The Southern herald., 1886-05-22
Is his lawfully and not the proceeds Of

y his lawfully and not the proceeds Of
spoil.
In the ''blaCk museum are treas
ured some startling souvenirs of blood
and murder. A visit to it has much
the same effect on the sensitive tenn
permanent as the perusal of Edgar Poe's
tales in the attic Of a solitary mansion
in the small hours of a winters night.
1t puts the nerves out Of gear. There,
in addition to y miscellaneous assoft-
inent Of trumpery, finery and poor be.
longings, broomsticks, crockery; fat.
irons, aprons, sacks, hammers and tid-
dies, are pigeon-holed, costly lace,
malachite buttons, diamond rings and
chattelS Of genuine value. In an up-
per room, the assassin's nest, are the
ropes with which men were hanged,
remains Of the potions with which they
were poisoned, or the daggers with
which the souls were brutally dug out
of their bodies, side by side with ugly
flint pistols, bludgeons, suggestive Of
Bill Sykes, and the evil-looking pixies
welded by Malay pirates who enjoy the
grim hospitality of quicklime grave
under Newgate's fagstones.
A lady who would insist on entering
the place once was carried out in a
deadly swoon. Some things there are
in this gallery Of unadvertised memo
ries Of atrocity which dare not be
limited at in English, no, nor, l will
even 60 SO far as to say, in the French
of lola. But The burglars budget Of
tools is remarkable and edifying OBJ
ject of study. They are beautifully
finished and Of the most exquisitely
tempered steel. A fine trade in the
manufacture of these excellent speci-
mems Of skilled handicraft must be
done somewhere. The dark lanterns
are ingeniously wrought, the list slip
pers delicately embroidered and some
of the jimmies are polished until they
resemble oxidized silver. There must
be aesthetics of the housebreakers' art.
How Sir Claude de Crespigny, the
would-be hangman, would rejoice were
he let loose in this happy hunting
ground! 1t sickened me. / had to ask
for air when the curator showed me,
suspended in vial of spirits of wine
and neatly docketed, patch Of the
charred skin of the woman whom
Wainwright had butchered. Less re-
pulsive were the gamblers devices; all
the tricks of the calling we're there dis.
closed-the loaded dice, the roulette
boards with springs underneath to
stop the ball at will, the marked cards
and the mirror arrangements.
The coiners' apparatus exhibited a
notable progress in the march of intel
lect-that is, the intellect which is i'm
mOrtalized in the Newgate calendar.
The curator told me the criminal
classes were acquiring dangerous ac-
quaintance with chemistry and dynam-
les, and that facility of penmanship
was on the increase. Is this the result
Of school-board trainingp 1t would be
melancholy if such an argument-that
education is not an unmixed blessing
were to be taken as valid against its
spread. The abuse of a gift is no rea-
son that its dissemination should be
hampered.
There is almost a library of photo
graphic albums of malefactors. They
are all represented with their hands laid
fiat on their breasts, it having been as
certained by experience that the hands
often furnish unalterable clews to iden-
tification. As these likenesses are safe
guarded in testimony against them, the
habitual criminals betray an extreme
antipathy to having them taken. 1t
was a weeks labor to get correct
counterfeit presentment' of the mod
ern and more artful Jack Sheppard,
the late Charles Peace. He wriggled,
grimaced, changed his expression and
distorted his features with such a
monkey-like quickness that it was well
nigh impossible for the man with the
camera to catch him. He was fixed in
the plate at last as he was intently
watching the fogging of a comrade.
Whether 1t was the effect of precon-
ceived notions or not l can not say, but
there did not appear to me to be SOL
itary good countenance in the complete
law-breakers' gallery. All were sulky,
vicious, semi-idiotic, with vizor of wolf
or weasel, with low foreheads, con-
tracted brows, eyes CLASSY or greedy,
villainous jowls and the tokens of mean
or british animality. When / quilted
the ''black museum l felt as if were
shaking off charnal smells and the con-
tact of things Shiny and loathsome. In
a corner of the yard l observed an in.
congruous group Of cigarette-smoking
mashers, country yokels, jolly jack
tars, lame peddlers and roughly dressed
mechanics with grimy cheeks engaged
in conversation. They were detectives
on the eve of sallying out on the war
path. Thomas s. CHI. NJ p, IN RhilG-
delphiG Press.