Victorian criminal photographs from the Newcastle area made between December 1871 and December 1873.
Photographs were taken for two reasons: the identification of the criminal classes; and to support theories about criminal physiology.
''Most of the photographs show prisoners with their hands on their laps, or in shot. This is because of theories about the shape of the skull and hands of criminals,” Rees said. “These pictures fed into the cod psychology of the day.”
Theories of anthropological criminology, the idea that a person is born criminal, and that such tendencies can be identified by physical indicators.
Prisoners were photographed upon arrival at jail, so the clothes in the mugshots reflect their social status and wealth. Many of them appear dirty, unwell and malnourished.
Most of the crimes committed were as a result of poverty, there are a few prisoners who appear middle-class and well-dressed. But the majority appear in a state of desperation.
In those days there were no restrictions on the age a child could be sent to prison, or indeed an age of criminal responsibility. Reform schools had been imposed in the 1850s, but children convicted of a crime still had to go to prison first.
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/history/victorian-mugshots-reveal-nineteenth-century-interest-in-criminal-anthropology-7892823.html
http://www.flickr.com/photos/twm_news/5268805390/in/set-72157625464218629/
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