We have been looking at vintage mugshots recently discovered in the archives of the West Midlands Police Department, including the oldest mugshot in British history. This is a strangely captivating picture of Joseph Martin from August 5, 1862.
Joseph has a certain toughness and resolution to his image, but his actual crime is lost to history. Somehow I do not think it was stealing doorbells.
Goodbye Pork Pie Hat!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sxz9eZ1Aons
Sad, because this man was once someone’s little boy.
The French semiotician Roland Barthes wrote “Camera Lucida,” a meditation on photography. It featured a photograph from, I believe, the 19th century of a condemned killer. Barthes’s observation about photography’s ability was that it showed “He is dead, and he is going to die.”
It appears that his nose has been broken and healed.
He looks like he stuck a knife in somebody for a few shillings.
He looks like the drugs kicked in. 😉