c. 1890–95
Police photograph of Michael Ostrog
THE DEVELOPMENT OF photography transformed the way that criminals were circulated and identified. Although the photography of prisoners largely developed in prisons, the pictures of prisoners were also used to help witnesses identify suspects involved in crime and were displayed in albums in a format that would enable witnesses to glance through many pictures at once in an attempt to recognise their suspect. The process was primarily a screening process before a formal identification parade. This early example of a witness album shows a picture of Michael Ostrog, a suspect for the Whitechapel murders. In modern times this process has been transferred to a computer-based system, and the identification parade process now takes place with a witness observing a sequence of good quality video clips of suspects.
The photographs of prisoners were also used for the distribution of an Illustrated Circular of Expert Criminals that was published, in 1924 for instance, so that all of the police forces could have access to a list of travelling criminals, who might then be recognised when they were perpetrating particular methods of crime, such as fraud, in different parts of the country.
According to The Development of Criminal Records by Dennis Luke, it was as early as 1842 when the Swiss police circulated daguerreotypes (a photographic process dating from around 1839) of a man who was caught breaking into a church. The governor of Bristol prison, Captain Gardiner, began to take daguerreotype pictures of every prisoner he thought was a habitual criminal. Birmingham City Police undertook photographs of prisoners from 1857 by employing a local private photographer who used collection plates, one of the earliest being that of criminal Dennis Desmond. With the introduction of photographic paper from about 1860, this task then began to be undertaken by the police themselves.
One of the first references to photography at Scotland Yard was a police order dated 3 April 1868, drawing attention to the availability of equipment for photographing prisoners, especially Fenians. By 1870, the record pages of the Habitual Criminals Register, kept by Scotland Yard, had a space for a photograph, and by 1872 the Paris police had 60,000 photographs. In 1878, the commissioner wrote to the Home Office saying that he proposed to set up a collection of photographs of criminals, and Sir Howard Vincent wrote to the Home Office on 2 March 1882 for approval to consult all chief constables about improving Police Gazette. This publication had started in the eighteenth century under the auspices of the Bow Street magistrates to circulate details of crimes and wanted criminals, and it was part of Howard Vincent’s reforms to transfer responsibility for Police Gazette to Scotland Yard.
By January 1884 photographs of wanted criminals were being circulated in special editions of a supplement to Police Gazette. A special illustrated circular of ‘Race Course Thieves, Welshers, Three Card Trick and Confidence Men’ from July 1894, for instance, showed photographs of thirty-seven criminals who might be expected to travel to various horse racing venues. Later, photographs of all prisoners sentenced to penal servitude were taken at the prison prior to their release and sent to Scotland Yard’s Convict Supervision Office who would then circulate them. The possibility of crime being committed by recently released prisoners was seen as a real problem. Some police forces exercised a supervision role with some of these men, directing them towards lawful employment but also keeping an eye on whether they were reoffending.
The modern technology for easily making copies of pictures was not available. Detective Inspector William McBride, who joined as a constable in 1900 and became a notable police photographer, described how John Ashley, then a sergeant in the Criminal Records Office and later to become a chief constable in the CID, had wished to circulate a picture of a wanted criminal to police stations in London. Ashley borrowed a quarter-plate camera and then distributed copies of his photograph, this method then being quicker than the alternatives. This led Detective Superintendent Frank Froest to set up a photographic section. The first officer to perform the job retired within a year, but William McBride then applied for the vacancy and succeeded in impressing Assistant Commissioner Melville MacNaghten with a picture he had taken of an Italian woman playing a street piano. From those beginnings, the Photographic Branch of Scotland Yard developed, but the members of staff were far more involved with photographing scenes of crime and fingerprints than taking pictures of prisoners.
The advances of photographic technology enabled increasing use of new techniques in the years that followed. One notable exponent of new technology was Ken Creer MBE, whose work with the Serious Crime Unit at the Metropolitan Police Forensic Science Laboratory in the 1980s developed the use of lasers, light sources and chemical, physical and biological methods to reveal fingerprints and other features that would otherwise be invisible to the human eye.
1904
Adolf Beck at the Old Bailey in 1904