No. 645
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
March 18, 2024

Turkey Shooting.

About the beginning of October, turkeys, young and old, move from their breeding districts towards t
November 20, 2017
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Encountering a ghost may be a strange, possibly terrifying experience, but fortunately they are rarely harmful.  However, every now and then there is an account of a spirit that is not just malevolent, but physically dangerous.  One such story was told by folklorist Mary L. Lewes in the December 1912 issue of “Occult Review.”  It concerns a couple named Mr. and Mrs. Caxton. 
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Strange Company - 3/18/2024
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HE DUEL IN ELLEN'S HONOR. Soapy Smith’s grandmotherOn Wednesday, August 9, 1820, an argument between 17-year-old, James Bowe Boisseau (1802-1820) and Robert C. Adams (unknown-1820) vying for the attention of 18-year-old Ellen Stimpson Peniston (1802-1860), took a terrible turn. The happy party in her honor took a tragic turn when the competition for Ellen’s affections ended in a deadly duel,
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Soapy Smith's Soap Box - 1/10/2024
Going to the theater has always been a beloved New York City pastime. But theater became even more thrilling with the advent of open-air rooftop gardens—which hit the scene in the late 1880s with the opening of the rooftop theater at the Casino on Broadway and 39th Street. It wasn’t just the cool breezes that […]
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Ephemeral New York - 3/18/2024
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
Dr. John W. Hughes. Dr. John W. Hughes was a restless, intemperate man whose life never ran smoothly. When his home life turned sour, he found love with a woman half his age. Then, he lost her through an act of deception, and in a fit of drunken rage, Dr. Hughes killed his one true love.Date:  August 9, 1865Location:   Bedford, OhioVictim:  Tamzen ParsonsCause of Death:&
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Murder By Gaslight - 3/16/2024
Included in yesterday’s trip to Fall River was a stop at Miss Lizzie’s Coffee shop and a visit to the cellar to see the scene of the tragic demise of the second Mrs. Lawdwick Borden and two of the three little children in 1848. I have been writing about this sad tale since 2010 and had made a previous trip to the cellar some years ago but was unable to get to the spot where the incident occured to get a clear photograph.  The tale of Eliza Borden is a very sad, but not uncommon story of post partum depression with a heartrending end. You feel this as you stand in the dark space behind the chimney where Eliza ended her life with a straight razor after dropping 6 month old Holder and his 3 year old sister Eliza Ann into the cellar cistern. Over the years I have found other similar cases, often involving wells and cisterns, and drownings of children followed by suicides of the mothers. These photos show the chimney, cistern pipe, back wall, dirt and brick floor, original floorboards forming the cellar ceiling and what appears to be an original door. To be in the place where this happened is a sobering experience. My thanks to Joe Pereira for allowing us to see and record the place where this sad occurrence unfolded in 1848. R.I.P. Holder, Eliza and Eliza Ann Borden. Visit our Articles section above for more on this story. The coffee shop has won its suit to retain its name and has plans to expand into the shop next door and extend its menu in the near future.
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Lizzie Borden: Warps and Wefts - 2/12/2024
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
The Wedding Postponed. | Packed Away in a Trunk.

Turkey Shooting.

Turkey Shooting

[more] About the beginning of October, turkeys, young and old, move from their breeding districts towards the rich bottom lands near the Ohio and the Mississippi. The males associate and feed in companies of from ten to a hundred, apart from the females, which advance singly, sometimes followed by their young, and sometimes in united families, forming a band of from seventy to eighty. All these exhibit a dread of the old cocks, and are constantly on the watch to avoid them; for though the young birds are now about two-thirds grown, the males seem always to regard them as rivals, and whenever they have an opportunity they will attack and often kill them by repeated blows on the head. Towards the middle of February, or early in March, the turkeys begin to prepare for breeding, the females at first shunning the males, who eagerly pursue them, and utter their peculiar gobbling call. At night, the two sexes roost apart; though usually at no considerable distance. When a female chances to utter the call-note, all the males within hearing return a loud response, in a rolling gobble of rapidly successive notes, as if with the design of emitting the last as soon as the first, much in the same manner as the tame turkey when he responds to any unusual or frequently repeated noise, but not with the spreading tail and strutting gait, as when fluttering around the hens on the ground, or practising similar movements in the morning on the branches of the roost-trees. Then their numbers are considerable, the woods from one end to the other, sometimes for miles, resound with this singular hubbub, continued from the roosting-places in alternate responses for about an hour. All then becomes still again, till at the rising of the sun they leap down in silence trom their roost-trees, and begin to strut about with expanded tails and drooping wings. Then the male and female turkey meet, the ceremonies of strut¬ting and opening the wings are carried on by both parties, with the same pomp of movement that used to distinguish the stately minuets of the courts of St. James and Versailles. The match being at length agreed upon, the attachment appears to continue during the season. At the time of laying, the hen has reconrse to every stratagem of cunning to conceal her eggs from the male, who always breaks them, in order to prevent her from withdraw¬ing from his society, by attending to the duties of incubation. At this period the hens shun the cocks daring the greater part of the day, the latter becoming clumsy and listless, meeting each other without strutting or exhibiting any rivalry.


Reprinted from Gleason's Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion, November 11, 1854.