Vintage Photos, Genealogy & Crime Stories
I had been planning to write a blog post about Harris Lyons for awhile, but I hadn't gotten around to it when I received a message on Ancestry about him. My correspondent noticed that I had saved a number of newspaper articles about him and wondered if I was a relative. I told her I … Continue reading Double Trouble, Or the Case of Two Mugshots
Counterfeiting is a serious crime in America, but it’s nowhere near the problem it was in the nineteenth century. According to the National Archives, in the years after the Civil War, between one-third and one-half of all currency that changed hands in the United States was counterfeit. That’s an astonishing statistic! Imagine how you’d feel … Continue reading The Counterfeiting Couple
Two youths, victims of the cocaine habit, were brought before Magistrate Kernochan, in the West Side Court, yesterday morning. One was a mere boy of 16, anxious to have his mother send him away where he couldn’t get the drug. The other was a confirmed user of cocaine, and when sentenced to six months on … Continue reading A Little Coke Please
He was known as “Trenton Al”, “French Al” and “Albert St. Claire.” His real name was Francis Alphonse Voullaire. His crimes were mostly of the white-collar variety—embezzlement, bribery, forgery, passing worthless checks—Al didn’t like to get his hands dirty. Held as prisoner #209 by the Jersey City Police, his measurements and mugshots were taken on October 5, 1901.
Captured and Exposed 