35 Vintage Mugshots That Prove They Don’t Make Female Criminals Like They Used To
Sydney Living MuseumsEugenia Falleni, alias Harry Crawford, spent most of her life masquerading as a man. In 1913, Falleni married a widow, Annie Birkett, whom she later murdered. The case whipped the public into a frenzy as they clamored for details of the “man-woman” murderer. New South Wales. 1920.
They range from fresh-faced teenagers to hardened old women who have lived through hell. Their appearances range from dirty and disheveled to Sunday best. And the charges leveled against them range from petty theft to murder and dismemberment.
But as diverse as these vintage mugshots of accused female criminals are, all of these photos paint a different image of how we so often imagine ladies of the early 1900s: prim and proper. There were, of course, rough-and-tumble criminals back then just as there are today. And the mugshots above are certainly a testament to that.
What’s more, these mugshots reveal how little has changed over the course of the mugshot’s long history, which dates back nearly to the beginning of photography itself.
During the 1840s, when it was still a new technology, police departments displayed daguerreotype portraits of potential “rogues” or suspects. The nature of long-exposure photography meant that often several people needed to hold down the suspects in order to get the photo. The department then hung the likenesses so that the patrolmen could familiarize themselves with the suspects.
In 1888, Alphonse Bertillon created the modern mugshot, which included two images: one in profile and one from the front. This practice included bodily measurements and together the technique constituted the “Bertillon System.” Bertillon’s system appeared at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair and spread like wildfire to the biggest cities in America.
Taken not long after that point, the vintage mugshots of female criminals above provide a fascinating look at how these types of photos looked more than a century ago.
