1007 Rock St. in 1897 and Patrick was pleased to walk his daughter Margaret (Marguerite) down the aisle in 1913. Patrick Doherty retired from the force in 1915 and succumbed to interstitial nephritis on June 28, 1915.. He, and some of his children are buried in St. Patrick’s Cemetery in Fall River. Resources: Ancestry.com, Parallel Lives,: A Social History of Lizzie A. Borden and her Fall River, Find-a-Grave.com. and Yesterday in Old Fall River: A Lizzie Borden Companion Fall River Globe June 28, 1915
Bernard Gussow was born in Russia in 1881. But by 1900 he’d made it to the Lower East Side, where he was described as an “East Side artist” in a New York Times article about paintings he displayed at an art show at the Educational Alliance settlement house on East Broadway. [“Subway Steps”] Gussow would […]
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: […]
17-year-old James E. Nowlin murdered George Codman in a Massachusetts stable in January 1887. Then he took an axe and chopped Codman’s body into pieces. As he traveled home in a sleigh, he threw the pieces into the snow along the road.Read the full story here: Massachusetts Butchery.
Roped-inOmaha Daily BeeJune 25, 1884(Click image to enlarge)
OSSIBLE VICTIM OF THE JEFFERSON R. SMITH GANG. Omaha Daily Bee
June 25, 1884
COLORADO.
Col. Fletcher, a tourist from Boston, was roped-in by the bunko men of Denver and relieved of $1,000.
NOTES:
$1,000.00 in 1884 is the equivalent of $33,472.95 in 2023. According to the Rocky Mountain News there were at least two,
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 engaged as a carrier of wine, because he and his brother, with the help of […]
Somewhere between the I Ching and the Magic 8 Ball lies Napoleon’s Oraculum, one of many fortune telling books popular in nineteenth century America.
Napoleon’s Oraculum or Book of Fate, was allegedly discovered by one of Napoleon’s men in an Egyptian tomb during a military expedition in 1801. At Napoleon’s request it was translated by “a famous German scholar and antiquarian.” The Oraculum became one of the emperor’s most prized possessions and he consulted the book “before every important occasion.” It was found among Napoleon’s personal treasures after the defeat of his army at Leipzig in 1813. As it states in the 1839 edition of the Oraculum, “Happy had it been for him, had he abided or been ruled by the answers of this Oracle.”
This story is highly unlikely for a number of reasons. The Rosetta Stone, which translates Egyptian hieroglyphs into Greek, was not fully deciphered until the 1820s. It would have been impossible for Napoleon’s “German scholar” to translate the Oraculum with the detail necessary for consultation. But more to the point, it is hard to imagine how a conquering emperor would use this book. The questioner is limited to a fixed list of thirty-two questions, most of which have nothing to do with military success. The answers tend to be little bits of conventional wisdom, more reminiscent of Poor Richard than of King Tut.
The true origin of the Oraculum is unclear. Reportedly there were English translations in the 1820s but the most widely sold version was Boney’s Oraculum, or Napoleon’s Book of Fate, published in Ireland by James Duffy and Sons in 1830. The Oraculum was published in America in the 1830s and the book remained popular, with numerous editions, throughout the century. There were several twentieth century editions but the book is out of print today. Public Domain Review has two editions, one from 1839 and one from 1923.
How to use Napoleon’s Oraculum for Divination
To foretell the future, the diviner first selects a question from the printed list. Then the diviner draws five rows of lines, “taking care that each row shall contain more than twelve lines or marks; but by no means to do so studiously, or count the marks till the five rows are completed.” The lines are counted, and for each row if the number is even the user draws two stars, if odd one star:
Using the arrangement of stars and the question number, the diviner looks up a symbol ( a letter, punctuation mark, or faux hieroglyph) from the “Key.” Then using the stars and the symbol, he or she looks up the answer to the question.
The National Night Stick has developed a simple, online version called Napoleon’s Oraculum Interactif. Now you too can consult the Oraculum before major battles, just as Napoleon did!
Sources:
Public Domain Review:
Napaleon’s Oraculum and Dreambook; 1839; S.N., New York.
The Book of Fate, formerly in the possession of and used by Napoleon rendered into the English language by
H. Kirchenhoffer, from a German translation of an ancient Egyptian manuscript found in the year 1801 by M. Sonnini in one of the royal tombs near Mount Libycus in Upper Egypt; 1923; H.S. Nichols, New York.
"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."
The Sunday Flash 1841