No. 235
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
August 24, 2015

She Liked Her Lager Beer.

A Murray Hill belle, with a fondness for the Teutonic beverage, sets up a keg in her boudoir.
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August 24, 2015
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THOMAS BURNS
alias: COMBO, HAMILTON
PICKPOCKET

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.comTime to saddle up those ghost horses!  The “San Francisco Chronicle,” December 30, 1931:Horses, horses, horses. Three phantom black horses, galloping soundlessly with the speed of the wind, have set Berkeley agog with a mystery that has even the scientific police department of that community guessing. The horses have been seen in the Berkeley hills north of the
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Strange Company - 10/1/2025

Soapy Smith's "STAR" notebook, Page #24: 1882 and 1884, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Portland.

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
Amen.

A ghostly old house on the edge of the Hudson River, and the boxer who lived there with his family

Before Riverside Park, before Riverside Drive, before the sparsely populated Manhattan district known since the 18th century as Bloomingdale was urbanized into the Upper West Side, there was a lone modest house. Perched on the edge of the Hudson River in the West 80s, the two-story, pitched-roof dwelling appears to have no neighbors. A back […]
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Ephemeral New York - 9/29/2025

1617: A miller of Manberna, the hangman’s last

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

Undue Religious Excitement.

Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, March 28, 1868.Robert Sprague, a normally peaceful man, was spending a quiet evening with his family in their home in Jasper, Iowa, on February 17, 1868. He was reading the Bible with his mother, wife, and children when his 70-year-old mother asked him a question in relation to a religious meeting the night before. At the previous night’s meeting,
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Murder By Gaslight - 9/27/2025
On the Russians.

18th anniversary for Warps & Wefts

New to Warps & Wefts? We’ve been online since 2007 with hundreds of articles, posts, over a thousand images, animations, colorizations, newspaper coverage and clippings of the murders and trial day by day, cartoons, AI and imagined imaging, videos, profiles of important people in the case, on the road field trip vlogs and much more. We post every day on Facebook, usually 6-10 posts on various topics so everyone can find something to enjoy reading- why? Because we want a bit of the Borden case every day! We sign off every night around 10 p.m. and upload every morning around 9 a.m. Visit our Facebook and Youtube channel links below. Please do like and follow our Facebook page  Send us your questions! No Patreons or monetization ever. No detail too small to be considered. Stop by to see us- we learn something new every day!  https://www.facebook.com/lizziebordenwarpsandwefts/ https://www.youtube.com/@LizzieBordenWarpsandWefts See less Comments Author Lizzie Borden Warps &
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Lizzie Borden: Warps and Wefts - 9/26/2025

Convicts to Maryland, 1773 by Peter Dickson

  [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
Getting Above his Business. | New Jersey’s Great Wash Day.

She Liked Her Lager Beer.

Liked her Lager Beer

A Murray Hill belle, with a fondness for the Teutonic beverage, sets up a keg in her boudoir.

A recent inquiry into the sanity of a young society lady of Murray Hill brought about by the application of some of her relatives to take the control of her fortune out of her hands on the grounds that she is a lunatic, developed some strange doings on the part of the eccentric heiress. One point made by the applicants for the appointment of a guardian was that the young lady turned her boudoir into a bar room. It appears that the lady in question has acquired a taste for lager beer from frequent visits to Koster & Bail’s, Theiss’ and other noted resorts, after coming from the opera or a play with a make escort. She liked it drawn from the wood, no bottled medicine for her. Therefore she had a veritable bear horse placed in her boudoir, and got her favorite beverage by the keg, not forgetting the proper accompaniments of glasses with handles and pretzels. When thus provided it was her custom to invites a choice set of her male friends to her room, and hold high revel in real beer saloon style. The committee to whom the case was referred failed to see that this evidence showed any case of insanity they rather thought it was a level headed idea.

National Police Gazette, December 22, 1883.

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