Crime and Murder always led the old news headlines of the late 1800's and early 1900's. Ad with today, people brought newspapers to follow the day to day happenings in the courtroom. On the streets, reporters followed petty crimes as well as bank robberies and organized crime.

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From an article titled “The Third Degree” from New-York tribune, October 08, 1905

The so-called "Third Degree," the system of inquiry which detectives employ in order to establish the guilt or innocence of a person suspected of crime had its origin in France. All which have read French detective stories or who are familiar with the French procedure, will understand its scope and its method. It is never employed unless direct evidence is lacking. It is a vital necessity to the Police Department in the detection of crime. But it involves peculiarly many questions as to the rights of the individual and is often denounced by the press and criticized by the public in a way which serves only to show a prevailing ignorance of its necessity and its character.

Personally, I believe in it, because I believe in the conviction of the guilty. And yet I would prefer that countless guilty people should escape rather than one innocent person should suffer. Whatever may be said about the inflexible laws of justice and the "overruling Providence that brings the guilty to punishment," experience shows that the case must be made by the Police Department. The reputations of a score of great criminal lawyers have been made in the district attorney's office by patient, thoughtful, and persistently unrecognized work by members of the detective staff at the central office. And in order that all unnecessary romance and prejudice shall be removed from considering the "Third Degree," it seems desirable that the public should understand exactly what it is and what it is not.

The "Third Degree" may be defined as any method by which you can reach a man's mind through his imagination. Each case that comes before the chief of the detective bureau requires treatment different from any other. In nearly all cases, however, the first proceeding might be called "The Sympathetic Talk." It consists in making a friend of the prisoner, getting him to talk freely with you on other subjects than the crime, getting him to lay bare his real nature and, as happens in  nearly all cases, uncover many facts, to him unimportant, which may be of the greatest value in establishing his guilt or innocence.

Mrs. Stanford dead in Honolulu March 02, 1905

Mrs. Jane Lathrop Stanford, widow of the late Senator Leland Stanford, came to a sudden end in Honolulu Tuesday night under strange circumstances that have aroused suspicion of murder by poisoning.  Miss Bertha Berner, who has been Mrs. Stanford's private secretary for many years, and the maid, Miss May Hunt, are under police surveillance pending investigation, but there is no tangible evidence against them. Before Stanford retired for the night she took a dose of bicarbonate of soda and it is now known that it contained Strychnine. Chemists who made analysis so reported at an early hour this morning. Her groans attracted others at the Moana Hotel at 11 o'clock and after forty minutes of convulsions she expired. She declared that she was poisoned, but her friends believed she was the victim of a hallucination that enemies were trying to kill her.

Was Mrs Stanford Poisoned? Find out here

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