Hobo Ethics
A code of principles proposed at the 1889 National Hobo Convention: Decide your own life; don’t let another person run or rule you. When in town, always respect the local law and officials, and try to...
View ArticlePost Holes
According to the International Mail Manual, it’s prohibited to send: clocks to Algeria fur to Australia flypaper to Botswana playing cards to Brazil bicycles to China leeches to Cyprus absinthe to...
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In a Word
ladrone n. a thief; robber; highwayman; rogue depeculation n. a robbing or embezzling desponsate adj. married adhorn v. to make a cuckold of According to legend, French highwayman Claude Duval agreed...
View ArticleAfoot
In 2004, the world’s foremost scholar on Sherlock Holmes was found garrotted on his bed. Richard Lancelyn Green had been planning a three-volume biography of Arthur Conan Doyle but had had trouble...
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Help Wanted
In an 1893 textbook, criminologist Hans Gross tells how investigators interpreted this ideograph, which had appeared on the wall of a remote Austrian chapel: The bird, drawn with a single stroke,...
View ArticleHa!
In 1722, Jonathan Swift published the “last speech” of one Ebenezer Elliston, “a malefactor executed for street robbery,” “published at his desire for the common good”: Now as I am a dying man I have...
View Article“The Prison Poet’s Farewell”
‘John Carter,’ the young English convict whose poems brought him pardon, left a farewell message to his friends within the walls of his Minnesota prison. This ‘last will and testament,’ first printed...
View ArticleThe Soiled Dove Plea
One morning in 1899, accused Oklahoma prostitute Minnie Stacey was scheduled for trial when the judge found that she had neither an attorney nor the money to hire one. Attorney Temple Lea Houston...
View ArticlePuppy Love
Con man Joseph Weil once paid a Chicago bartender $10 to watch his dog, saying he had an urgent business meeting. He told him it was a pedigreed hunting dog. He then sent in a confederate, who admired...
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The Gentleman Highwayman
In “Short Notes of My Life,” Horace Walpole records an alarming experience: One night in the beginning of November, 1749, as I was returning from Holland House by moonlight, about ten at night, I was...
View ArticleA Pirate’s Credo
Cruising off Rhode Island in 1717, pirate Samuel Bellamy plundered a Boston sloop and granted his crew’s wish to sink her. Before putting the captain ashore, Bellamy told him: I am sorry they won’t let...
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Two Dire Punishments
Under Roman law, subjects found guilty of patricide were subjected to poena cullei, the “penalty of the sack” — they were sewn into a leather sack with a snake, a cock, a monkey, and a dog and thrown...
View ArticleTo Whom It May Concern
After his Connecticut home was burgled in September 1908, Mark Twain posted a sign on the front door: NOTICE To the Next Burglar There is nothing but plated ware in this house now and henceforth. You...
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Moonlighting
In 1788, when two thieves were arrested for robbing an Edinburgh excise office, they identified a surprising accomplice — William Brodie, a respected city councilor and president of a local trade...
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A Typographical Banknote
In 1819, as the Bank of England struggled against counterfeiters, T.C. Hansard proposed a note that combined such a variety of typefaces that a lone forger couldn’t hope to duplicate it — the faces...
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Shop Talk
An odd little item from the New Zealand Police Gazette, Sept. 20, 1893: Christchurch. — William Strange and Co. report that between the 2nd and 4th instant their premises were broken into, and a...
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Sweet Dreams
In an 1894 feature on peculiar furniture, the Strand describes a “suffocating bedstead” used to dispatch unwitting inn guests in the days of coach travel: Nothing whatever of a suspicious character...
View ArticlePaperwork
Doubtless time travel will raise a host of legal difficulties, e.g., should a time traveler who punches his younger self (or vice versa) be charged with assault? Should the time traveler who murders...
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Not Guilty
The Swedish courts took up a perplexing case in 1656: Småland maid Karin Svensdotter claimed to have had a sexual relationship with the King of the Fairies. She said she’d met a beautiful man in...
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Private Collection
In November 1985, a couple walked into an art museum in Tucson, Arizona. While the woman chatted with a security guard, the man disappeared briefly upstairs, and then the pair departed. Then the guard...
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