No. 658
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
March 26, 2024

They Put Her Ashore.

A Show Manager's Faithless Wife.
March 26, 2024
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A journal dedicated to stamp-collecting seems like an unlikely place to find a prime slice of The Weird, but that just goes to show that life is full of surprises.  In 1928, “The Stamp Lover” carried an article by one C.H.R. Andrews titled “The Red Dragon Stamps” that is, frankly, not quite like anything I’ve ever heard of.  I’m a bit surprised that Andrews’ story seemed to languish in
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Strange Company - 9/15/2025
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
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
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
Soapy Smith STAR NotebookPage 22 - Original copy 1884Courtesy of Geri Murphy(Click image to enlarge) ADDENDUM: Published September 12, 2025(At bottom of page) oapy Smith's "STAR" notebook, 1883-84, St. Louis, San Francisco, Soapy arrested: Pages #22-23      This post is on page 22 and 23 of the "STAR" notebook. I am combining these two pages as they only account for a total of
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Soapy Smith's Soap Box - 8/27/2025
  [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
Turning the Tables. | Unmindful of their Attire.

They Put Her Ashore.

Put-Her-Ashore

A Show Manger’s Faithless Wife—Her Paramour Dumped into the Mississippi, and the Guilty Woman Landed in the Woods.

A "summer snap" manager has been moving up the Mississippi from St. Louis for the last fortnight, exhibiting at various landing places on his way Northward. His domestic experiences on the trip led to a very dramatic scene just below Cairo, last week, in which the full strength of the company participated. The manager's wife, a comely and vivacious woman, considerably younger than her lord in years, had given cause for gossip in the show troupe by her evident partiality for the society of the treasurer of the show. There was no effort by either to conceal their liking for each other, and with reckless disregard of appearances, they were found frequently closeted together in different state rooms, with the door-key turned to shut out intruders. The manager was slow to suspicion, and when suspicion was no longer impossible to others, he remained in doubt. Representations by various members of the company as to improprieties of conduct they had witnessed did not convince him. "The broken pitcher goes to the well once too often," the Spaniards say, and the guilty wife and her paramour, regardless of warnings and their own knowledge that they were under surveillance, made the most of all their opportunities for intercourse. The patient husband of the guilty woman at last "got on to the racket dead." A Mississippi steamer is too narrow a field for a liaison to remain long and undiscovered. The wife and the treasurer were found in a position which left no room for doubt of their criminality, and the wrath of the wronged husband knew no bounds. Ordering the steamer headed for a lonely waste of forest on the Missouri shore, he summoned the show troupe together, told them plainly and with tears running freely down his cheeks, the story of his wrongs and the convincing character of the evidence lie had obtained. He ordered the band to play a dirge, and as the boat run her nose into shore, he put out the gang-plank and made the guilty woman go ashore across it. At the same time he pitched her paramour over the steamer's side into the river. "Now set her out into the channel," said the manager to the pilot.


Illustrated Police News, July 12, 1890.