54 Vintage Mugshots Brought To Life In Stunning Color (2024)

From a woman who sliced off her husband's penis to a serial killer who gleefully confessed to murdering 21 people, these vintage mugshots are just as unsettling as they are compelling.

E.H. Brunson.
Charged with "assault to murder."
Circa early 1900s.Arne Svenson Collection

15 of 55

E.L. Jones.
Charged with grand larceny.
Circa early 1900s.Arne Svenson Collection

16 of 55

Elizabeth Ruddy.
A career criminal who was convicted of stealing from the house of one Andrew Foley. She was sentenced to 12 months with hard labor.
Long Bay, New South Wales.
1915.Sydney Living Museums

17 of 55

Ellen ("Nellie") Kreigher.
One of four people arrested and charged over the murder of Gertrude Mabel Heaydon. In October the previous year Gertrude Heaydon had been taken to the Coogee flat of a woman known as "Nurse Taylor" to obtain an illegal abortion. She died there in the flat. Police later claimed she was murdered by Nurse Taylor, at the behest of Heaydon's husband, Alfred.
Sydney, Australia.
1923.Sydney Living Museums

18 of 55

Eugenia Falleni, aka Harry Crawford.
Assigned female at birth but presented as a man. In 1913, Falleni married a widow, Annie Birkett. Falleni later murdered her. The case whipped the public into a frenzy as they clamored for details.
Long Bay, New South Wales.
1920.Sydney Living Museums

19 of 55

Everad Ulrich.
Convicted of grand larceny.
Pierce, Washington.
1922.Washington State Archives, Digital Archives

20 of 55

Francis Flood.
Charged with theft and sentenced to two years of hard labor.
Sydney, Australia.
Circa 1920.Sydney Living Museums

21 of 55

Frank Hammilton.
Charged with petit larceny.
Circa early 1900s.Arne Svenson Collection

22 of 55

Frank Murray, aka Harry Williams.
Sentenced to 12 months of hard labor for breaking, entering, and stealing.
Sydney, Australia.
1929.Sydney Living Museums

23 of 55

George Crawford.
Convicted of carnal knowledge of a minor child.
Kitsap, Washington.
1922.Washington State Archives, Digital Archives

24 of 55

George Ray.
Served 10 years for manslaughter.
Nebraska State Penitentiary.
Circa 1890s.History Nebraska

25 of 55

Goldie Williams.
The five-foot tall, 110-pound Williams was defiant upon her arrest for vagrancy. Williams reported her hometown as Chicago and her occupation as a prostitute.
Omaha, Nebraska.
1898.History Nebraska

26 of 55

Guillaume Joseph Robillard.
Anarchist photographed by Alphonse Bertillon.
Paris.
1894.
Alphonse Bertillon/The Metropolitan Museum of Art

27 of 55

Henri Marc Julien Birilay.
Anarchist photographed by Alphonse Bertillon.
Paris.
1894.
Alphonse Bertillon/The Metropolitan Museum of Art

28 of 55

Herbert co*ckran.
A tailor from Fairmont, Nebraska. Arrested for burglary.
Omaha, Nebraska.
1899.History Nebraska

29 of 55

Herbert Ellis.
Sydney, Australia.
Circa 1920.Sydney Living Museums

30 of 55

Isabella McQue.
Charged with the theft of a sealskin coat.
North Shields, U.K.
1915.Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums

31 of 55

Isom White.
Convicted of first-degree murder.
Snohomish, Washington.
1921.Washington State Archives, Digital Archives

32 of 55

Jack Cramer.
Convicted of second-degree burglary.
King, Washington.
1929.Washington State Archives, Digital Archives

33 of 55

James Collins.
A 23-year-old tailor. Escaped after being arrested for burglary. He was later re-arrested.
Omaha, Nebraska.
1897.History Nebraska

34 of 55

James Dawson.
Charged with indecent exposure.
North Shields, U.K.
1902.Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums/Flickr

35 of 55

James McGuire.
Charged with theft.
Edinburgh, Scotland.
1906.Edinburgh City Archives

36 of 55

Jess Poyns.
Convicted of robbery.
King, Washington.
1928.Washington State Archives, Digital Archives

37 of 55

Joe Weil.
Convicted of bootlegging.
Spokane, Washington.
1922.Washington State Archives, Digital Archives

38 of 55

John Anglin.
One of the only five men to "escape" Alcatraz prison. Whether any of the prisoners survived their escapes remains a mystery, as their bodies have never been found.
San Francisco, California.
1960.Media Drum World

39 of 55

John H Walker.
Convicted of second-degree assault.
Spokane, Washington.
1914.Washington State Archives, Digital Archives

40 of 55

Laura Belle Devlin.
Murdered and dismembered her 75-year-old husband with a hacksaw, throwing some of him in the wood stove and the rest in their backyard.
Newark, Ohio.
1947.Bettmann/Getty Images

41 of 55

Lewis Powell aka Lewis Payne.
Abraham Lincoln assassination conspirator aboard the USS Saugus.
1865.Bureau of Prisons/Getty Images

42 of 55

Lizzie Cardish.
A 15-year-old who was convicted of arson.
Leavenworth, Kansas.
1906.Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images

43 of 55

Mabel Smith.
Arrested for larceny.
North Shields, U.K.
1903.Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums/Flickr

44 of 55

Maud Johnson.
Convicted of obtaining money by false pretenses.
Clarke, Washington.
1910.Washington State Archives, Digital Archives

45 of 55

Nellie Cameron.
One of Sydney's best-known — and most desired — prostitutes.
Sydney, Australia.
1930.Sydney Living Museums

46 of 55

William Stanley Moore.
Charged with opium dealing.
Sydney, Australia.
1925.Sydney Living Museums

47 of 55

Susan Joice.
Charged with larceny for stealing money from a gas meter.
North Shields, U.K.
1903.Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums/Flickr

48 of 55

H. McGuinness.
Sydney, Australia.
1929. Sydney Living Museums

49 of 55

Valerie Lowe.
Arrested for breaking into an army warehouse and stealing boots and overcoats.
New South Wales.
1922.Sydney Living Museums

50 of 55

Walter Smith.
Charged with breaking and entering.
New South Wales.
1924.Sydney Living Museums

51 of 55

Anonymous mugshot showing an innovative technique to capture profiles and facing photos in a single shot.
Date and location unknown.Mark Michaelson

52 of 55

Amy Lee.
Described in court as a "good looking girl until she fell victim to the foul practice" of snorting cocaine.
New South Wales.
1930.Sydney Living Museums

53 of 55

Alice Fisher.
Convicted of larceny.
Long Bay, New South Wales.
1919.Sydney Living Museums

54 of 55

Albert Johnson.
Convicted of grand larceny.
Nebraska.
1885.Nebraska State Historical Society

55 of 55

Like this gallery?
Share it:

These Colorized Mugshots Show Criminals From The Past As They Really Were

View Gallery

Mugshots have been a powerful police tool — and a source of public fascination — for more than a century. In fact, they trace their origins back to 19th-century Paris.

Louis Daguerre invented the first publicly available photographic process in 1839. Almost immediately, police officers found photography useful when it came to tracking down criminals. Evidence of this early practice goes back as far as the 1840s in Belgium.

However, it was another Frenchman — Alphonse Bertillon — who invented the mugshot some 50 years later and created a system that would eventually be adopted by police departments all around the world.

The Bertillon Method

Alphonse Bertillon/The Metropolitan Museum of ArtAugustin Dupuis, an anarchist photographed by Alphonse Bertillon. 1894.

Bertillon was an unlikely trailblazer. While both his father and brother were expert statisticians, Bertillon himself was very much a black sheep.

Expelled from the Imperial Lycée of Versailles, Bertillon spent four years in the French army before securing a low-level position in the Parisian police. In 1879, as a police clerk, he grew frustrated with the department's ad hoc methods of identifying and documenting criminals and suspects.

Paris was in the middle of a crime surge, and in Bertillon's view, the police's skills weren't up to snuff. So he developed what came to be known as the Bertillon System of documenting and organizing criminals and suspects.

According to the system, the police would measure a suspect's head length, head breadth, the length of the middle finger, the length of the left foot, and the length of the "cubit," or the forearm from the elbow to the tip of the middle finger.

The idea was that each person's combination of measurements would be more or less unique. It served as a sort of "fingerprint" in an era before actual fingerprinting was a common police practice.

The mugshot — one photo of the subject facing the camera and one taken in profile — was perhaps the most important element of the system.

Before long, the system showed success — so it was implemented all across France. In 1883, Bertillon identified 49 repeat offenders. And by 1884, that number increased to 241. Unsurprisingly, the Bertillon System in France earned him major praise. By 1888, he became the chief of France's newly-established Department of Judicial Identity.

He also published a book describing his process for posterity called Signaletic Instructions Including the Theory and Practice of Anthropometrical Identification. (They sure knew how to write catchy titles back in the 1890s.)

Mugshots Then And Now

San Jose Police DepartmentA mugshot of Bertha Boronda, a woman charged with "mayhem." 1908.

The Bertillon System made its debut on the world stage when it was demonstrated at the Chicago World's Fair in 1893. David R. Papke, a professor at Marquette University Law School, explains the response as such:

"It was an age of science, and some thought of the mug shot as a useful component in 'scientific law enforcement.' Indeed, there are surviving efforts by police departments to superimpose photographs of certain types of criminals on top of one another. We could then, theoretically, have distilled images of, to note only two of many possibilities, the typical pickpocket or typical forger."

The Bertillon System was far from perfect — and some of Bertillon's investigations did fail. And it didn't take long for most of the system to be overtaken by the modern-day practice of fingerprinting. However, the mugshot still prevails today.

The mugshot was already a standard procedure for police departments worldwide by the 20th century. But it wasn't until the 1970s and 1980s that they started regularly being printed in color.

After checking out these colorized vintage mugshots, take a look at colorized mugshots of some of the most famous people in history. Then, see some more vintage mugshots in their original monochromatic form.