Alice Mullholland, 18, was a street trader who was sentenced to three months in Newcastle Goal for stealing boots.

The list of thefts committed was ominous enough, ranging from stealing of rabbits, beef, pigeons to clothes, tobacco and bed linen. In a fascinating record of early police portraiture, these men and women look into the new technology enabled apparatus sans hope, regret or amusement. Still proud, one can clearly see how they might have been asked by the cameraman to meet the ‘posing protocol’ of Victorian representation, hands/fingers locked. Not all of them care for protocol though. Take a sepia tinted look, courtesy the Tyne & Wear Archives.

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