Strange scrapbook on eBay

Someone is selling on eBay a reproduction of an unusual scrapbook from 1879. One wonders what kind of person collected these clippings.

This is a fascinating copy of an old 1879 scrapbook loaded with news clippings about the states of Maine and Vermont. There are thousands of long lost and forgotten news items, covering all aspects of life including murders, freak accidents, all variations of crime, disease, etc.

If you imagined Vermont and Maine quaint and pastoral in 1879, you might be shocked to see some of this stuff. There were really horrible axe murders, painful (and usually fatal accidents), all sorts of mayhem. It's all a surprising collection of information. Among the countless articles - a man jumps out his window to escape burglars and is impaled on a picket fence, a blind man trampled by horses, a bold robbery, a wandering girl dies in the forest,

A man attacks his wife in a potato field with an axe,

a girl falls down a pipe and is killed, a train smashes into a team of horses, a woman burned to death by dropped lantern, a freak chicken hatched with three bills and three pairs of eyes, loads of suicides by hanging, gunshots and slit throats, cries of murder as a husband and wife fight, countless destructive fires, lots of people drowning in ponds, lakes steams, etc.