Photographing of criminals began in the 1840s only a few years after the invention of photography, but it was not until 1888 that French police officer Alphonse Bertillon standardized the process. A mug shot or mugshot (an informal term for police photograph, or booking photograph), is a photographic portrait typically taken after a person is arrested.
The mug shot has been an essential police procedure around the world. “Mug” is an English slang term for “face, and the original purpose of the mug shot was to allow law enforcement to have a photographic record of an arrested individual to allow for identification by victims and investigators.
Mug shots and the associated information are published regardless of whether or not the person is guilty or has been convicted of the crime they were arrested for. Generally, officials took full-face and profile photographs. If convicted, men had another set of images taken after their hair and beards were shaved off to limit the spread of lice. Women’s hair was not shaved.
Here is a vintage full-face mugshot collection of 35 prisoner photographs in North Shields, England during the First World War, both men and women, arrested for stealing money, breaking and entering, assault or even stealing ducks.
