Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1895-11-14
PEN-PICTURES OF HOLMES.
Personal Appearance and Characteris-
tics of the Famous Prisoner.

tics of the Famous Prisoner.
Holmes looked about At every one,
, and everybody looked at him. This is
the sort of man the silent crowd
studied A thin, wasted man, weigh
Ing l20 pounds, a man with keen
but intensely repulsive face; a face
shaped like a Ratchet, like one of the
old-fashioned hatchets-the sharp
face, the blade, and the head, ending
in sharp abnormal point behind, the
hatchet's top. His full beard grows to
! a point. 1t is very think, slightly
mustache is very heavy, but it is not
allowed to grow out at the ends. The
beard is the beard of a professional
man. 1t would be considered hand
some or beautiful by any admirer of
hair on the face. The remarkable
feature is the nose. 1t is such a nose
as hangmen rarely meet in their bust
ness capacity. 1t is we'll developed,
beautifully chiseIed, Greek nose of
the finest pattern. A murderer with
such a nose as that, with such a face
as that, is bound to be an unusual
murderer.
The shape of the head is unusual,
abnormal. The forehead is fairly
good except that it lacks development
at the top, but it would be considered
very good forehead. The foreheads
put in the jury box to sit in judgment
were not so good. Tie tophead is
fiat, except for one sharp bump rising
suddenly and sharply. 1t would be
! said to mean reverence by the usual
! phrenologist, but not reverence for hui
man life-at all events not in this
case
/ The construction of the head at the
! back is the amazing part of this great
murderer's skull. The head shoots
out suddenly, and then as suddenly
contracts. 1t is a back-head shaped
| like the head of the Barnum what
Is-It,' head like the carving in old
Egyptian stones. Something is the
matter With the shape of that head.
| Perhaps it is that deformity that
means murder. On top of that head
his hair is thin. The eyebrows are
very heavy and very dark. They meet
almost a sign of criminal tendency,
according to archaeological theorists.
| The eyes are very big and wide
open. They are blue. Great muir
| derers, like great men in other walks
of activity, have blue eyes. There
are deep lines under the eyes, that
! come from sleepless, nights of trou-
bled thought and helpless rage. Be
| tween the eyes, running up and down,
are Two deep lines of mental concen-
tration.
Of the mur1erers mouth not much
can be seen, for the hair is as thick
! as the thickest fur. But one can see
that the lips are very thin, and the ex-
preston so cold and cruel as to be not
human. The upper lip seems to eX-
| tend beyond the lower, and every few
seconds, as he rubS the knuckles Of
one hand with the fingers of the other,
he vets his lips and bites his beard.
That lower lip, so deeply. sunken, i'm
| presses one as one of the mans most
marked peculiarities.
| At first glance the striking thing
about the man is the skull SO abnor-
mally shaped at that back; but it is
not so abnormal as the murderer's ear
| That ear, as small as a little girls,
twisted out of shape so that the inner
| part sticks out beyond the outer rim,
would stamp the man a criminal, or
possible criminal, in the opinion of
every students of criminOlOgy. 1t is
marvelously small ear, and at the top
it is shaped and carved after the fash
ion in which old sCulptors indicated
| deviltry and vice in their statues of
! satyrs.
The mans hands are thin and bony,
The cords and bones stand out on the
backs of the hands. They would be
good hands for an old, WORKOUT
woman. The arms are as thin as
French bread, and his shanks are
lean. His shoulders are round and
his chest is hollow. His neck is weak
and very thin. It is not as big around
as the arm Of the jailer who sits beside
him. Perhaps it is thirteen inches
round; it is not more. 1t runs down
anu ldoCClIo lJoClI W Ilo DCdy III al
odd way. His feet, like his hands, are
SMALL and would be ordinarily spoken
of as indicating refinement.
He is made on a very delicate model.
To be a great murderer he needed all
his cunning and trickery, for nature
gave him neither the physical strength
nor the animal brutality needed for
violent killing. He had killed his
friends for money; killed. cut up, and
burned up little children, and muir
dered women whom he pretended to
love; but he probably never looked
one of them in the face to murder him
openly, or even competed with Eyraud,
the stranger, or Pranzini, the throat
cutter, in deeds Of semi-cOurageoUs
deviltry.
we probably boast conscientiously
of the greatest modern murderer, but
we must resign ourselves to boasting
Of him as a cowardly murderer. He
murders snake fashion. He is the
hyena among killers.-Philadelph
Correspondence in New York World.