overly pale face ...

A friend to our research went looking for material on dirty old man swindler creepy guy Albert Delmont Jones. Boy did he find stuff! Such fun. He found a longish article about Jones’ nefarious deeds that adds bits we did not know. This is good. But what really strikes my fancy is a short, one paragraph article in the New York Press of Feb 2, 1890. It describes Jones. Finding descriptions of some of these people is hard. It’s always fun to find one. Jones is described as “stylish looking, with long black hair and peculiarly white face.” He affected “black sombrero hats and has the air of a crank.” Understand that the “air of a crank” comment is newspaperese for “I think he is a bad ‘un.” Good stuff, huh?