No. 808
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
April 08, 2025

A Terrible Axe Duel.

Two Texas Wood-Choppers Dismember and Mutilate Each Other.
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April 8, 2025
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WILLIAM FALE
alias: BROOKS
HOTEL THIEF, SLEEPING-CAR WORKER

Weekend Link Dump

 Welcome to this week's Link Dump!However, I'm not sure I like what the Strange Company HQ staffers are planning for today's menu.What the hell was the Dover Demon?An archaeological mystery near Yellowstone.A fatal obsession with an actress.The "f word" goes a long way back.In 1900, these were women's favorite weapons.A look at the latest book about Poe.  It sounds a bit pretentious,
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Strange Company - 10/2/2026

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

A Cursed Murderer in Lowell, Mass.

William H. Devlin(Illustrated Police News, December 22, 1877)Shortly after noon on Monday, December 10, 1877, a man entered the Lowell, Massachusetts, Police Station in a highly excited state. He told Deputy Marshal Favor that he had heard a terrible fight between a husband and wife Saturday night in a tenement on Common Street. Since then, he had heard nothing from the house, and he feared the
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Murder By Gaslight - 10/3/2026
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
She Was a Child of Nature. | An Actress Used a Pistol.

A Terrible Axe Duel.

axe-duel

A terribly savage duel with axes took place the other day In the Trinity bottom, near Dallas, Texas, between two wood-choppers, Haskell and Haynes. The latter had his arm nearly cut off, and Haskell his shoulder badly hacked. Each man struck his antagonist repeatedly with his weapon, and both were bathed in blood and terribly hacked and mangled. it is thought that neither of them can survive.

Illustrated Police News, February 22, 1879.

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