Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 14, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 December 1884 — The Rogue’s Gallery. [ARTICLE]

The Rogue’s Gallery.

The first thing a strarger wants to see is tho rogue’s gallery. The experience of years has attested that. But tlie public’s idea of this criminal portrait gallery is not a room full of portraits of offenders. It is not a gallery at all. It is a large black-walnut frame which contains in small spaces, tabulated and numbered, all the criminals who have been known as professional culprits for years. An accompanying hand-book contains the records of each. The law directs that an offender must be convicted before his picture is placed on exhibition. But there have been instances years ago where men who have been only arrested for common crimes and whose guilt was unsustained were photographed for the gallery. During the investigation of the Slewart grave robbery an example Was brought to light and suit was begun against the poli• e. Since that time the letter of the law has not been violated. Through a small apartment the museum is reached. It is a handsomely-furnished-room, but the eye takes in few details of upholstery or the like. About the room are objects invested with a fearful interest. A glass case rises to-the coiling on either side, and in each nre the most tragical objects to be seen in any collection on the continent. Great, old-fashioned pistols that have long ago passed out of use, murderous revolvers of every caliber, and strange unfamiliar weapons that clearly have been made to serve special murderous use—they all hang together, with a scroll attached to each, and an inscription upon it. The inscriptions are gruesome reminders of lialf-forgotten crimes. They each commemorate a tragedy.

But that is not all. The cases bristle with daggers. There are loflg, sharp stilettoes, and broad dirks, and keenedged bowieknives. with tiny, innocentlooking skred3 of steel that, for all their fragility, have destroyed human lives. And here behind them is the most painful sight of all—a cluster of blaok hoods that have mercifully hidden the convulsions of strangling murderers. The walls are decorated in harmony with the rest. There are portraits suspended on them, brutal distorted faces as they are and horribly deathlike as they seem in this tragic chamber. They are all large pictures of prominent.criminals which Inspector Byrnes prepared the better to impress their features upon his men. Looking upon them, one can understand how difficult the recognition of a culprit can be made, for most of the cunning rogues of the collection have, during the enforced “sitting,” twisted their faces out of all semblance to their actual appearance. To aid the work of identification a record is kept of some peculiarity which, despite the twisted features, generally enables the culprit to be singled out. —New York Herald.