As a rule, prison photographs are not excellent specimens of photographic art.
The pose is not perfect, nor the subject carefully focussed, and the result of the defect is not removed by a normal squint or a twist of the features at the critical moment.
Officialdom felt this drawback, and to meet it to some extent a “black book” was devised.
The “Habitual Criminal Register,” as this book is termed, is an imposing-looking tome. In six years and a half the names of nearly 180,000 persons were registered in its pages. In every case the criminal had been more than once convicted on indictment for serious crimes against the community.
This formidable catalogue was compiled for the most part by men whose names are to be found in it and printed at “Her Majesty’s Prison, Brixton.”
There is a curious irony in the fact that some of these gentlemen should be employed to perfect a scheme destined to react upon themselves and their fraternity.
Yet with all these precautions a goodly proportion still evade the clutches of the law.
By the free adoption of aliases, identifications through the Hue and Cry, and even by means of photographs, have often failed.
Amusing exceptions, it is true, have occurred, one woman, who had provided herself with sixteen aliases, being convicted for the thirty-ninth time.
Lieut.-Colonel Du Cane says in his preface to the first volume of the “Register”:—“It is, I believe, the first time that an attempt has been made to furnish all the police of this or any other country with information in such a complete and readily accessible form respecting the individuals of the class against whom they are carrying on their operations, and the first time that such a work has been carried out in a prison.”