Beachcombing's Bizarre History Blog

The originality of Victorian criminals is often breath-taking. Here is a particularly fine dodge and something that would have made a quite excellent Sherlock Holmes short story. A remarkable case of attempting to extort money is reported from New York. Some years ago, it may be remembered, a Mr Rosenbaum, in London, was annoyed in […]

The Wandring Whore was a mysterious late seventeenth-century English dialogue between a number of ladies of the night, which was published in five numbers 1660-1661. It is titillating stuff and, after some back and forth between these bawds, each edition included a list of London prostitutes. Of course the publisher did not approve. God forbid! […]

Dear Reader, Beach has been a bad blogger. The past week he has barely put a post up as he was – writing his new book… The book in question is about the supernatural in the island whose cold, harsh Atlantic sands you see above. Apart from crazy and happy writing hours still a lot […]

***Matthew gets it…*** The Index Biography is a new form of biography pioneered by this blog and introduced in a previous post. The creator must find a biography of a famous individual from history, they must turn to the index and write down eight peripheral facts about the individual’s life. We offered up previously here Sheridan le […]

Shortly before his emphatic and embarassing defeat. People carried on shoulders rarely end well…

Those Bolshevik bastards… Actually the four Romanov girls were shaved because of the measles (?)

Adorable. Could this be mass produced for the greater good?

‘integrates your money but segregates you’

This is one of those only in Ireland stories, which the British press loved in the nineteenth century. The tale originally came up in the Cork Examiner, but this text was taken from Bu He, 3 April 1869. An amusing instance of post mortem bequest and its consequences transpired at the Kanturk Petty Sessions on […]

This tale appeared in a good Protestant paper in the six counties. It has a puritan twist and a capitalist ethic. The following story is told of Mr. Sheaf, a grocer in Portsmouth, New Hampshire: it appears that a man had purchased some wool of him. which had been weighed and paid for and Mr. […]

‘I told you these were shadows of the things that have been,’ said the Ghost. ‘That they are what they are, do not blame me!’

1889 polygamist Mormons righteous in prison.

In 1920 the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research published a letter from Celia Alleyne. I like this letter because having been through tens of such cases from the twentieth century now this is (a) written by a person of above average intelligence and (b) average in terms of relations with the ‘fairies’ (or […]

Miranda shortly before his death: the most colourful death and now montony in a small room. Can anyone go lower on sad prison images?