When the body of beautiful young Jennie Cramer was found on a sand bar in the ocean off West Haven Connecticut in August 1881 it was assu...

Looking through American Murder Ballads and Their Stories , by Olive Woolley Burt, I found three ballads relating to two murders already cov...

Little Murders: From Defenders and Offenders : Emma Davis. This remarkable woman has a mania for administering poison to those whom she ...

The townhouse at 31 Bond Street was, to all appearance, a model of staid middleclass Manhattan decorum.  In 1857 it was a boardinghouse r...

Little Murders: From Defenders and Offenders : William Showers. "This fiend murdered his two grandsons at his farm, at a pl...

James Walkup, successful businessman and politician from Emporia, Kansas met Minnie Wallace on a trip to New Orleans in December 1884 and...

I was interviewed today at Early American Crime . Stop by and read what I have to say about Murder by Gaslight and my new blog, The Nationa...

I’m pleased to announce the launch of The National Night Stick , a blog devoted to Crime, Eccentricity and the Sporting Life in 19th Centur...

Little Murders: Here are three very short stories from the same edition of the Elyria Democrat , Elyria, Ohio: The Trial of James Sawyer ...

I found a very colorful book of lawmen and criminals published in 1888 entitled Defenders and Offenders (no author). It includes color port...

On Sunday, April 12, 1885, the manager of the Southern Hotel in St. Louis, Missouri, entered room 144 responding to guests’ complaints ...

A troupe of temperance players who visited the town of Berlin, New York in December 1844 had a profound effect on Henry G. Green. It was...

From the frontispiece  of an 1837 American book entitled Confessions, Trials And Biographical Sketches Of the Most Cold Blooded Murderer...

The morning of October 27, 1845, the body of Maria Bickford, a beautiful young prostitute, was found murdered in her room in Boston’s ...

Here is an interesting post from Lizzie Borden: Warps & Wefts : The Story Benind Arsenic & Old Lace . It's about "Sister ...

Up until now Murder by Gaslight has been documenting just the major American murders of the 19th century—stories with a beginning, a middle...

In June 1831 Joel Clough moved into a boarding house in Bordentown, New Jersey and soon fell in love with his landlady’s daughter, a youn...

Just a quick post to commemorate two Christmas murders that have been immortalzied in song: Billy Lyons shot by "Stack" Lee S...

In a book called Piracy, Mutiny and Murder by Edward Rowe Snow, I came across a Lizzie Borden story I had not heard before. It concerns a...

On January 2, 1800, the body of Gulielma Sands was found in the Manhattan Well, not far from her boardinghouse on Greenwich Street, New...