The herald., 1895-03-22
THE CHAMBER OF HORRORS
Criminal Collection Kept at the
Courthouse
A SKULL AND A BOTTLED EAR
Death Warrants and Pictures That Give
the Creeps
SKULL AND A BOTTLED EAR
Exhibits Of Deadly Weapons Which Hurder
ers Have Use. to Give Their Victims
an Eternal Quietus.

There is room in the courthouse
which it would not be advisable for a
man with weak nerves. or one who can t
stand soda water in his glass, to visit. 1t
is the gallery of horrors, which is looked
after by W. NJ. Ward, the deputy county
clerk in charge of criminal records. The
cabinet OF horrible things used in the
commission of crimes contains some very
unpleasant objects t, look upon.
A Herald reporter. whose nervous sys-
TEN is made of cast iron, paid visit to
the cham Der of horrors yesterday being
! chaperoned by Mr.. Ward, who looks upon
| the specimens in it with as much pride
as the curator of dime museum looks
upon the Circassan beauty and the living
| skeleton.
A grinning skull is the first prominent
! exhibit in the room. 1t is brow ned from
! exposure, and in the top of the Uranium
is "A gaping hole made by the hammer of
| an unknown assassin who struck his vic
tim while he was asleep on sofa in n
back room of his saloon, the Carleton, on
| Spring street 1t is the skull of Colonel
| George W. Miller
Another pleasant object to gaze upon
| is John Kelly's ear, preserved in bottle.
James Callahan bit it off for him in 1883,
and that is the reason that Kelly, instead
OF cooking it when anyone speaks, allows
III TO SWIM around Ill Il plnt Oh WHISKY III
the courthouse.
Among the photographs that are nailed
to the walls is that of Mrs. Toal, after her
husband Frank had cut and slashed her
face so often that it looked like a sieve.
Mrs. Toal, strange to say, recovered and
is alive today. There is also picture of
Wong Ark, the Chinese highbinder who
killed his Chinese wife, and after three
trials went up for ten years. Fritz An
schlags photograph is here, too. This fell
low killed a whole family in Garden
Grove after getting deed to their prop
erty in 1884 He cheated the gallows by
taking poison.
:. Death warrants also decorate the walls
as diplomas do in doctors offices. There
is that of Tomaso, an Indian, whose neck
was stretched in 1859; that of James L.
Johnston. who suffered two years before.
Luciano Tapa and Thomas King also
departed this valley of trouble by the sus-
pension route in 1857 and their death
warrants are the only mementos that are
left of them. Anschlag unexecuted death
warrant is there, as well as that OF Fran
cisco Martinez, who paid his debt t. So
ciety all right enough in 1884.
Among the exhibits which would sober
a drunken man are eight bottles of poison
ed boca beer. Mr.. James Burk is the man
who put strychnine into the lager. There
are a number of bullets contained in en-
veiopes, which are too battered to be use
full as watch charms. Some interest at
taches To these because they were at some
time or other cut out of some part of the
bodies OF human beings who had been
murdered.
There ale masks which had been used
by murderous robbers and burglars. AS
to the utensils that killed people or MAIN
ed them they are in the chamber of hor
rors in great quantities. There are several
shotguns, among which is the broken one
used by the tailor, Ralph Lecker, at Nor
walk upon James Huston. Revolvers of
all sizes and every pattern there are,
prominent among them the three used by
eX-Polceman Craig, to murder his wife |
and her parents. or hunting knives, too,
there is plenty, the most murderous one
still covered to the hilt with the clotted |
biood of its victim. being one foot long |
which Wong Toi Hing stuck into Iout |
Hows breast on June g. 1898.
b Then the chamber contains daggers. |
butcher knives, bread knives, pocket |
knives each one with deed of violence |
attached to it; bludgeons sheep shears,
scissors, hammers, hatchets razors,
clubs slung shots, used in the endeavor |
to take human lives. There are plaster
casts of the feet of murderers which have /
been used to convict them. There is also
a satchel which beonsd to Henry Bentley, |
who was tried for the poisoning of his |
aged wife. 1t contains bottle of poison.
The paraphernalia of Chinese lotteries |
and games OF chance, taken during night |
raids in the heart of Chinatown are here
TOO, composed of tins, bowls, tickets,
cash, buttons and cups.
There, too, is an intnity of stolen prop |
erty consisting of odds and ends, valuab BILE |
and worthless, lying in the chamber await |
ing it's turn to be used as evidence in |
trial. and then to be carried away by the !
owner. But there is one thing nobody |
can carry away from the chamber of hor- |
ror, and that is its smell. That smell would |
kill all the microbes and bacili in the |
world if they had to inhale it as steady /
diet