In 1854 the governor of Bristol Gaol, James Gardener, produced a Home Office report advocating the use of photography as an aid to the administration of criminal justice. Robert Evan Roberts was the first known English prison governor to use photography for identification purposes. A governor at Bedford prison (1853- 1885), he was convinced that habitual offenders were getting off with relatively light sentences because there were inadequate records. In 1859 he started to photograph all the prisoners in his gaol, and two years later was given an allowance of seven pounds a year for materials. The practice was taken up by several other counties, but it was quite some time before photographic records became standard practice.
However, he was not actually the first to take pictures of prisoners. The New York Illustrated News for 19 March, 1851 reads: "Major Gilpin, of Philadelphia, has had daguerreotypes taken of all the noted characters arrested within the past year or two, and he has now quite a gallery of the celebrities. This is an excellent police arrangement."
© Robert Leggat, 1997.