A biannual publication offering insights into the use of digital historical collections

Robert Wilhelm

Robert Wilhelm is the author of Murder and Mayhem in Essex County (History Press), a history of murderous acts and other bad behavior in Essex County, Massachusetts between 1636 and 1900. He also writes about nineteenth century American crime for the blogs Murder by Gaslight (www.murderbygaslight.com) and The National Night Stick (www.night-stick.com). Wilhelm is currently at work on a book about the 1896 murder of Pearl Bryan.

Articles by this author

Rascalities and Notorieties: Salacious and Satirical Illustrations in the Flash Press of the Nineteenth Century

November 2019 (Volume 14, Issue 2)

The early 1840s saw the rise of new underground newspapers, known collectively as the “flash press,” dedicated to the licentious appetites of the American urban male. Their readers saw these publications as satirical, irreverent and ribald; but to their opponents, they were obscene, vulgar and immoral. At first glance, they...

Verses from Beyond the Grave

February 2014 (Volume 9, Issue 1)

Thomas W. Piper was executed in Boston on May 26, 1876, concluding one of the city’s most sensational murder cases—the murder of five-year-old Mabel Young in the belfry of the Warren Avenue Baptist Church. It was the sort of dramatic story that had always inspired the poetry of Byron DeWolfe...

The Female Marine

February 2013 (Volume 8, Issue 1)

In 1814, Boston printer Nathaniel Coverly Jr. published a pamphlet entitled An Affecting Narrative of Louisa Baker, which became an immediate bestseller in New England. It is an autobiography in which Miss Baker relates the story of her journey from idyllic rural Massachusetts to the depths of urban degradation in...