The Unflattering Portrait Gallery
After a shoplifting incident, a local merchant commissioned life-sized paintings of the thieves for public display.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
An interesting novelty in the way of an exhibition will begin this evening as a sequel to the capture of the men who stole the money jar from the show window of Hyams, Pasaou Co. Manager Kedelsheimer has had handsome life-size oil paintings of Jennings and King, the two principal culprits, made and will this evening place them in the window of the store, at the corner of Front and Columbia streets. It is but rarely that a couple of burglars are considered worthy of this distinction, and the public will have such an opportunity as it rarely enjoys to study the physiognomy of the criminal class.
“It is but rarely that a couple of burglars are considered worthy of this distinction.”
Public shaming as a form of social justice or civic deterrence remains a contentious practice. In the 1890s, store owners took direct, performative action to mark criminals in the streetscape, a practice that, while vanished from storefronts today, resonates in the digital age's 'trial by internet.'
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