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

Jack the Garter Stealer.

A bold and eccentric individual, who is alarming the girls and puzzling the authorities of Exeter, M
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June 12, 2017
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THOMAS LEARY
alias: BRIGGS, KID LEARY, WALTER H KIMBALL
BANK SNEAK

What happened to the flashy amusement park nicknamed the Coney Island of Canarsie?

It was just a few miles on the Brooklyn shoreline from the real Coney Island—an amusement mecca of Greco-Roman towers, dance pavilions, and electric lights fronting a new boardwalk beside Jamaica Bay. Opening to a crowd of 30,000 New Yorkers in May 1907 in the sparsely populated South Brooklyn area of Canarsie, Golden City, as […]
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Ephemeral New York - 8/4/2025

Soapy Smith's "STAR" notebook, 1884, Denver: Page #20

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
Amen.

Weekend Link Dump

 Welcome to this week's Link Dump!The Strange Company staffers have decided this is Take Your Kittens To Work Day.Five really weird books.A murder in Madison County.The author of William the Conqueror's "medieval big data project." You can now read online the oldest known book about cheese, which for my money is one of those times when you have to salute the internet.17th century ship's
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Strange Company - 8/1/2025

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

The Walworth Parricide, in New York.

 Read the full story here: The Walworth Patricide.
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Murder By Gaslight - 8/2/2025
On the Russians.

It’s Almost August

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

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
Retribution. | Tennis.

Jack the Garter Stealer.

Jack the Garter Stealer

A bold and eccentric individual, who is alarming the girls and puzzling the authorities of Exeter, Mass.[more]

The terror which Exeter’s (Mass.) mysterious “waterproof” man has aroused among the weaker sex of the town shows no sign of abatement. The best description which has been given of the man comes from one of Exeter’s prettiest society belles. She describes the fellow as tall and slim with a slouch hat pulled down over his eyes. He wore a long black coat which came nearly down to his heels. She was going to her home, which is in almost the very centre of the town, between the hours of 7 and 8, when suddenly she was grasped around the waist with one hand, the other being placed over her mouth so she could not cry out. She was thrown on her back to the ground and her garters forcibly removed. The girl’s cries frightened the man away.

Reprinted from National Police Gazette, November4, 1893.

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