…of the Justice & Police Museum
Posted in Femme Fatale, Negative Archive, mug shots on Aug 26th, 2009
Prisoner identification photographs make up many of the earliest negatives in the collection. Photographed in various institutions across New South Wales the negatives usually record a full frontal and profile view of the prisoner.
Assistant Curator Nerida Campbell’s current research centers on retelling the stories surrounding women convicted on a range of offences who served time [...]
Posted in Femme Fatale, mug shots on Jul 29th, 2009
Photographed 27 November, 1919 at the State Reformatory for Women, Long Bay . FP07_0215_005
Many criminals give false personal information to police in the hope that their previous convictions will not be discovered. Jean Harris used a large number of aliases that included the names Emma Rolfe, May Mulholland and Eileen Woods. She sometimes successfully fooled [...]
Posted in Femme Fatale, mug shots on Apr 2nd, 2009
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Photographed 10 January 1924 at the State Reformatory for Women, Long Bay, NSW
During the early 20th century many unmarried or widowed women with children lived in circumstances of abject poverty. Unable to work during a time when there were no welfare payments, they were often driven to commit desperate acts. Whole columns of the [...]
Posted in Femme Fatale, mug shots on Aug 8th, 2008
Photographed 3 June 1927 at the State Reformatory for Women, Long Bay, NSW
The care and management of young offenders has always presented difficulties for the police and courts. Authorities are reluctant to send teenagers to prison and seek to give them an opportunity to turn their lives around. During the 1920s the courts would often [...]
Posted in mug shots on Apr 22nd, 2008
The other day I was alerted to a batch of extraordinary photographs from the 1920s by a member of staff at the museum, named Gareth Malone. It was explained to me that these images had been damaged… all of them suffered from chipped corners, hairline fractures and surface abrasions. When I viewed these offender [...]