Victorian Mugshots Gallery

'Paddy the Devil'

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• Bread and water but no cheese
• The compilation of photographs of offenders began in Belgium in the 1840s. In Britain in the 1850s and 60s, local police forces assembled their own collections as best they could. If photos were found when an arrest was made the offender's likeness and other information were grouped together in large scrapbooks. If no images were available local photographers would be employed to snap the offender, sometimes in the police station, others in the studio. Some prisoners seemed to be cursing the cameraman and 'cheese' was very rarely on the lips of any sitter. Many subjects had to be restrained by two or three officials, pulling hair and twisting arms. Most albums have at least one or two photos of prisoners desperate to remain anonymous. 'Paddy the Devil' appears in a Manchester file from 1893. His real name was Patrick Cox, a notorious counterfeiter. 'The Devil' certainly didn't go down without a fight.

By the 1870s, the Home Office saw the advantages of collating detailed records of offenders with the result that the photographing of prisoners, by both police forces and prison authorities, became commonplace. These were often the only photographs ever taken of the subjects.