HF The History of Photography 600pág

Photography of criminals 5 1 5
from 18 56 to 1873 took portraits of suspected persons as well as of convicted prisoners,
and pasted them in an album, appending brief case-histories of each sitter.
The first public wanted person's notice with photograph was made following the
suggestion of the Frenchman Moreau-Christophe in 1854. The following year
Lerebours' photograph of Pianort, who had made an assassination attempt on
Napoleon III, was circulated to French and foreign police forces.
The first time that a photograph of a wanted person was bill-posted by the police
all over England was in 1861. The man sought had absconded with £40,000. A
private photograph was used, in which the offender smiled amiably, hat in hand,
upon all who read the notice that £rno reward would be paid upon his apprehension.
A month later the defrauder was recognized from this photograph by an English
detective in Turin, and duly arrested. In spite of this success, it was not until 1865
that a Select Committee of the House of Lords recommended to the Home Secretary
the universal adoption of prison photography, and another five years went by before
the Prevention of Crimes Act was passed, making compulsory the photographing
of every prisoner in England and Wales. During the year 1871-72 a total of 30,463
portraits were received at Scotland Yard from County and Borough prisons, and
375 arrests were made in consequence of the criminals having been identified by
photographs. The cost of photographing was low compared with its great utility.
From the time the Act came into operation in November 1871 up to the end of 1873,
the portraits of all prisoners in the 115 gaols of England and Wales cost
£z,948 18s. od.
Of course, many prisoners objected to being placed on record in this way, as
illustrated in Luke Fildes' woodcut of 1873. Others, knowing the uselessness of Pl 314
resistance, meekly submitted, but when the lens was uncapped, pulled a frightful
grimace to make themselves unrecognizable. So far, only full-face portraits were
taken : after about 1900 profile portraits were also taken to make identification still
easier.
It was not long, however, before it became evident that photographs alone were
insufficient proof of identity. An outstanding example of this is the famous Tichborne
case. In 1867 Arthur Orton claimed to be Sir Roger Tichborne, who was declared
lost at sea thirteen years before, and claimed the baronetcy and estates worth about
£z4,ooo a year. Though accepted by Lady Tichborne, who had advertised for her
missing son in 1865, no other members of the family believed in Orton, and they
resisted his claim in court. Old photographs of Orton were compared with those of
the lost Tichborne, and with his present appearance ; physiognomists were consulted,
and hotly disputing each others' opinion, published polemical pamphlets against one
another. Out of 150 witnesses, over IOO swore that the claimant was not Tichborne,
but the remainder were equally positive about his genuineness. After nearly four
years-the longest trial known in England-Arthur Orton was sentenced to fourteen
years' hard labour for perjury and forgery, and after serving ten years was released
on ticket-of-leave. He continued protesting . his innocence, which was still believed
in by many people, until three years before his death in 1898 when he published his
confession in The People.
In other countries, too, the authorities sooner or later came to the conclusion that
some other identification method was necessary in addition to photographs. The
Prefect of the St Petersburg police, for instance, had circulated the portrait of a certain
Nihilist, and to make doubly sure, sent six different carte-de-visite photographs of
him. Before long the Prefect received a communication from a police superintendent:
'Your Excellency, I have the honour to report that I have already arrested four of the