No. 216
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
August 18, 2014

The Girls Have a New Game.

August 18, 2014
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There is something about the transitory, enigmatic nature of the following little story that charms me.  I always enjoy those moments when The Weird suddenly appears, slaps you in the face with a dead fish, and just as quickly and inexplicably vanishes for good.Our tale takes place on a pleasant English Sunday, May 5, 1924.  A young woman named Betty Bone went on the bicycle ride of 15
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Strange Company - 9/21/2026
  [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
"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 Song Written in Memory ofThe St. George Murder.(excerpt) In St. George, Me., as you shall hear,It proves to be the fatal year -That Mrs. Meservey, in the prime of life.By a murderer's hand has lost her life....Nathan Hart is the murderer's name,Father and husband think of the shame,Did he forget all woman kind,Seek like a beast some prey to find?...God in His written book doth say, 
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Murder By Gaslight - 9/19/2026
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
An Undertaker’s Assistant’s Mistake. | They Got Hilariously Full.

The Girls Have a New Game.

The Girls have a new game

They wile away the hours in the beach at Narragansett Pier in bewitching bathing costumes pitching clam shells at a mark. [more]

They wile away the hours in the beach at Narragansett Pier in bewitching bathing costumes pitching clam shells at a mark.
The girls at Narragansett Pier have a new game now played on the beach in bathing suit costume. They mark a ring in the sand and stand about twenty feet off and try to throw shells and stones inside the line. Once in a long while a girl gets inside the line and is allowed to rest and watch the others as a reward for her prowess. A poet who observed the game in progress the other morning said it reminded him of that beautiful poem beginning:

She threw a stone into the air,
It fell to earth, I know not where.
But there was a mile, I know full well,
Between where she aimed and where it fell!


Reprinted from The National Police Gazette, 9 Sep 1893.