No. 794
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
January 28, 2025

A Boy’s Wild Ride.

Six Miles Through the Woods on a Buck’s Back.
January 28, 2025
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Via Newspapers.comBring on the Mystery Fires!  The (Napoleon, Ohio) “Democratic Northwest,” January 6, 1890:In regard to the mysterious fires that have visited the home of W. F. Miller, and which have been noted in the Advertiser, a Bairdstown friend sends us the following, which we are sure our readers will peruse with interest:The first of the series of unaccountable fires that have
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  [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
"As his son I am proud of hisefforts to succeed in life"Jefferson Randolph Smith IIIArtifact #93-2Jeff Smith collection(Click image to enlarge) oapy's son hires a legal firm to stop the defamation of his father's name. At age 30, Jefferson Randolph Smith III, Soapy and Mary's oldest son, was protecting his father's legacy and his mother's reputation from "libel" and scandal. He was also
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Soapy Smith's Soap Box - 10/13/2025
William H. Devlin(Illustrated Police News, December 22, 1877)Shortly after noon on Monday, December 10, 1877, a man entered the Lowell, Massachusetts, Police Station in a highly excited state. He told Deputy Marshal Favor that he had heard a terrible fight between a husband and wife Saturday night in a tenement on Common Street. Since then, he had heard nothing from the house, and he feared the
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Murder By Gaslight - 10/3/2026
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
Pick-pockets "Working the Crowd.'' | The Pocket Photograph Camera.

A Boy’s Wild Ride.

Wild-Wide For years, an old buck, the leader of the deer herd in the North Woods of the Adirondack region, has maintained an absolute and malicious tyranny of the younger members of his own sex. His treatment rankled, and the other day they made a combined attack upon him, and a boy, the son of Edward Martine, a guide, finally mounted the buck’s back, and experienced for six miles what is probably the liveliest race through thick woods and deep snow which ever fell to the lot of a youth of his years. He was glad enough when the buck came to a stand-still from exhaustion, and happier still when a rescuing party following the buck’s trail on snow-shoes brought him out to a place of shelter.


Illustrated Police News, February 18, 1882.