No. 550
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
November 17, 2020

Anxious For a Funeral

November 17, 2020
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Be sure to follow the trial every day on our facebook page. This will be our fourth year showcasing the trial. This year the coverage will be augmented with AI reels and images to help put you on the spot! https://www.facebook.com/lizziebordenwarpsandwefts/
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Lizzie Borden: Warps and Wefts - 6/4/2026
"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
Via Newspapers.com Proof of reincarnation--sort of--appeared in the “Ottawa Citizen," December 16, 1933:LONDON (by mail).-Here is the man who has "died" three times in three years. He is Mr. Tim Sandell, of Templar street, Camberwell.On the first occasion the report spread among his friends that he had met with a sudden and mysterious death, and that a post-mortem was to be made. His wife's
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Strange Company - 6/3/2026
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
Strangler Suspect, Jacob Tolker(New York Journal, May 14, 1897)Eight women were strangled—seven fatally— on Manhattan’s East Side, between May 1894 and August 1900. While the police closed three of the cases, their solutions were so weak that the New York City newspapers continued to list them all as unsolved and continued to speculate that one man committed all eight crimes. “It is not difficult
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Murder By Gaslight - 5/31/2026
Say what you want about Robert Moses. But as Parks Commissioner in the 1930s, he opened 11 new public municipal pools across the five boroughs—helping residents keep cool and resist the lure of swimming in the East or Hudson River, which amazingly people used to do. Moses, a swim fan himself, also championed and helped […]
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Ephemeral New York - 6/1/2026
  [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
A Newspaper Man’s Plight | The Edson Electric Garter.

Anxious For a Funeral

Anxious For a Funeral

Joseph Biberich, of San Francisco, has his wife measured for a coffin before she is dead. [more]

Joseph Biberich, a San Francisco. Cal., man, was arrested the other night for disturbing the peace. Blberich has been married only six months, and his wife lies on her deathbed, cared for by a nurse and attended by kind-hearted neighbors. Biberich got drunk and tried to drive tho nurse from the bedside.Then the police interfered.

The nurse says he has openly threatened to poison his wife, and has pinched and beaten her while she lay powerless in bed. He called in an undertaker and had his wife measured for a coflin. Then be purchased a burial lot and made arrangements for the funeral. His wife has some property which, the nurse says, Biberich wants to get hold of.


The National Police Gazette, October 10, 1891