No. 783
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
December 03, 2024

Photography as an Aid to Divorce.

The Process Applied to a Guilty Woman and Her Paramour.
December 3, 2024
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 Welcome to this week's Link Dump, where we wish our fellow Americans a happy 250th birthday!The unveiling of the Victoria Cross.A handy reminder that Robin Hood was no hero.One really freaking long tennis match.The motivations of Richard, Duke of York."Somebody's father" at the battle of Gettysburg.Why we call it a "honeymoon."The dog who loved trains.Now that all other problems on Earth
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Strange Company - 7/3/2026
"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
The 1876 Centennial was an all-out party in Gotham—fireworks, military parades, musical performances, and thousands of American flags and bunting draped over the windows of city buildings, houses, and hotels. But the Sesquicentennial, or America’s 150th birthday? By comparison, it was much more low-key. The big national celebration took place at Philadelphia’s Sesquicentennial International Exposition. […]
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Ephemeral New York - 6/29/2026
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
 Charles Kaiser conspired with Lizzie DeKalb to murder his wife for insurance. When the plot was uncovered and the murderers tried, both claimed that they acted under the hypnotic power of James Clemmer, the insurance agent who conceived the plan.Read the full story here: The Kaiser Conspiracy.
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Murder By Gaslight - 6/27/2026
Be sure to stop by our Facebook page tomorrow for a Prosecution Marathon of witnesses. Here are the witnesses for Wednesday, June 14th, Day 9 Rufus Hilliard, City Marshal, Mayor John Coughlin, Mrs. Hannah Gifford (seamstress and dressmaker), Anna Borden ( wealthy socialite who was on Lizzie’s grand tour of Europe, distantly related to Lizzie), Lucy Collett (watching the office of Dr. Chagnon day of the murder), Thomas Bowles ( handyman who once rented a room from Addie Churchill and was wa
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Lizzie Borden: Warps and Wefts - 6/13/2026
  [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
Gambling for a Child. | The Bloody Century 2.

Photography as an Aid to Divorce.

Divorce-photo

The pictures-taking process that police authorities have so successfully applied to the apprehension of rogues has received a new application at the West End In Boston, where a photographer has by means of a camera caught a guilty wife and her paramour dead to rights. A professional man on Court Street has for some time believed himself entitled to a divorce on the score of his wife's unfaithfulness. He was willing to separate from her without scandal or publicity providing he could prove her guilt. He confided his suspicious and desires to a friend in the photograph business, who suggested that if he could "catch them with the camera, that would settle it." There would be no disputing the wife's guilt provided she and her paramour could be photographed, at the proper moment, without their knowledge, and there would be no necessity for a "scare" such as usually follows a husband's discovery of a wife's liaison. Get him a place so that he would bring his camera to bear without being observed, and the photographer was confident that he could secure the evidence. The husband got the standpoint he wanted by renting the room next to his own suite, and sending a man to put in a stove pipe collar in the wail under pretense that it was by the landlord's orders and for the accommodation of a new tenant, who proposed to run a stove, and who could obtain no connection with the chimney in his own room. The wife was unsuspicious, and after a week of close shadowing the husband and the photographer realized by onto side indications that it was time to bring the camera to bear thought the stove pipe hole. They did it, and secured very fair pictures, easily recognizable in court or elsewhere as portraits. It is needless, perhaps, to say that the sitters were not postured exactly for the picture taking ordeal, nor were they in the attitude in which they would care to be handed down to posterity. The husband, however, has in his possession a negative and several prints from it, which the wife and her paramour understand that there is no evadIng as an evidence of their criminality. The case Is a new illustration signalizing the value of photography as a means of detection and conclusive testimony.


Illustrated Police News, February 26, 1881.