No. 711
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
August 4, 2025

Map of the Square and Stationary Earth.

Scripture that condemns the globe theory.
September 22, 2020
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1930s Romania may not have been a paradise for most people, but for a young Bucharest actress named Tita Cristescu, life was pretty darned good.  She was well-connected (her father, Gheorghe Cristescu, was a prominent figure in Romanian politics,) she had a successful theatrical career, and was pretty enough to be named “Miss Romania” of 1933.  Tita was engaged to be married to Hotta
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Strange Company - 8/4/2025
Soapy Smith STAR NotebookPage 20 - Original copy1884Courtesy of Geri Murphy(Click image to enlarge) oapy Smith's early empire growth in Denver.Operating the prize package soap sell racket in 1884. This is page 20, the continuation of page 19, and dated May 6 - May 29, 1884, as well as the continuation of pages 18-19, the beginning of Soapy Smith's criminal empire building in Denver, Colorado.&
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Soapy Smith's Soap Box - 6/1/2025
There’s so much exquisite natural and structural beauty grabbing your attention in Central Park that you probably don’t give the transverse roads much thought. You know the transverse roads. Part of Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux’s 1858 Greensward plan for the park, these four serpentine roads at 65th, 79th, 85th, and 97th Streets are […]
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Ephemeral New York - 8/4/2025
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
 Read the full story here: The Walworth Patricide.
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Murder By Gaslight - 8/2/2025
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
  [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
She Had a High Old Time. | Cuban Beauty Emporium.

Map of the Square and Stationary Earth.

Electric BroughamAn 1890s Electric Brougham

The first automobile in Manhattan was a Woods Electric Brougham owned by Diamond Jim Brady. After its maiden voyage down Fifth Avenue the NYPD put a ban on horseless carriages.

Diamond Jim BradyDiamond Jim Brady.

James Buchanan Brady, better known as “Diamond Jim,” was the most flamboyant of all the Gilded Age millionaires. Even in those extravagant times, Diamond Jim Brady was the undisputed master of conspicuous consumption. His nickname derived from his well-known love of diamonds which adorned everything he owned, from his underwear to the spokes of his bicycle wheels. Equally famous was his gargantuan appetite which he satisfied with several multi-course meals a day. A typical dinner might include a dozen oysters, six crabs, bowls of turtle soup, followed by a main course of two whole ducks or six or seven lobsters, a sirloin steak, and one or two whole pies for dessert. 

Lillian RussellLillian Russell.

Diamond Jim’s life and career included a number of notable milestones. He invented the modern notion of the expense account, proving that wining, dining and otherwise entertaining prospective clients could sell more railroad equipment than any product demonstrations. His forty-year relationship (mostly platonic) with Lillian Russell, the most celebrated actress of the day, was the longest of her life, outlasting all four of her marriages. And Diamond Jim owned the first automobile in Manhattan.

The vehicle was a custom built electric brougham  manufactured by A. H. Woods of Chicago. The automobile arrived accompanied by a mechanic named William Johnson—an African American man who knew how to run it and fix it. Brady immediately hired Johnson away from Woods, dressed him in a bottle-green uniform and gave him the title of chauffeur.

Brady had Johnson drive him around the city on five consecutive mornings between three and four o’clock, when no one was watching, so he could be confident that the automobile would not break down. Then he alerted the press before debuting his horseless carriage in the daylight. On a Saturday afternoon in the spring of 1895, William Johnson in his uniform and Diamond Jim Brady in a top hat, drove down Fifth Avenue to Madison Square. Crowds gathered along the way to view the spectacle and cheer them on. The new machine delighted the spectators, but horses on the road were much less welcoming. When the brougham reached the busy thoroughfare of Forty-Second Street at least five teams of horses bolted in surprise and ran away. After several trips around Madison Square they stopped at the Hoffman House and Diamond Jim went inside and ordered a lemon soda at the bar (he did not drink alcohol.)

The trip had caused so much disruption that the New York City Police Department ordered Brady not to bring the contraption out again during the day. This prohibition was short lived; within a year automobiles powered by gasoline as well as electricity were a common sight in New York City.


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