No. 484
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
August 12, 2020
alias: FOUNTAIN, PALMER, PURDY
Via Newspapers.com
I always say, nothing completes a library quite like a ghost. And if it’s a “nice, gentlemanly” one, all the better. From the “Great Bend Daily Item,” July 25, 1908:
New York.--Columbia University holds that ghost stories may be dismissed with a laugh, until an educated, nice, old gentlemanly ghost gets to hovering 'round Columbia's library building of nights. In other
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Strange Company - 8/12/2020
There are so many questions and things to ponder when considering the Borden case in its entirety, but let’s just …
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Lizzie Borden: Warps and Wefts - 8/8/2020
On this date in 979, a Saxon lord won a trial by combat at the cost of his head. You’re not supposed to call this period the “Dark Ages” but it’s fair to say that our sources don’t throw a comprehensive illumination on the story. Our date’s principal is a count named Gero, possibly/presumably the […]
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Executed Today - 8/11/2020
The Web of Arachne
by Fernand Le Quesne
(1856 - 1932)
Colorized by Curtis Byrne
(Click image to enlarge)
HE WEB OF ARACHNE
COLORIZED.
It's great to see what this painting may have originally looked like.
As I recently hung my framed print of The Web of Arachne, by Fernand Le Quesne (1856 - 1932), in my new place, I wondered why the artist didn't colorize it? Then I
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Soapy Smith's Soap Box - 8/4/2020
John Dilleber was a wealthy 28-year-old wholesale liquor dealer who lived and worked in New York City. In June 1975, he divorced his wife, left his home, and took up residence at the Westminster Hotel on 16th Street.
It was Dilleber’s habit, after dinner, to wander the halls of the hotel while smoking a cigar. Romaine Dillon, another of the Westminster Hotel’s outcast residents, was much
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Murder By Gaslight - 8/8/2020
As a social realist painter, William Glackens often depicted scenes of day-to-day life he witnessed in city parks, particularly Washington Square Park. (Makes sense; he lived on Washington Square South in the early 1900s.) This time, he took his inspiration from Central Park. “The Drive, Central Park” was completed in 1905 and likely shows the […]
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Ephemeral New York - 8/10/2020
[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 Family […]
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