Vintage Photos, Genealogy & Crime Stories
A couple of months ago this image caught my eye when I saw it for sale at an online vintage photo fair. The seller titled it "Four mug shots framed in a mat with a prisoner stripe motif." Obviously, I wasn't able to examine it in person, but got in touch with the seller and … Continue reading An Odd Display
No one who follows this blog will be surprised to find that I’m a fan of The Alienist, currently in its second season on TNT. The show, based on the novels by Caleb Carr, vividly brings to life crime in gritty lower Manhattan in the late nineteenth century, complete with dimly lit saloons, dogfights in … Continue reading The Real Inspector Byrnes
When a federal census worker counted his family in 1880, George J. Doyle was just one of the thousands of children of Irish immigrants living in the poverty-stricken Five Points section of lower Manhattan. Along with his father and four siblings, George lived in a tenement at 86 Mulberry Street that housed 19 families — … Continue reading Alias Dorsey Doyle
Captured and Exposed 