Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 161

This issue contains "New York Nell, the Boy-Girl Detective; or, Old Blakesly's Money" by Edward L. Wheeler, serialized in Beadle and Adams' weekly pulp series. The story follows Uncle Redmond Blakesly, a retired merchant from Hudsondale on the Hudson, who arrives in Philadelphia and encounters a resourceful young newsgirl calling herself New York Nell (real name Niblo). After a train-station reunion with his educated but dandified son Jack—who arrives with an orphan girl named Viola Vern—Blakesly becomes suspicious of the meeting. Nell, dressed in boy's clothes to move freely through the city, reveals herself to Blakesly as a detective working incognito. The plot involves Blakesly's money and apparently a missing sister, establishing the mystery central to this detective-adventure serial.