The seedy underbelly of Sydney’s criminals during the 1920s is set to be exposed in an exhibition featuring never-before-seen mugshots.
The ‘Underworld: Mugshots from the Roaring Twenties’ exhibition at Museum of Sydney opens on Saturday, and features more than 130 police mugshots taken during a turbulent decade for crime in the city.
Cocaine dealers and addicts, illegal alcohol sellers, Mafia bosses, petty criminals, prostitutes, pickpockets, thugs, thieves and wayward youths make up the subjects of the incredible mugshots featured in the exhibition.
A fireman on steamships, Arthur Caddy was known to police as a shopbreaker and had previously been arrested for drinking ‘sly grog’, photographed on March 6, 1929
Stanley James Hay was injured in France while serving with the army, he returned to Sydney and later broke into ‘Diggerville’, a workshop set up by the government to train returned soliders, photographed in September 1920
Olga Anderson, also known as the ‘Marchioness de Falaise’ was known to police as a great storyteller. She and her partner travelled the world on the proceeds of a blackmail racket targeting married men. Photographed on November 11, 1929
Edna May Lindsay stole a cheque from her employer and forged the signature with her lover, hoping to steal £310. Photographed March 22, 1929
Museum curator Nerida Campbell said the 1920s saw ‘massive social upheaval and fast times bred new crimes’.
‘Criminals moved into new markets including the illicit sale of alcohol and cocaine and the police had to employ every tool and technology to keep up.’
The criminals photographed are shown smoking, reading, chatting, slouched on chairs, holding handbags and wearing stylish outfits.
Some of the back stories of those pictured include outrageous tales of a life of crime.
Edward Banbury stole a police motorbike and rode it from Sydney all the way to Queensland, while Gladys Lowe was convicted for opium possession.
The photos on display have been reproduced from the original glass negatives when they were taken almost a century ago.
Police believed Giuseppe Mammone was one of the leaders of Sydney’s Mafia-style organisation known as the Camorra. One of his partners was murdered and he was suspected of the crime – having been previously convicted of killing a mobster in New York – but was later released. Photographed February 15, 1930
Gladys Lowe was suspected of opium possession. Photographed September 28, 1929
Athol Smith was suspected of illegally using a motor car. Photographed on Match 13, 1929
‘The collection is mostly made up of glass-plate negatives that have been digitally scanned,’ Ms Campbell said.
‘The high quality of the material on which they were captured and the skill of the police photographer allows us today to see a wealth of unexpected detail.’
Sydney Living Museums executive director Mark Goggin said the photographs ‘capture humour, defiance, bravado, malevolence and vulnerability – emotions that speak directly to us as we view these incredible photographs’.
‘Sydney police did things differently in the 1920s – the images are simply like nothing else in existence anywhere in the world.’
The exhibition will be accompanied by a book titled ‘Underworld’, featuring the photographs and selected essays.
Amy Lee was an deep-seated drug addict, and admitted to using cocaine, morphine and opium. She continued to sniff cocaine even as the interior of her nose rotted away and her septum collapsed
Augustine Gracey and Edgar Dalton were felons who managed to dupe authorities and enlist to fight in World War I