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Unidentified photographer/creator
Criminal Photography
1873, 1 November
Magazine page
Google Books
LL/35041
Published in "Criminal Photography" in "All the Year Round" by Charles Dickens, New Series, Volume 11, p.9-12.
CRIMINAL PHOTOGRAPHY.
We have not yet come to an end of tho additions made to the useful applications of photography. Nay, we seem to be still only on the threshold. Portraits somewhat unmeaningly called cartes de visite small enough to be inserted in an albnm, continuo to be the main production of the art; but the variety in other directions is becoming amazingly large. Landscape, sea, and sky have been brought within the range of the camera, with surprising results; geological stratification and mineral structure are copied with a fidelity never before possible; leaves, buds, tendrils, bark, and roots have been made to tell their secrets to the collodionisod plate; wings, fur, plumage, skin, hair, are in like manner revealed as to their surface structure. Medical men take photographs of diseased organs and tissues, as among the best modes of comparing one disease with another. Archaeologists photograph ancient marbles and inscriptions, ancient bronzes and coins. Ethnologists fix by a similar agency tho characteristic portraiture of nations and tribes. Astronomers, by the aid of tho camera, have largely increased the knowledge which the telescope and the spectroscope had given them of the sun, moon, and other heavenly bodies; and are preparing to use the same valuable auxiliary in watching the transit of Venns next year. Civil engineers take photographs of broken bridges and embankments, and mechanical engineers of broken boilers and locomotives, that they may have before them a permanent record of each disaster, so far as concerns the actual appearance of the fragments. And now justice steps in to claim her share in tho service which photography renders to mankind. She asserts that when a rogue has become well-nigh incorrigible, it is right that the officers of the law should have an eye upon him, and a clue whereby they may know him again when he again transgresses.
During a few years past, a custom has occasionally been adopted of taking photographs of criminals in prison not, of course, to gratify the criminals themselves, but to obtain permanent means of knowing them again. This was generally decided on by individual magistrates, or jail governors, who foresaw the value of the system; and evidence has been afforded that they were not wrong in anticipating useful results. In one instance, two men stole some sheep in the north of England, drove them south, and added to the number as they went on. They sold them in London, and got off with the proceeds; but the detectives ferreted them out, and lodged them in Shrewsbury Jail. As a means of obtaining evidence, the police required that the thieves should be identified in the districts through which they had passed. A photographer took their likenesses; copies of these were sent to the several districts; and the clue thus obtained led to the conviction of the offenders. In another instance, where a murder had been committed at Durham, a photograph of a suspected man was sent by the police to the house of one John Owen, a tailor, in a distant part of England. It was immediately recognised by Owen's daughters, one of whom exclaimed in tears, " Oh, it's our Jack; there is no doubt about it now;" and Owen himself also acknowledged that the photograph was a portrait of his son, against whom suspicion had already been aroused, and who proved to be the murderer.
When it was proposed, about three years ago, to establish this as a regular system, objections were raised to it by some portion of the press. It was urged that there are generally seven or eight thousand convicts in the various convict prisons, besides prisoners in other jails; that to take and keep photographs of them all would produce a criminal album of most portentous bulk; that it would be unfair to photograph a man against his will, and thus render him an object of suspicion for the rest of his life; and that an ingenious rogue might so effectually distort his features, as to render identification difficult, if not impossible. And it was added: "Of what use will the photographs be? Criminal faces are almost all of one type. There is but little individuality about them; and the various photographic portraits, which will compose the new criminal gallery, will have so unusually strong a family likeness as to be of little or no practical value in establishing the identity of a prisoner. These objections were without difficulty removed. As to the number of photographs, this might be lessened to any degree if the results were not found adequate to the expense. As to the unfairness of photographing a man without his own consent, this objection falls to the ground; the photographs are for the police authorities, not for the public; and they are portraits of wrong-doers, concerning whose future proceedings society has a right to be placed on its guard. And as to the family likeness among rogues, every day's experience disproves this; some of the most benevolent-looking hypocrites are to be found among our criminals.
There is more cogency in the objection that a criminal might so twist about his face as to ronder a photograph wanting in real identity. The authorities have experienced this, and have adopted means for frustrating the cunning. On one occasion, at Shrewsbury, where a convict knew that he was to be photographed, he made such horrible contortions as to spoil the plate, and then a second. At a third attempt, the photographer only pretended to be at work; he had either no lens in his camera, or no collodioniscd plate behind the lens. After a few moments, he shut down the apparatus with an expression of annoyance, and went into the dark chamber as if to develop a negative. The convict, thrown off his guard, resumed his ordinary shape of features; and at that moment a second photographer, quietly placed behind a screen, did the work effectually through a small opening. In other instances, by previous concert with the prison warders, the photographs have been taken in the labour - yard, at the instant when a prisoner was standing before a small opening in the wall. In most cases, however, a threat of shortening the rations, or increasing the labour, has been effectual in inducing the rogues to leave their features in their natural form.
Three years ago, the Secretary of State for the Home Department, in the exercise of power intrusted to bim by parliament, issued an order to the magistrates to furnish the Commissioners of Police with photographs of all offenders in county prisons, whose offences brought them within the statutory meaning of the Habitual Criminals' Act; thereby giving systematic effect to a plan which had before been only partially adopted. The Chief Commissioner of Police, reporting on the subject about a year afterwards, stated that the order had not been so well carried out as had been expected, but that the full benefit of the system might eventually be looked for. " It is confidently expected that a more general use of photography, the exercise of greater care in observing and noting any peculiarities in the personal appearance of prisoners respecting whose antecedents information is sought, and the cordial cooperation of the police and prison authorities of the kingdom with the Central Register Office, will lead to the frequent identification of old offenders. Many prisoners have been identified by means of their photographs, and former convictions proved. Occasional use has been made of photography in special cases with good results; and the system recently established of visiting prisons has given the detective officers a good knowledge of thieves."
Two years ago a new Act was passed to give more definite effect to the Home Secretary's order. Registers of convictions are to be kept in a prescribed form at central offices in London, Edinburgh, and Dublin. The governor, or chief officer of every jail, is to make returns of the persons convicted of crime who come into his custody. Regulations are to be made for photographing all prisoners convicted of crime, confined in any prisons; and refusal to obey any regulation made in this matter is to be deemed an offence against prison discipline. The expenses of keeping the register are to be paid by the Treasury; but the outlay for photographing the convicts is to be deemed a part of the regular expenses of each prison or jail.
An interesting parliamentary paper has recently been issued, giving an account of the results of this system, during the short time that it has been in force in a regular way. Down to the end of last year, more than thirty thousand photographs of criminals had been received by the Commissioners of Metropolitan Police, and deposited in the Habitual Criminals' Office, from the governors of county and borough jails and convict prisons. This was in little more than twelve months. Going back another year, to the date when the Home Secretary's order was issued, the total number amounted to forty - three thousand, forwarded from a hundred and two prisons in England, and thirteen in Wales (the experiences of Scotland and Ireland are not reported in this document). As we know pretty well the cost of photographic album portraits done in the usual way, we may have a pardonable curiosity to learn the cost of those relating to criminals. This information the parliamentary paper gives us; for it appears that the forty-three thousand prison photographs have cost three thousand pounds about one shilling and fourpence each. The rogues are certainly not worthy of this sixteenpence apiece; but then it is bestowed, not for their benefit, but as a safeguard in the hands of justice.
The House of Commons, in ordering the returns to which the paper relates, requested to be informed in how many cases the photographs had led to the identification and conviction of offenders. Many of the governors of county and borough prisons were unable to furnish information on this point. Some said "not known," some "no record kept," some "not recorded," some "cannot ascertain," many of them plainly said "none," while the rest furnished instances of successful application. Tho Bedford County Prison reported : " Of the hundred and five county prisoners, twenty have been detected through the aid of photography." Cornwall said: "In many cases information received from the Habitual Criminals' Register by photographs sent on jail forms for recognition has led to the identification of old offenders." Dorset could tell of "six cases known;" while Herefordshire reported that "three who have been in custody here were recognised by the police elsewhere through their photographs." The authorities at the Holloway City Prison had no means of knowing accurately the number of cases in which photographs had led to the identification and detection of criminals; but, "at any rate, they can say that about thirty of the number have since come under their observation, and have been re-dealt with for fresh offences, in most instances receiving a sentence of penal servitude." At Leicester Borough Prison three male prisoners had been detected, before trial, by means of portraits sent round to different counties, of having been previously convicted of felony. At Newgate many prisoners had been identified by means of photographs received from the government convict prisons.
Some of the prisons sent memoranda of the cost that had been incurred in bringing the photographing arrangements into working order. Monmouthshire told of twenty-five pounds spent upon a studio; while at the Liverpool Borough Prison an expense of ninety-five pounds had been incurred for a photographing room, and sixty pounds per annum for the services of a photographer. Here and there the governor of the prison is a tolerably efficient amateur in this art, and has managed the matter without any cost to the county or borough. So far as we can judge from the returns, only one copy of each photograph is usually taken, but in some instances there are evidently more. Thus, of two hundred and twenty - eight photographs sent to the Habitual Criminals' Office from Leicester, twenty-two were duplicate copies. Of five hundred and eighty-two taken at the City Prison, Holloway, two hundred and twentyfour were furnished to the Registry, three hundred and twenty-eight to the City police, and thirty to the magistrate. In all probability there were several triplicates in this instance. The greatest number sent by any one prison to the Criminal Registry were from Newgate, nearly four thousand eight hundred; next to this was Coldbath Fields Prison, about two thousand eight hundred; Liverpool Borough Prison came next, with two thousand eight hundred; and Westminster County Prison, with two thousand three hundred. From these high numbers we come down to Lincoln County Prison, which sent just one photograph, and only one, for which an outlay of three shillings and sixpence is recorded. It might be supposed that Newgate, with its large brigade of photographs transmitted to Scotland Yard, would be able to point to a goodly number of instances in which these have led to the detection of criminals; but there is one reason why the authorities at Newgate have no means of testing this matter : "The prisoners convicted here are, after trial, removed to various prisons to undergo their respective sentences;" and Newgate sees nothing more of them unless a subsequent conviction, for other crimes, happens to take place within the district of which this prison is the head-quarters.
It is not alone in this country that photography has been brought into requisition as an aid to the administration of justice, nor, indeed, was it with us that the system first began. Every principal police station in the United States of America has for some years past had its " Rogues' Gallery" a collection of portraits of offenders whose future proceedings require watching, and whose personal identity might clear up some otherwise insoluble puzzlement. It may perchance be only a joke, but the American thieves are said, in self-defence, to have established a " Detectives' Gallery," portraits of such police officers as it might be worth while to avoid. Cunning rogues are more likely, we imagine, to photograph such lineaments on their brains or memories than on collodionised plates of glass.
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