No. 822
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
July 29, 2025

The White Porpoise.

We give in our present number a correct sketch of one of the largest specimens of the Porpoise that
July 29, 2025
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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
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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. […]
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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
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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
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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 […]
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Early American Crime - 2/7/2019
Terrible Explosion in Boston. | The Reign of Outlawry.

The White Porpoise.

The White Porpoise

White Porpoise, caught in the river Saginaw, by Capt. Leyfield, of the Patapsoot. 

We give in our present number a correct sketch of one of the largest specimens of the Porpoise that has ever been seen. It was sketched by our artist as it laid on pier No 13. Its measurement is about twenty-five feet in length, and weighs two thousand eight hundred and sixty pounds. It was caught by Captain Leyfield, of the Patapsoot, in the Saginaw river, and was brought on here by him as a curiosity fit to astonish even a New Yorker.

It is supposed, from its immense size, and the decayed condition of its teeth, to be nearly two hundred years old, which supposition is borne out by the fact that it has become perfectly white. The Porpoise is of the mammalia genus, and is one of the must universal of fishes, being found in every sea. It is somewhat singular, consider the large quantity of blubber found in these creatures, that no regular fishery has been established to convert them into oil. We understand that it is the intention of the owner to exhibit it in the Palace Garden

It is now at the store of Mr. Rowe, 15 Albany street.


Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, February 4, 1860.