35 Candid and Stylish Mugshots From the Roaring Twenties

   
The Roaring Twenties was a golden era for criminals when rapid societal change led to the opening up of new illicit markets for entrepreneurial felons. Fast times bred new crimes creating policing challenges ranging from reckless joyriders to the emergence of the Mafia and razor gangs.

Hampton Hirscham, Cornellius Joseph Keevil, William Thomas O’Brien & James O’Brien, 1921
 
New South Wales Police Department photographers captured the zeitgeist of the era in these unexpectedly candid mug shots of cocaine sellers and addicts, sly-grog purveyors and small-time criminals, who frequented the cells of the Central Police Station in Sydney.

Herbert Ellis, 1920

 

William Frederick Long, circa 1920

 

Eugenia Falleni, 1920

 

Gilbert Cochrane Burleigh & Joseph Delaney, 1920

 

“Silent Tom” Richards and T Ross, 1920

 

Augustine ‘Gus’ Gracey & Edgar ‘Eddie’ Dalton, 1920

 

Thomas William Gunn, William Carl Neilson & Albert Alfred Beck, circa 1921

 

Frederick Edward Davies, 1921

 

John Walter Ford and Oswald Clive Nash, 1921

 

Clara Brooks, 1922

 

Ernest Joseph Coffey, 1922

 

Patrick Riley, 1922

 

George ‘the Midnight Raper’ Wallace, 1922

 

Henry Marchant, 1922

 

John Daniel ‘Snowy’ Cutmore, 1922

 

Joseph Messenger, 1922

 

Cameron McIntosh Bean, 1922

 

William Cahill, 1923

 

Alex Westland Robertson, 1923

 

Sydney Skukerman, or Skukarman, 1924

 

Nancy Cowman, 1924

 

Eileen May Burt, 1924

 

Guiseppe Fiori, 1924

 

Sidney ‘Kicker’ Kelly, 1924

 

Antonius Jacobus Francisco Zetto, circa 1924

 

Jean Dawson, 1926

 

William Stanley Moore, 1926

 

Fay Watson, 1928

 

Thomas Craig, Raymond Neil, William Thompson and FW Wilson, 1928

 

Olga Anderson, 1929

 

Frank Murray, 1929

 

Edna May Lindsay, 1929

 

Athol Smith, 1929

 

Alison McCann, 1929