No. 293
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
October 17, 2016
A Scene not on the Bills.
Actor Ricardo’s bluff jump from the stage to the audience at the Grand Opera House, Columbus, Ohio.
October 17, 2016
alias: REYNOLDS
SNEAK, BURGLAR
Soapy Smith STAR NotebookPage 24 - Original copy1884Courtesy of Geri Murphy(Click image to enlarge)
oapy Smith's "STAR" notebook page 24, 1882 and 1884, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Portland. Steamer Ancon.
This post is on page 24, the last of the "STAR" notebook pages I have been deciphering and publishing for the last two years, since July 24, 2023. The page is two separate notes dated 1882
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Soapy Smith's Soap Box - 9/17/2025
Stop by this week as we explore what happened the week before the murders, Emma and Lizzie’s getaway to Fairhaven and New Bedford, and new imagery which will help to tell the story. The pears are almost ripe, August 4th is coming fast, and thoughts begin to turn to that house on Second Street once again. Follow us at https://www.facebook.com/lizziebordenwarpsandwefts/ !
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Lizzie Borden: Warps and Wefts - 7/26/2025
Via Newspapers.comSome author--I can’t recall who he or she was--once wrote that it made no sense that ghosts were always seen fully clothed. Shouldn’t they all be naked? That writer would be pleased with the following news item from the “Springfield News Sun,” August 22, 1999:BAGHDAD, Iraq - Ghost stories are pretty common around the old Iraqi city of Haditha. Still, when the ghosts
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Strange Company - 9/17/2025
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
Deep roots anchor P.J. Clarke’s, the restaurant and bar occupying a Civil War–era brick building with its top two floors sheered off at Third Avenue and 55th Street. Converted into a tavern in 1884 when Irish laborers held a large presence in the developing neighborhood, the building was bought by Irish immigrant Patrick “Paddy” J. […]
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Ephemeral New York - 9/15/2025
[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
A scene not down on the bills took place recently at the Grand Opera House, Columbus, O., during the performance of Hanlon’s “New Fantasma.” In the last act Mr. Roccardi, one of the performers makes an attempt to jump from the stage into the audience. By means of a wire attached to his body he is raised by a pulley and jerked back by men behind the scenes. While attempting the act this night the wire broke while Roccardi was in the air, and, clearing the heads of members of the orchestra, he landed among the occupants of the first two rows in the parquet chairs, causing a shout of horror to go up from the audience. No one was seriously hurt, Roccardi escaping with a sprained ankle.The Bloody Century 2
Takes the reader back to 19th-century America in all its gory glory.
