No. 438
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
October 29, 2019

Hallow Eve Sports.

The cool reception that some frolicsome young Doylestown girls gave to a verdant beau who was not posted as to the manners and customs of the Pennsylvania Dutch
October 29, 2019
...
...

Via Newspapers.comTime to saddle up those ghost horses!  The “San Francisco Chronicle,” December 30, 1931:Horses, horses, horses. Three phantom black horses, galloping soundlessly with the speed of the wind, have set Berkeley agog with a mystery that has even the scientific police department of that community guessing. The horses have been seen in the Berkeley hills north of the
More...
Strange Company - 10/1/2025
Soapy Smith STAR NotebookPage 24 - Original copy1884Courtesy of Geri Murphy(Click image to enlarge) oapy Smith's "STAR" notebook page 24, 1882 and 1884, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Portland. Steamer Ancon. This post is on page 24, the last of the "STAR" notebook pages I have been deciphering and publishing for the last two years, since July 24, 2023. The page is two separate notes dated 1882
More...
Soapy Smith's Soap Box - 9/17/2025
Before Riverside Park, before Riverside Drive, before the sparsely populated Manhattan district known since the 18th century as Bloomingdale was urbanized into the Upper West Side, there was a lone modest house. Perched on the edge of the Hudson River in the West 80s, the two-story, pitched-roof dwelling appears to have no neighbors. A back […]
More...
Ephemeral New York - 9/29/2025
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
More...
Executed Today - 11/13/2020
Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, March 28, 1868.Robert Sprague, a normally peaceful man, was spending a quiet evening with his family in their home in Jasper, Iowa, on February 17, 1868. He was reading the Bible with his mother, wife, and children when his 70-year-old mother asked him a question in relation to a religious meeting the night before. At the previous night’s meeting,
More...
Murder By Gaslight - 9/27/2025
New to Warps & Wefts? We’ve been online since 2007 with hundreds of articles, posts, over a thousand images, animations, colorizations, newspaper coverage and clippings of the murders and trial day by day, cartoons, AI and imagined imaging, videos, profiles of important people in the case, on the road field trip vlogs and much more. We post every day on Facebook, usually 6-10 posts on various topics so everyone can find something to enjoy reading- why? Because we want a bit of the Borden case every day! We sign off every night around 10 p.m. and upload every morning around 9 a.m. Visit our Facebook and Youtube channel links below. Please do like and follow our Facebook page  Send us your questions! No Patreons or monetization ever. No detail too small to be considered. Stop by to see us- we learn something new every day!  https://www.facebook.com/lizziebordenwarpsandwefts/ https://www.youtube.com/@LizzieBordenWarpsandWefts See less Comments Author Lizzie Borden Warps &
More...
Lizzie Borden: Warps and Wefts - 9/26/2025
  [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 […]
More...
Early American Crime - 2/7/2019
Duel of the Divas. | Hungry Joe.

Hallow Eve Sports.

Hallow Eve Sport

The cool reception that some frolicsome young Doylestown girls gave to a verdant beau who was not posted as to the manners and customs of the Pennsylvania Dutch. 

In no part of the country can be found a place where the old times sports of Hallow Eve are better kept than Doylestown, Pa. The last day of October is a carnival of fun for the honest and mirth-loving descendants of the Pennsylvania Dutch, of good old Bucks county. It is a holiday in which the young girls can particularly enjoy themselves by a little practical joking. Socials parties are held on the occasion, and the young folks rack their brains to devise schemes to catch the unwary in some ludicrous predicament. They enjoy catching some unsophisticated youth to play their tricks on. A party of gay damsels of Doylestown lately captured a fresh young dude from Philadelphia, and after playing many tricks on him, capped the climax by inducing him to take a seat between two of the belles of the occasion, who were apparently seated on a lounge covered by a sheet. It was not long before he discovered that the supposed lounge was two chairs at the end, and under the enticing looking centre seat was a tub of cold water, as the young man found to his sorrow.


Reprinted from The National Police Gazette, November 10, 1883.