Repo man

Barre Gazette, June 25, 1847. Back in kinder, gentler times, people didn’t mediate their financial disputes via impersonal debt collection agencies.

Badges? We don’t need no steenking badges!

New York Tribune, May 30, 1912. I’ve said it before: have no truck with fake lawmen.

Huh? II

Detroit News, May 2, 1931. The professor may have understood, but I don’t. I would be completely immune to this “matching pennies” scam, because the grifters wouldn’t be able to explain it to me in 1,000 years.

Black Widow II: Cheaper by the dozen

Detroit News, May 29, 1931. The hausfrau or boardinghouse mistress with a secret penchant for murder-for-profit is an enduring American phenomenon. Before Mrs. Summers there was Belle Gunness. Since then we’ve had Dorothea Puente and the deadly septuagenarian partnership of Helen Golay and Olga Rutterschmidt . God knows how many others have joined Margaret Summers in historical oblivion. It’s rank sexism if you ask me.

Raw deal

Detroit News, April 27, 1931. All that fuss over a friendly little game of cards.