following description of him was circulated by the police:


"Charles Peace wanted for murder on the night of the 29th inst.
He is thin and slightly built, from fifty-five to sixty years of
age. Five feet four inches or five feet high; grey (nearly
white) hair, beard and whiskers. He lacks use of three fingers
of left hand, walks with his legs rather wide apart, speaks some-

what peculiarly as though his tongue were too large for his
mouth, and is a great boaster. He is a picture-frame maker. He
occasionally cleans and repairs clocks and watches and sometimes
deals in oleographs, engravings and pictures. He has been in
penal servitude for burglary in Manchester. He has lived in
Manchester, Salford, and Liverpool and Hull."


This description was altered later and Peace's age given as
forty-six. As a matter of fact he was only forty-four at this
time, but he looked very much older. Peace had lost one of
his fingers. He said that it had been shot off by a man with
whom he had quarrelled, but it was believed to be more likely
that he had himself shot it off accidentally in handling one of
his revolvers. It was to conceal this obvious means of
identification that Peace made himself the false arm which he was
in the habit of wearing. This was of gutta percha, with a hole
down the middle of it into which he passed his arm; at the end
was a steel plate to which was fixed a hook; by means of this
hook Peace could wield a fork and do other dexterous feats.