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 […]
New York, New York - 1882 The term “bunco” has come to mean to any type of swindle, but in the 19th century it usually referred to a confidence game involving crooked gambling.
“Bunco” and “banco” were used interchangeably and the generic term evolved from the game of banco, a popular dice or card game devised specifically bilk the unsuspecting. Banco was the American version of an English game called Eight Dice Cloth. It was first played in San Francisco during the 1849 gold rush and rapidly spread to the east. The game consisted of a cloth with forty-eight numbered square flaps. The player rolled eight dice or drew eight cards and summed the values to determine which flap to open. Beneath the flaps were either prize amounts, a star, indicating the player can take another turn after paying a nominal amount, and two squares of special interest to the bunco man - the “conditional” and the “state.” The conditional awards the player a large prize - sometimes as large as $10,000 - provided he pays in an equal amount. If his next turn reveals a star or a cash prize he gets his money back along with the prize. If the player gets the state number he loses all, including the cash paid for the conditional.
The game is deceptively simple but involves a team of the bunco men to pull off. The first is the “roper” or “roper-in” who loiters in hotels, train stations, and steamboat docks, looking for business travelers likely to be carrying large sums of cash.
He will approach the man he doesn’t know and say something like, “Hello, Mr. Jones, how are all my friends back in Greenville?”
The mark will respond with something like, “You are mistaken sir; I am Mr. Brown from Austin, Texas.”
The roper makes his apologies, then takes what he has learned about Mr. Brown to the “steerer.” The steerer, armed with a book called a bank-note reporter, looks up Austin, Texas and finds the name of the major bank in that city, along with its president and other officers. The steerer will now approach Mr. Brown, address him by his name, and remind him that they had met before. He will say they had been introduced by his uncle, the bank president. Mr. Brown, flattered that he is recognized in a strange city by the nephew of such a prominent man, will overlook the fact that he does not remember the meeting. The steerer will take Mr. Brown out for a night on the town, get him as drunk as possible, and take him to a gambling den to play a new game that is easy to win.
Here they meet the, the “banker” who, unbeknownst to Mr. Brown, is another associate of the steerer, and controls every turn of the game. Mr. Brown and his new friend agree to play together, sharing profit or loss, and in the early stages, profits mount up quickly. But invariably the players will draw the conditional space, and the banker will give them a choice—the possibility of winning a large cash prize in exchange for equally large cash bet, or lose all of their current winnings. The steerer will persuade Mr. Brown that they must take advantage of this easy money, but unfortunately he has not brought enough cash. Brown agrees it is a sure thing and puts up the full amount. Of course the next play reveals the state square, the blank, they lose all.
Mr. Brown is stunned; how had things gone so terribly wrong? As they leave the steerer expresses sorrow at leading such a prominent man to financial disaster. He takes brown’s address and promises to pay back all the money he has lost. Of course, after they part, Brown never sees the man or his money again. Brown is unlikely to report such an embarrassing transaction, but if he does, the police will find nothing but an empty apartment where the game was played the night before.
In spite of their elusiveness, bunco men were well known to the police in the 1880s. They had colorful nicknames like, “Paper Collar Joe” Bond, “Grand Central Pete” Lake, and James “The Kid” Fitzgerald.
The most audacious of the bunco steerers was “Hungry Joe” Lewis, who swindled Oscar Wilde during his 1882 visit to New York City. In the words of Inspector Thomas Byrnes:
“Sharp as was Oscar Wilde when he reaped a harvest of American dollars with his curls, sun-flowers and knee-breeches, he could not refrain from investing in a speculation against which he was "steered" by the notorious Hungry Joe.”
The affable and fast-talking Hungry Joe befriended Oscar Wilde for a week before steering him to a banco game where the poet lost $5000. But in a rare lapse of judgment, Hungry Joe and his crew agreed to take a personal check. When he realized the following day that he had been swindled, an embarrassed Oscar Wilde stopped payment.
By the way, the men in the picture at the top are not playing banco, they are playing faro, a bunco game in its own right, and a story for another day.
Sources:
Byrnes, Thomas. Professional criminals of America . New York, N.Y: Cassel, 1886.
Eldridge, Benjamin P., and William B. Watts. Our rival, the rascal a faithful portrayal of the conflict between the criminals of this age and the defenders of society, the police. Boston, Mass.: Pemberton Pub. Co., 1897
Smith, Gene, and Jayne Barry Smith. The police gazette . New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972.
"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