No. 640
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
November 07, 2023

A Great Game of Football.

Fair college students engage in a rough-and-tumble chase after the pigskin.
November 7, 2023
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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
One Week Only! The Bloody Century Half Price!
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Murder By Gaslight - 9/16/2025
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
Another Steamboat Disaster. | She Whipped the Dude.

A Great Game of Football.

Football

Twenty-two girl students of Alma College, at Elmira, N, Y., are shivering In their shoes for fear their names will be known, and they will have to explain the part they took in a football game in the college dining room the other night, in which a large number of panes  of window glass were shattered and the chandelier demolished. One of the girls said she thought it was a cruel shame the girls could not play football the same as the boys. Some of her friends decided to have the game, and for that purpose “filched” the ball belonging to the boys. When lights were out, they cleared the big dining room, and from the wreck seen, it is evident they must have had a very fast game, as the place, according to the janitor, was strewn with pieces of dress goods and the like. Three of the girls whose faces bore marks of the struggle have been called upon by the woman principal to explain.


National Police Gazette, December 15, 1894.