okay so it didn't turn out how I wanted so I might have to remake it another time in a cleaner style, but I've been wanting to make a Bunny mugshot for LITERALLY AGES. LIKE..... YEARS. Wormwood Scrubs and similar prisons in the 1880s/90s took mugshots with the over the shoulder mirror (for the profile view) and hands on the chest to get as many distinguishing angles as possible in one photo. Very genius if you ask me. I have a sheet of mug shots I used as reference, and if my source is correct, these are Wormwood Scrubs mugshots.
i have a drawing for today(prison) but it's something I literally wanted to draw for years, as while it's still going to be sketchy like the other drawings, I don't want to rush it too much. Two drawings to be posted tomorrow!
Though one could accuse Raffles of many things, inhospitality was never among them. He played a genial host to all who did not scorn his manners, friend or foe, crook or copper. As such, I could not entirely check my surprise when, upon making an appointment at his rooms that the man himself had set, I found him too engrossed in his paper to rise at my entrance. It was not leisure which had side-lined me, at least; his mouth was twisted unhappily as he read, and his brow furrowed in what I recognised acutely as disapproval.
Despite all this, when I offered him a somewhat churlish good morning, he looked up with that same old smile, and offered me a cigarette with a brief apology for his preoccupation. I asked after his reading, curiosity winning over peevishness, and his frown returned.
“Bunny,” He began, taking up the paper again. “You have called me an amateur of crime - which no doubt was true when you became one - but I must beg you now to drop it, for I trust you would not rank me among the true amateurs of our profession.”
“Not at all.” I replied promptly. “But why do you mention it?” Already some trepidation had crept into my breast, for conversations such as these were not infrequently the precursor to some shadowy exploit, embarked upon in little more than that sporting spirit which burned so brightly in my friend. He merely presented me his Times in response. There, black and leaded, was a headline which sent a terribly familiar jolt down my spine.
ATTEMPTED ROBBERY IN WEST END: NOTORIOUS CRIMINAL CAUGHT!
“‘In the late hours of last night a devilish plot was foiled at…the City and Suburban!’” I read aloud, my heart fluttering in some mix of sympathetic and recalled horror. “Raffles, what on Earth-”
“Keep reading.” Amusement lined his words, and when I looked up, I saw that his displeasure had been usurped. What he found funny I could hardly see for myself. Yet I obeyed his instruction.
“‘On the evening of October 9th, unbeknowst to all but the heroic few who put a stop to it, an attempt on the cellar of the bank was underway. Police agent Jones, who had staked out the area on a tip from Mr. Wilson, a shopkeeper who had suspiscions of his new assistant, stated that the thieves’ entrance had been affected through a lengthy tunnel beneath the ground, coming to a head under the very stones upon which rested several crates full of French napoleons.” Here I could no longer keep myself focussed upon the details of the press, and allowed my eyes to jump skittishly down the page. A name stood out amongst the sea of black on white.
“John Clay.” I said aloud, glancing once more up to my friend. He had lit a Sullivan, and was regarding me as I read from the depths of his armchair. “The name sounds familiar.”
“I made have had cause to mention him.” Raffles responded, tapping his cigarette into the crystal ashtray at his elbow. “He was closer to our sort than most; educated and born to a good name, well established in both the criminal and high societies.” He cast another distainful look at the paper. “I fear I gave him too much credit.”
“How so?” His manner surprised me with its bitterness, and I had my answer within the moment.
“Brute force, Bunny!” He cried. “Brute force and some luck of both varieties, not a bit of imagination in it. Tell me, my dear fellow, if I would ever allow myself, or you, to be caught in such a graceless way as that, pinned in our own burrow, given away by a shopkeeper?” He shook his handsome head. “For my last labour to be months upon months of digging! I wouldn’t bear it.”
Indeed, I could not help but draw some conparison between the frightful sucess of Raffles, and the equally frightful failure I saw before me. Yet perhaps they were not so completely seperated as my friend professed, for I found it terribly easy to impose upon the sparse details of the paper our own crime, to sketch over the photograph of Mr. Clay with my friend’s bust. I set the paper down.
“Well now, we haven’t the full story, have we?” I offered. “Perhaps there is some quality to it which would redeem the poor man.”
“I hardly think so.” Raffles sighed, and with that decisive dismissiveness which served him so well, allowed the unhappy topic to fade with his smoke.
Rafflesweek2025 Day 1: Literature!
Sorry it's a little late, it will happen again. We always flip out over Rest Cure Bunny in drag (as we should), but what about Rest Cure Raffles with Beard?
reference below cut ♥
