No. 600
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
March 29, 2023

"Four Aces."

September 25, 2012
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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
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Strange Company - 3/27/2023
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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
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Lizzie Borden: Warps and Wefts - 3/3/2023
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 […]
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Ephemeral New York - 3/27/2023
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: […]
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Early American Crime - 12/17/2021
 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.
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Murder By Gaslight - 3/25/2023
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,
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Soapy Smith's Soap Box - 3/12/2023
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 […]
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Executed Today - 11/13/2020
Serpent and Dove. | Love in a Railroad Car.

"Four Aces."

Four Aces

 

“Baffled”” hissed “Little Jake,” alias “The Ace of Hearts,” alias Jacob Girrbach, of No. 354 Port avenue, Elizabethport, N. J.

The train had swept on relentlessly, almost ruthlessly, in spite of the efforts of the “Four Aces,” who had leagued themselves together to wreck it.

“But I will have revenge!” cried the leader of the band as he and his followers turned back in their tracks.

“Revenge!” chorused the others, making the sign—that mystic sign that meant blood.

For weeks the “Ace of Hearts,” and the other aces—of Diamonds, John Decker, of No. 411 Pine street; of Clubs, William Dobson, of No. 449 Bond street, and of Spades, Hugh O’Brien, of No 412 South Park street, of the frontier town of Elizabethport—had plotted to hurl a train to destruction, loot the combination-car, and massacre the mangled passengers, all except four beauteous maidens of high degree. These they would carry away to the fastnesses of the Orange Mountains, the defiles of which were known only to the members of the band, all young, but, oh! so devilish.

The day set for the slaughter was last Tuesday, and the “Four Aces” came by devious ways to the junction of the Long Branch Railroad and Broadway, in the very heart of Elizabethport. Their daring was superb.

In the distance the low rumbling of an approaching train could be heard, while the sun hung red in a Sandy Hook mist, that half obscured the surroundings as well as the deep, dark waters of Newark Bay.

“’S’ death!” ejaculated the “Ace of Hearts,” stamping his feet impatiently. “Will the monster never come?” He held a two inch plank in his good right hand, brandishing it disdainfully as if it were but a toy.

“Hist!” cried the “Ace of Clubs.” “The time is near!”

The Ace of Diamonds” and the “Ace of Spades” crouched expectantly, like beasts ready to spring on their prey. I the cab of the engine was Michael J. Kennedy, known all over the Jersey flats as the “King of the Lever.” The train flashed over the rails like lightning out of a clear sky. Its onslaught was terrible—it was the best “come-on” that ever was.

The “Ace of Hearts” simply said, “Ha!” But one could see how cool and self-possessed he was. Hot a tremor swept over his well-knit frame—in some circles the “Ace of Hearts” was “Ice of Hearts.” But let that pass.

Just as the engine crashed over the crossing the A of H, raised the plank in his good right hand, and was about to hurl it under the tremendous grinding wheels, when—

The “King of the Lever” saw him.

The A. of H. drew back. The train swept on in safety.

And Engineer Kennedy called on Old Sleuth Matson, who ran the band to earth. This morning Judge Hatfield, who sits in the Elizabeth Police Court, will pass sentence on the “Aces.” I will likely go hard with the leader of the band because once before, in September, he hurled a stone at Engineer Kennedy, and was soundly lectured by Justice Hatfield.

 

Reprinted from the New York World, December 2, 1897.