It's a little while since we've had a fiction review, and this week I've been reading The Palace of Curiosities by Rosie Garland.



The Story & Characters

The Palace of Curiosities opens with a line that is sure to already have you hooked after the rather delectable cover: 'Before I am born, my mother goes to the circus'. The first chapter is dedicated to recounting her experience in 1831 and is a heady journey of the senses as the mother revels in a rare nervous night out with the man of her desires, the release from 'ladylike' sensibilities into the braying joy of the crowd and the stink and sensation of the circus and its acts, that are equally thrilling and oddly tragic. The thrill of the circus is soon kicked into horror as an act goes wrong that will affect the mother very personally for the rest of her life.

The chapter is stand alone, but it does a good job of setting the tone for the rest of the book as we move to follow the fortunes of her daughter Eve the 'Lion-faced girl' as she seeks out her independence and belonging. In turn we follow the story of Abel, a man washed out of the mud of the Thames, confused, forgetful and groping for his memories each day. As the two are brought together Garland builds a picture of the Victorian underworld and the profitable and at times brutal world of the Freak Show.

The story moves along their lives, switching between each protagonist at an easygoing pace that shrugs off a more rigid plot in favour of creating a series of scenes and the tone of a dark fairytale. Plot certainly happens, and you are never left adrift, and this style allows you to more easily occupy the moments of each character's lives and their inner worlds as they each gradually grow out their roots and inch towards control of their own lives, purpose and a sense of belonging. The style has been compared to Angela Carter and the comparison is one I could certainly see - there is a lot in the mix of brutality and dreamy description that reminded me of Angela carter's 'the Bloody Chamber' and Eve's mentions of the story of Bluebeard throughout the book is surely not an accident. When you click into the style of writing, it's an enjoyably gothic read.

The supporting characters are all very well realised, from Abel's difficult relationship with his best friend Alfred, and Eve's conflicted relationship with her husband and freak-show owner Josiah Arroner. My personal favourite was Lizzie, the voluptous, fierce and comforting figure who took on the role of the Whore of Babylon at the performances.


Does This Work As a Historical Novel?


Since this blog is effectively one that looks at history, I couldn't finish a review here without looking at how this fares as a historical novel. For me, it's a difficult assessment to make as I don't really think that this is a particular goal of the book, nor should it really be judged on it's historical accuracy. The Carter-esque fairy story style of the book tends to creep into the languages and characteristics, and works very well to create a certain dreamy tone, but fails to create the same sharp sense of authenticity of language and character that I find in the CJ Sansom books, for example. The language, while Victorian of course, is a little too showy and flowery at times to feel authentic, though it should be said that when characters are in their darker moments and angry this improves.
That said, the book does excel in certain scenes and themes. Eve's navigation of subservience to her husband and of respectability vs her own aching sexual awakening and need for power and independence and how she classifies this within what it means to be a 'good wife' all ring very true to the time. Abel's early life living in a crowded stinking cellar as an abattoir 'slaughter-man' and his peer's contentments and frustrations at this life also paint a brilliantly real picture of slum life. A particularly raw and tragic scene with his friend Alfred and how Alfred deals with the situation also rings painfully authentic for how many men must have coped in the harsher times. Finally the Freak-Show itself and the way the audiences are written and the downtimes in the house that all the freaks occupy feel very real.

Is It Worth a Read?

All in all I enjoyed the book and the journey it took me through. For those looking for a historical novel it holds enough good scenes in it as to be attractive, so long as you slip yourself into the frame of mind of this being a fairytale story. For those looking for tight plot, instead you would do better to relax yourselves into their fairytale tone, enjoy the slow build of the characters and be taken down the story of love and belonging. Definitely worth picking up if you'd like a change.




For more posts on freak shows....

- The Human Marvels: 'Circus Freaks and Human Oddities'
- Interpretation, Taboo and Climbing Mountains: The Problem of Frieda Pushnick's Obituary

If there was one thing the Victorians were crazy for, it was a good seance.


Victorians occupied an unusual moment in history, where the scientific revolution of the 17th and 18th centuries had become professionalised and atheism, while still unusual and often distrusted, was gaining popularity. Life was hard yet - for many- more genteel than ever before, and death was romanticised while still haunting the majority of families as a danger that could strike at any moment.  The rise of the middle classes and self-made men meant that what was fashionable spread like competitive wildfire and defined how many people saw themselves in society that was increasingly critical of itself. In an uncertain world, hung between science and religion, nature and the power of man, spiritualism offered some form of compromise between the old ways and the new. The alter of spiritualism was the seance performed in a fashionable gentleman's parlour, and the grand vicar of spiritualism was the medium.

In The First Psychic Peter Lamont tells us the story of the Victorian era's most notorious medium, Daniel Dunglas Home and, through this narrative, examines all the complexities of how our ancestors (and we) witness and interpret the world around us.

Who was Daniel Home?

Daniel Home

Daniel Home was the Scottish-American son of a mother who was reported to have 'the gift' of clairvoyance and spiritual contacts. He was Christian, often sickly and effeminate in appearance, with blonde-red hair, but commanded an impressive presence when he set out on his mission to convince the world that spiritualism was truth. He conducted his 'mission' by holding regular seances for the famous and well-born of America and Victorian London. He never charged a cent and instead relied on the hospitality of his clients to keep from homelessness and quickly built up a reputation as a frighteningly talented medium. It was said that Daniel communed directly with the spirits and through them he caused tables to float and flip, instruments to play without being touched and for spirit hands to appear and interact with the audience members. But, most impressively, he was known to levitate high off the ground,even flying in and out of windows.

Naturally, plenty of people doubted Daniel and the others who followed his profession, but while his contemporaries were discovered one by one Daniel continued to perform and astound his audiences without his methods ever being found out. He made powerful enemies in Robert Browning and Charles Dickens, while utterly convincing Mrs Browning and many eminent scientists. In the meantime his wide net of acquaintances took him through the turbulent seas of poverty and wealth, even drawing him to marry a relative of the Russian tsar! Daniel polarised public opinion about one of the most controversial topics of the Victorian era.


'The First Psychic', really?

Daniel set up in one of Crook's experiments

The title of the book might be a surprise, given that soothsayers and clairvoyants are seemingly as old as time, but it perfectly encapsulates the position of this little snapshot of history. The treatment of Daniel's 'powers' by skeptics was typical of the new professionalism of the scientific method, and Daniel was famously tested by William Crookes, the scientist who famously discovered thallium. Crookes devised a series of experiments to test (and restrict) Daniel's 'powers' to determine their integrity and in doing so found that he could not disprove any of Daniel's powers. Even when in the presence of precise measuring equipment and restricted conditions the tables still moved and the accordions still played as if by ghostly hands. Having no other alternative he was forced to concede that Daniel really did have access to 'another force', a mysterious power of movement. He officially dubbed this 'psychic force' - the first use of the term - and Daniel Home became the official world's first 'psychic', sanctioned by the scientific method.
Naturally, Victorian society did not take this sitting down.


So is it worth a read?

A 1930s seance

Peter Lamont does a great job of writing in an engaging fashion in this little biopic. It took me less than 10 days to read which, for non-fiction books I typically only read in snippets at my breakfast or commute, is pretty darn good. What might have been a dry , though admittedly curious, life story in someone else's' hands actually turned out to be a well balanced well thought out piece on science, spiritualism, conjuring and the always difficult reliability of testimony. lamont reminds us that the stakes are always high, as friendships, relationships and professional reputations are built and destroyed as they orbited the controversy of spiritualism. Though showing us the remarkable life of one extraordinary man Lamont manages to tell a detailed history of the tensions victorians felt between the scientific and the spiritual, and how the various facets of private victorian societies interacted and rubbed against one another. Most importantly, lamont offers a very balanced view, not letting his own beliefs about whether Daniel's actions as a medium were real or trickery. He examines the evidence carefully as well as the counter evidence and in doing so remains remarkably without bias - a feat that previous historical writers of Daniel's life have often failed to maintain.

If you're interested in stories about remarkable people, the weird and wonderful, or the culture of fashionable Victorians, this is a book for you.


Other posts on the weird and wonderful:

- The science behind 'Bloody Mary'
- Mary Toft's Rabbit Births
- Why do so many aliens in real-life abduction stories look the same?
-Review: on Monsters and Marvels
-Running around like headless chickens



Keep in touch....

Remember, you can follow Preludes: Blog of Words us on Twitter and Facebook. Or Subscribe to us on Blogluvin' to never miss a post.

I love weird history. While at times it can be gimmicky, it's always illuminating. Social history at its best.

So, fellow readers, you're probably not surprised that I loved Melissa Mohr's "Holy Sh*t: A Brief History of Swearing." I mean, come on. Look at that title, then look me in the eye and tell me that this wouldn't be a great book.

Admittedly, when you pick this off the shelf it's likely for the same reason why you flick to the dirty words in the dictionary or why you put Who Cut the Cheese? on your Amazon wishlist - you want a dirty snicker while education floats vaguely in the background as plausible deniability. But Holy Sh*t is a lot more than an excuse to see scatological humour and swearwords in an academic setting. Through pulling apart two versions of swearing - 'the holy' (curses and oaths) and 'the shit' ('dirty' swearing) - and tracking their development from the Romans to the modern day, Mohr provides a fascinating and insightful lens into our cultural development. Look to what offends a culture most and you will often see what it values most. Focus on what's classified as good manners and how these are broken, and you will always find what the history books are so often trying to hide.

In her journey through the history of swearing Mohr keeps her tongue firmly in her cheek, but treats her history with respect and meticulous detail when it's important. I would even recommend this book alone for her treatment of the history of God's emergence as a monotheistic deity in the bible, which is a fascinating and revealing read that demands a book of its own. By understanding how oaths  was used by God at his youngest in the bible, it informs us as to why they ('the Holy' swears) had such a power to 'hurt' him in the eyes of his believers, and how the power of these oaths died down by the Georgians to modern day.
Also fascinating, by explaining how medieval people were what we would now see as so vulgar - desensitized to 'the Shit' swears - she explains in illuminating detail the power dynamics of the time and why, at the brink before these became offensive, it was perfectly acceptable for Queen Elizabeth 1st to greet esteemed visitors with her boobs out.

For me, social history is always a great pleasure and I applaud anyone who is willing to put in the research to explore these more under-represented areas of history. Holy Sh*t: A Brief History of Swearing is a fantastic little book that you absolutely must go out and buy. 
You'll fuckin' love it.

Let me open first by saying "Happy 2015!"

 I hope that you all had wonderful Holiday and New Years celebrations, and that you have not yet been driven quite insane by the Back to the Future memes that are currently abound on the internet. Yes we are in 2015. Yes this is the 2015 that Marty Mcfly saw as the 'future', with hoverboards and giant 3D sharks abound.

As a kid this was nightmare fuel, let me tell you.

 We've been at this point before in 1989 with Orwell, 2001 with a Space Odyssey and more and at each point our future has, seemingly, not lived up to expectations. But could it ever?

 That said, I couldn't resist adding to this little pop-culture milestone this 2015 by taking a deeper look into what history envisioned of our future and where we are now at the dawn of 2015.



The Technology of Back to the Future 2 and 2015

Hoverboards

Hovercrafts have been around for quite a while, but it looked as if we could never gain enough control to perfect these into the swift and compact hoverboards that got Marty from A to B, but it looks as if we're on the way there with a new piece of kickstarter-funded technology: The Hendo hoverboard. While still somewhat clumsy, it seems a lot of fun and the skating legend Tony Hawk certainly got a smile out of it.

 Holograms

Holograms have been a staple of Sci-fi for quite a while as a shorthand for advanced technology. You can see it in Star Wars, Star trek, Back to the Future 2, Minority Report, James Bond, Agents of Shield and Torchwood but to name a few. It seems, that we are on the edge of diving in to this immersive technology. Nowadays you can go to concerts with 'pseudo-holograms' of your favourite deceased musicians, or your favourite incredibly-expensive actors. A 'holographic' Tupac and Michael Jackson have already drawn in crowds, and who could forget the 'holographic' Liam Neeson in the modern stage production of The War of the Worlds? But these images can't quite be called true holograms, but instead a form of live-image compositing also known as 'Pepper's Ghost'. Clever, but not quite the sci-fi ideal.
A new design called Bleen seems set to move holograms into a user friendly personal format in a  style that we're perhaps more familiar with, as you can see form the publicity video below.

 However an over-reliance of computer graphics, the photoshopping of stock photos and a board of directors and scientists that seem to vanish into thin air all set alarm bells ringing, as the website Metabunk argues. Most importantly, the concept of projection onto cool day-lit air simply doesn't mesh with physics as we currently understand it. The closest that can be achieved is through using lasers to superheat small plasma dots in the air in simple shapes, which is dangerous enough that it could never be conducted outside of the labs. I'm certainly more than a little sceptical that true holograms are still firmly in the realm of science fiction today, but I shall let you be the judges.

Self tying shoes

The 80s envisioned that light up self tying shoes were the future and Nike - the product placement of the age- has tried to follow suit with their own Nike Mags self tying shoes that will imitate Marty's exactly. This is technically a case of life imitating art, and it's mind-numbingly tricky to actually find a video of the 'moneyshot' of the power laces in action. But we've been assured that they work. Will this signal a real near-future of potentially-ankle-snapping automatic power laces? Probably not.


While the more outlandish futuristic elements of the film are hit and miss at best, there are a lot of elements that did become a reality and entered our daily life so steadily yet quickly, that many of us even forget to take proper notice of them.

Tablet Computers

Tablet computers are everywhere nowadays 
and they seem to have just sprung up all of a sudden. Like the holograms, hand held computers were a feature of any science fiction show that envisioned a future, be it near or far. While we could track the screen depth of TVs and computers getting thinner and more portable, to actually be rid of a hefty processing system and to actually have a touchscreen that was functional was truly revolutionary. Now we have it, we so often take it for granted, when really our first experiences of them were nothing short of magical. In a way it is the natural progression of the laptop, but who could have predicted that it could become a reality so smoothly?

 Video Conferencing
 

 Another element that was always a staple in science fiction in the past was video conferencing, whether it was between councillors on space ships or employees. It seemed like a predictable and natural progression and so perhaps didn't require much of a stretch of the imagination to envision, but it couldn't have been made reality without some serious technical developments along the way, the chief of which is the sheer usability and speed of our internet connections. Without such a detailed and clever infrastructure in place, it simply wasn't possible, but we have gradually chipped away at this and made it into a reality. Like the tablet computers, and paraphrasing a John Green quote, we seem to experience this amazing technology's development like one falls asleep: slowly and then all at once. Long distance relationships have never been more connected, and it's set to improve even further soon enough.


So, in the end, Back to the Future 2 was hit and miss with its predictions. But what shone through in it's initial envisioning of the future was the media-based, consumer led brightness and imaginative boldness of the 80s. The imagined future, in this respect, was a mirror on the present.

How the past envisioned the future.

Whether or not we reached the goals that the past envisioned for us is never really as important as taking a step back and viewing the spirit behind these imaginations. Science fiction has often been a perfect genre for not only imagining a creative future, but also turning an eye back to view the society that envisioned this future in the first place. Imagination, after all, is always tied to the social influences  of the place in history from which it began.
So, while back to the future was very 80s, if we look to the victorian period often it was very, well, victorian.

The current fashion for steampunk has risen out of the sheer unbridled optimism of Victorian science fiction. Sometimes it was dystopian - just think of the Morlochs in HG Wells' the Time Machine - but when it came to technology the visions of the future showed a capacity to achieve anything. The Victorian age was at the height of blue-sky thinking through the industrial revolution, and this shows in how they envisoned the year 2000. Surprisingly, while it may look different, we actually achieved many of these.



Moving Houses By Train
 

Victorians had the rather sweet idea that having houses on a railway line would keep everything varied. While this idea in itself seems a little silly, nowadays we have the capacity to move huge items - even houses - regularly if needs be. The Victorians of course couldn't predict the decline of the railway, as it was the height of their technology at the time. Nowadays if you want to move a house you need to call up a truck.

 Holidays to the North Pole

The NorthPole was an inhospitable place for the Victorians, but there was hope. Expeditions in 1827, 1871, 1879-1881,1895,1897 and 1900 meant that the North pole was well in the conciousness of the Victorian society. While it was dangerous in the future they hoped to conquer it and make it safe and farmiliar enough to holiday to. Holidays were a new national pasttime and very popular - a true celebration of their progress and civility. And how else better to get to the North pole than by exciting and advanced airships?
Making the dangerous and inhospitable welcoming and accessible is a common feature in any time's predictions of the future. For us, we dream of tourism in space and the moon. For the Victorians, their dream was at least partially achieved. Nowadays, if you're tough enough, you can go and holiday in the North pole...though it;s hardly a walk in the park.

Televised Outside Broadcasts

With the development of the telephone a revolution in communication was at hand, and the Victorians envisioned how entertainment could be shared in this medium. Their solution was similar to the 'Peppers ghost' illusion that we now use for pseudo-'holograms', but they couldn't possibly predict how quickly the advancement in communication and entertainment technology could take place. Now we have Tv, computers, mobile phones, skype, 3d images and more. Quite impressive.

Individual Flying Machines

A successful aeroplane would not be invented until the Wright brothers in 1903, but humans have always wanted to fly. The Victorians had a spirit of exploration and a faith that technology would find a way: surely we would have flying machines by the year 2000!
Not quite. However individual ways of taking to the air are possible. We have private planes and gyrocopters for true flight. We also have handgliders and wingsuits if 'falling with style' is more your cup of tea.

In the end, envisioning what we want for the future is key to understanding who we are in the present.

Whatever your time period of birth, it's very difficult to pick out how the future will look. Marty McFly's 2015 was a future coloured by the 80s - all bright plasticy consumerist goodness with a little lashing of dystopian anxiety towards the end. The Victorian vision of the year 2000 was one that focused on the freedom of exploration and the joy of invention, yet it coached everything in Victorian ideals and could not predict the social revolution of the future that would, for example, put many women in trousers.
So often we use the future  to dream, but also to pass social commentary on our own present. This was  the aim of even earlier visits to the future, and we often see it in our current science fiction media. By imagining a utopia it shows us what we need to make a change, and by imagining a dystopia it cautions us as to what elements of our current society might cause decay and corruption.

To envision the future is to create a mirror, in the end, and it will always be interesting to look back and see how much of that reflection really came true.



Sources

- 'Back to the future how science envisioned 2015'
-11 things from back to the future 2 that came true
-Things we have by 2015
-Back to the future self tying power laces
-Bleen holograms
-Liam Neeson War of the Worlds Hologram
-5 awesome holograms
-Hoverboard
-Victorian visions of the year 2000
-North Pole, Wikipedia

Prisoners and criminals, throughout hsitory, have always occupied a strange place in society's structure. In many ways they still do.

Credit: Yavapie County Sheriff's Office

They are part of society but somehow also in a sphere slightly outside of it. Not to start off on a downer, but criminals can be romanticised in the media while at the same times being subject to human rights violations. Racism and classism are always heavily at work in both arrests and convictions and, in the case of America, whether police officers choose to shoot to kill. Subjects that might be horrific if inflicted on a 'free' 'law-abiding' person, are often treated as jokes when inflicted on the incarcerated. And while the majority of 'law-abiding' society may condemn criminals on principal, for some reason we seem to be relentlessly curious about their mugshots.

Today there are hundreds of click-bait websites showing off modern bizarre mugshots, but things are just as interesting if we look back through history to when the tradition of photographing arrested 'criminals' began...

Before Mugshots

In the past, social presentation and the body were very much linked and often criminals were identified and shamed by being branded, tattooed or mutilated in order to display their status.For example, in the film Pirates of the Caribbean (set in around the 1700s) Jack Sparrow has a branding scar that shows that he had been previously convicted as a pirate.

Jack Sparrow Branding scar: 'P' for pirate

As these actions often made the subject unemployable unless they could be easily hidden, it hardly helped them turn over a new leaf. Should the person be captured or questioned, they could easily be linked to past crimes.
When suspects were not mutilated, the police instead had to rely on descriptions, sketches (if available) and the memorization of each person's face and build. In early history, where people were typically more likely to be part of small communities, common kinship and acquaintance meant that people could be easy to track down. While criminals could escape by moving homes to other communities, harsh vagrancy laws often meant that when they arrived in a new community without ties they were rarely very welcome and could even be actively persecuted.
When industrialisation took hold and communities suddenly swelled at an alarming rate, it became far more easy to remain anonymous.A better form of identification and record was needed badly.




The Victorians & Edwardians
 
When the camera was first invented, the Victorians saw an opportunity to record themselves for the future in family portraits, postmortem momentos and for practical reference. When the prices  of this new technology decreased, the police decided to jump on the bandwagon and photograph the people they arrested for further identification.  By the 1870s, Alphonse Bertillon, a clerk in the Prefecture of Police in Paris, had designed a formulaic photo-record which consisted of one front shot and one profile shot under standardised lighting, which was soon circulated and adopted by police all over Europe and America. And so the mugshot was born.

 George Bennet was arrested in 1860. After many previous convictions he had been taken in for assaulting a police constable. As with all the mugshots, the photograph was accompanied by detailed descriptions to aid with identification and to record his crime. You can find his mugshot in the Bedfordshire and Luton Archives and Records Centre.

 Owen Cavill was arrested in 1914 for sheep stealing, and his mugshot shows the formulaic presentation of the photographs.

In many of the early mugshots the hands are visible as well as the face. This is largely due to the Victorian interest in criminal anthropology and eugenics. They believed that genius, sentiment and criminal 'nature' could be mapped by measuring the head and hands. This belief persisted for quite some time - even in Arthur Conan Doyle's famous Sherlock Holmes stories the great detective ascribes to the belief that a criminal nature may be identifiable by the shape of his head.
In this picture, the very young Magaret Cosh was convicted of stealing a coat, and was sentenced to two month's hard labour.

Another child to be convicted was 12 year old Henry.L.Stephenson. He was sentenced to 2 months in prison for the crime of breaking into houses in 1873.

Naturally, many criminals objected to being recorded for identification and put up a fight when it came to sitting for their photography, and Victorian policemen were rarely afraid to get heavy handed. This resulted in some of the most distressing and emotive mugshots in the collection. Here Thomas Murphy is restrained by the Manchester Police.

Here too 'Paddy the Devil' (Patrick Cox), a notorious counterfeiter, was restrained in Machester in 1893.

 By The 1920s, despite the unenviable position of the criminals, a certain dapper quality can be seen in many of the mugshots.

Here, William Henry Moore is photographed unusually in his hat. He was convicted in 1925 for dealing in Opium.

Rather topically, given the last few years' rising obsession with paedophilia, this is a mugshot taken in 1920 of Albert.S.Warnkin and Beutler. Warnkin was arrested for trying to 'carnally know a girl of eight years old' and Beutler was arrested for indecent exposure.

Harry.L.Crawford's story is a quite remarkable one. Having been arrested for the murder of his wife, it was revealed that Harry was in fact really Eugeni Falleni - a woman who had been passing as a man since 1899. Little is known about whether Harry was genuinely transgender or had other motives for such cross-dressing, but in 1914 he married the widow Annie Birkett. By 1917 his wife had disappeared under suspicious circumstances. It is believed that this coincided with her revealing to a friend that she had found out "something amazing about Harry". Did Harry murder his wife to stop the secret coming out?

 

Another story almost too bizarre to be believed is that of 'Pep the Cat Murdering Dog'. He was admitted to Eastern State Penitentiary in 1924, it is said, by the Pennsylvania Governer Gifford Pinchot. The dog did hard time - sentenced for life for killing Gifford's wife's cat.

In the prison records, Pep's inmate number has been skipped over (but not assigned to anyone else), as if the people recording the logs were too embarrassed to formally own up to  admitting a Labrador as a prisoner. We may never know how far this is fact and how far thisis prison folklore, but it's certainly a compelling story.

Mugshots are, in short, a fantastic piece of social history. They allow us to put  faces to sweeping historical movements and attitudes.

For example, what's more emotive of the civil rights movement then the mugshots of Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr? What's more chilling than to see the faces behind such legendary names as Al Capone?  And what is more bizarre than to see a currently well known celebrity photographed in such a sterile setting? And, in the end, when so many family photographs are lost to a historians through either private the collections never going public, through destruction or a simple loss of memory over time, mugshots provide a real timeless record of individuals across hundreds of years.

 Rosa Parks, photographed by Alabama police in 1956, following her arrest during the Montgomery Bus Boycotts.

The gangster Al Capone, responsible for the Saint Valentines Day Massacre of 1929.

Martin Luther King, photographed in 1956 during the Montgomery Bus Boycotts. Scribbled on top of the photo is a record of his murder on April 4th 1968.

Here is a selection of suffragists who were arrested for a variety of crimes of vandalism in 1914, from smashing windows to attacking paintings of classically 'beautiful' women.

 1 - Margaret Scott, 2 - Olive Leared (née Hockin), 3 - Margaret McFarlane, 4 - Mary Wyan (Mary Ellen Taylor), 5 - Annie Bell, 6 - Jane Short, 7 - Gertrude Mary Ansell, 8 - Maud Brindley, 9 - Verity Oates, 10 - Evelyn Manesta

David Bowie has become an enduring pop icon, and here his mugshot records him for posterity. This comes from 1976 in New York, where Bowie was photographed following a short arrest for cannabis possession.

 Finally, If you'd like to learn more about historical crime, make sure to also check out the Old Bailey Online.

Largely run by the Humanities Research Institute at the University of Sheffield, The Old Bailey Online is a fantastic resource to dig deeper into crime recorded at the Old Bailey in London between 1674-1913. Alongside providing transcripts and scans of the original sources for each recorded crime, it also gives several guides on how best to interpret the evidence, along with articles on relevant issues such as gender in crime.


Sources
-  Last Week Tonight: Prisons
-The Gaurdian: Texas Prsions Violate International Human Rights Standards
- The Telegraph: Dexter Author - Don't Romanticise My Serial Killer
-The Telegraph: Romanticising violence - the serial killers we love to hate
-Huffington Post: 10 Unforgettable Mugshots
-The Independent: 'Courts are biased against blacks'
-Ferguson Protests over the shooting of Mike Brown (via the continually updated tumblr tag)
-Hotties, Hunks and Beat up Celebrities - The Allure of the Mugshot
- 17 Hauntingly Beautiful Victorian Mugshots
-Vintage Mugshots from the 1920s
-The Wanted Victorian Women
-The Smoking Gun: Historical Mug Shots
-BBC History Victorian Mugshots Gallery
-Child Mugshots of the 1800s
-Victorian Mugshots Show 19thc Interest in Criminal Anthropology
-New Zealand Police Museum - Victorian Mugshots
-First criminal mugshots
-Criminal Identification before mugshots
-Suffragette Mugshots
-The Old Bailey Online

 




I'd like to share a website and a few posts that I've found floating around the 'net that are sure to warm any historian's heart: Smiling Victorians.








Due to the long exposure of cameras in 'ye olden days', many early photos that we have left behind naturally depict serious straight backed individuals. Mix this with the general popular image of Victorians as god-fearing, ankle-covering, kill-joys and it's easy to assume that our ancestors were all quite grim and alien.

But true history, or at least my sort of history, is about finding the humanity of the past, and so I was delighted when I found these more relaxed photos. I hope you enjoy them too.

Many thanks to Smiling Victorians on Retronaut and NearMercury on Tumblr for sharing these gems.

Fun fact: The man in the white suit in the first few pictures is Tsar Nicholas II