READERS have rapidly solved the "Where are they now?" mystery I recently posed over the whereabouts of death masks of convicts, who went to the gallows at the former Worcester County Jail in Castle Street.

It was on behalf of Mrs Maisie Thackeray, of Rushwick, that I raised the rather macabre inquiry about the eight plaster death masks with which she came face-to-face in shock more than 50 years ago.

In the 1940s, during her 13 years as a medical secretary at Worcester Royal Infirmary, Mrs Thackeray was once in the historic "Honorary Staff Room" and noticed a tall cupboard against a wall.

"Being a bit nosey, I opened the doors to peer inside and was absolutely flabbergasted to be confronted by two shelves lined with plaster death masks of eight men who, down the years, had been hanged at the jail across the road," she said.

During the 19th Century, the death sentences passed on convicts at Worcester often included the addition that their bodies be taken after hanging to be dissected for medical science at the Royal Infirmary opposite the jail. The last person to be hanged at Worcester was Djang Djing Sung, a Chinaman convicted of murder in 1919.

Within hours of the "Where are they now?" question appearing in Memory Lane, I was visited by a near neighbour, Dr Robin Steel, the retired Worcester GP, who was able to tell me the death masks still survive and are on display in the Charles Hastings Post-Graduate Medical Training Centre at Ronkswood, which also incorporates the George Marshall Medical Museum.

Dr Steel says rope marks can be seen on the neck of at least one of the death masks.

I was also contacted by Mrs Chris Spencer Bamford, the medical librarian based at the Charles Hastings Centre, who again alerted me to the current whereabouts of the death masks.

She recalled that the eminent Worcester surgeon George Marshall had discovered the death masks languishing in boxes in the "dungeons" of the Royal Infirmary at Castle Street and had rescued them for the historical collection of medical items he helped amass for the Charles Hastings Centre.

George Marshall died only this year, in his 90s. He and Dr Robin Steel played significant roles in the development of the Charles Hastings Centre, and both have been the subject of Memory Lane features.

I am grateful to Mrs Jennifer Murray, manager of the Charles Hastings Centre, for allowing us to take photographs of the death masks for Memory Lane.