Stockton Herald, South Durham and Cleveland Advertiser. — 1887-10-08 (Stockton-on-Tees, Cleveland, England)

SOUL-DESTROYING TEMPERANCE DRINK.  "Your Honour," said G. Gaston Brown, the well-known Oakland litterateur, rising in the Police Court the other morning, "you will confer a great favour upon me by sending me up for thirty days." "Drunk again, Mr Brown ?" enquired the Court.  "Yes, your Honour, disgracefully, shamefully drunk. I would like a month's retirement in order to get completely sober and do some writing. I wish particularly to coca • po,o an essay on the cause of temperance. The night before last, sir. I sat down in my right mind, filled with good resolutions, and ordered a lemonade and a cheese sandwich. Next morning, air, I awoke feeling as if I had I swallowed a turtle. The efforts of the reptile 1 to ascend my esophagus distressed me exceedingly, and drove me to brandy for relief. I felt strongly impressed with my ability to write a telling appeal to the young to avoid the intoxicating bowl. Temperance drinks, your Honour, produce indigestion, indigestion excites a craving for stimulants, stimulants produce—" "Thirty days, did you say, Mr Brown ?" "Yes, may it please your Honour." "Well, well say sixty. This Court desires to encourage literature. Take plenty of time to polish your work, Mr Brown." "Thank you, sir," said the gifted gentleman from Oakland, deeply moved.  Cartouche, or of nand Duval, but for deep conning, dare-devil audacity, and quiet coolness in times of danger it is not surpassed in the whole catalogue of wrong-doing. The weapons, as I have already. indicated, are extensively varied in both shape and charsetet The fire-arms range from beautifully-finished revolvers to ugly and unwieldy pistols of a long past era. Some would kill a man and leave. scarcely a scar; others arc big enough and wide enough in the bore to blow off the km of a victim's bead. The cutlery—covered with many tell-tale spots and splashes of red rust—offers still greater contrasts. There are the " gully " and the razor for the throat; the two-edged dagger for the ribs; and a whole array of sword. sticks, pocketknives, and chisels for the miscellaneous cutting and thrusting that occasionally lend colour and excitement to the street row. There are knuckle-dusters of formidable proportions—soma of a weight to skin an opponent, and others embellished with spikes sufficient to penetrate the brain. There are life preservers, watchmen's rattles, Egyptian conrbashes, Kaffir knobkerries, and a gnarled-headed walking stick which the Socialists are said to have made "the terror of Kensington." These are the instruments, commonplace enough, with which the murderous legends of the Black Museum are mostly associated. They are augmented by the jemmies of the burglar, the lanterns of the skulking thief, the explosives of the political assassin, the plates of the bank-note forger, the moulds of the coiner, and the other multifarious objects which form the strange apparatus of the predatory. classes. They are a curious lot, and the records concerning many of them are of the most sensational and terrifyieg character. Nothing is lacking in this singular place. Dotted about the upper shelves are a number of plaster casts—from York and Derby— which show us the strangled malefactors of thirty or forty years ago, and an exceedingly bad lot they are. In frames around the walla, or carefully preserved in huge albums, are the roughlyfieished photographs of their modern imitators. Many of the sitters display undoubted indications of brutality and sheer savagery ; many more bear plain evidence of imbecility ; but others, as in the case of Lamson and Wainwright, have nothing in their appearance to suggest the remotest connection with crime of any description. But whether they have yielded to sudden temptation, to an ancontrolfed fit of passion, or have been actuated by pure viciousness and devilry, thew is no piece of portraiture in this art gallery—either from the camera or the mould—which is not blurred by the stamp of the broad arrow, or associated with • the terrible degradation of the convict cell and the gallows. There is no means of settling the respective merits of the short or long drop, as those most interested in the experiments are not in evidence. Both systems count their score of victims amongst the treasured obituaries of Scotland Yard, and samples of both classes of halter are preserved there. They differ but slightly from ordinary ropes, but when dangling negligently from a gas pipe—with the white cap and pinioning gear to keep them in countenance— they form a trophy which never fails to create an involuntary shudder, or to render the atmosphere of the Black Museum close, stuffy, and suffocating.