No. 636
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
June 14, 2022

Done Up by Dizzy Blondes.

A special from Canajoharie, Sept 26, says: Duncan Clark, manager of Clark’s Female Minstrels, will p
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June 14, 2022
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KATE ARMSTRONG
alias: DILLON, MARY ANN DOWD, SANDERS
PICKPOCKET, SHOPLIFTER

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.comOn this blog, I’ve covered what many Fortean experts like to call “Anomalous Falls From the Sky,” but this is a new one for me.  Lousy actors and criminals in the stocks used to get pelted with tomatoes, but it’s a bit unusual for modern-day suburbanites to get such treatment.  The following is from a syndicated 1998 Dave Barry column which summarizes the incident.&
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Strange Company - 8/19/2026

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
Amen.

Artifact #93: Soapy's son, hires attorney to stop the slurring of his father's name.

"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

Ida and Sophia.

 Ida Quinlan and Sophia Grant.Mrs. Ida Quinlan went out to buy a pair of stockings at around 9:00 on the night of February 1, 1896, leaving her baby in the care of her sister, Mrs. Sophia Grant. She took a streetcar to the store several miles away and returned to the house at around 11:00. Entering the sitting room, she was surprised to find the drawers of the chiffoniers pulled out and
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Murder By Gaslight - 8/15/2026
On the Russians.

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
Knife and Chloroform Duel. | A Female Gambling House in Boston.

Done Up by Dizzy Blondes.

Dizzy-Blondes

A special from Canajoharie, Sept 26, says: Duncan Clark, manager of Clark’s Female Minstrels, will probably not visit the Mohawk valley again very soon. 

He was arrested in Utica for conducting an immoral show, in Herkimer and Little Falls he found the opera house for which his agent had contracted barred against him and this morning was severely pounded by members of his company at the Palatine Bridge depot. He endeavored to leave some of the troupe without paying them, and the result was the men and women, seven in number, attacked him in the depot and pounded him most unmercifully. The troupe boarded a train for Johnstown, but only got as far as Fonda, where another free fight was indulged in. Clark’s chief assailants were Lew Reynolds, Wm. Gallagher, A. M. Devere and several women. It is said Clark was cut with a sword by one of the women. At Fonda the troupe were all placed under arrest. Clark is reported dangerously hurt. He is well known in New York theatrical circles.

Reprinted from The National Police Gazette, October 15, 1887.

 

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