Rock Island daily Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1886-1893, 1889-05-08
A NeWGATE CUPBOARD.
Masks of Some of Englapd's Criminals
with Remarks by the Guide.

Masks of Some of EnglaDd's Criminals
with Remarks by the Guide.
1t was the practice of the authorities up to
the time of the murder of Mr.. Briggs to take
a cast of the heads and faces of criminals
after execution. Our guide commenced his
tour of the prison with an exhibition of a
cupboard full of these memorials. 1t was a
CHASTITY show of fearful countenances, low
foreheads, large brutal mouths, bull necks,
strong jaws and weak, broad chins and mar
row, and beneath them all the mark of the
rope which had strangled them. Seen in this
fashion the criminal countenances were no
doubt considerably discounted, but not SO
seriously as a caricaturist of some of our pub
lie men would have us believe How certain
OF the shining lights of the day might look,
shorn OF their hair and in prison dress, offers
a temptation to any artist who is opposed in
politics to the man he is drawing but he
would have to give rein to his bitterest i'm
agination to match the countenances in the
warder's cupboard at Newgate / could not
help thinking that Franz Muller was some
thing like-but let us not be personal
This Is the head of Martha Browning
who murdered her mistress, you will remem-
Der, In Park lane; killed her for the sake of
some bank notes which, when she got them,
turned out to be on the Bank of Elegance
This tapping the grim bust with n curious
familiarity is Franz Muller, who murdered
MIR. Briggs, and after denying his guilt almost
TO the last, confessed it In conversation
with his Lutheran priest. This is Greenacre,
who cut the body of his victim up into pieces
and hid them in variousparts of the town.
Greenacres was a very tell tale mask-a
low forehead of the worst form, apd a thin,
wide mouth that had the downward drag, ~
stiff and cruel. A good thing for some of us
that we do not shavel Do you remember the
mustache movement 1t was probably start
ed by some interested person who did not care
to go about with his wicked mouth exposed
to the general gaze. Leech did some of his
most characteristic sketches In Punch during
that curious period.
was visiting at little provincial town in
those days, where the leading draper of the
place had been hooted and called ''Frenchy, !"
and pelted for coming back after holiday
with beard and mustache. And | remem-
Der as boy that the records of the Burke
murders were still used as buggy by nurse
maids whose charges would not keep close to
their apron strings. The fear of being
"Burked" was lively one for many long
year after Burke was hanged in Edinburgh
and Bishop and Williams at Newgate.
These are the heads of Bishop and Will
Jams" said our guide, pointing to particu-
larly ugly couple; they murdered a little
italian boy and offered the corpse at Kings
college for twelve guineas; they were body
matchers. And this Mrs. Brownrigg, who
used to take little girls as apprentices and
then murder them; that was in 1888"
''Do you notice that some of the masks have
open eyesP asked the barrister. Eyes, and
they remind me of the line in Poe: His eyes
have all the seeming of demons that is
dreaming. '"-Joseph Hatton in London