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| Title: |
Mug shot of Gilbert Burleigh and Joseph Delaney, 27 August 1920, possibly Central Police Station, Sydney.
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| Creator: |
New South Wales. Police Dept.
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| Date: |
August 1920
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| Format: |
[Picture] Glass plate negative;
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| Inscription: |
Emulsion side:
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| Subject: |
police detainees and suspects
mug shots
men's clothing and accessories
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| Description: |
Special Photograph no. 169. Gilbert Burleigh on the left is identified as a 'hotel barber', and Delaney's picture is labelled 'false pretences & conspiracy'. A companion photograph makes it clear that in fact Delaney was the hotel barber - meaning one who books into a hotel, boarding house or residential and robs (or 'snips') fellow patrons, usually in the dead of night. In this instance Delaney was charged with stealing a cigarette case, a hairbrush, a clock and a quantity of clothing from a dwelling-house. A month later he was further charged 'being about to abscond from bail'. He is described as 'a fireman and a returned soldier'. Gilbert Burleigh doesn't appear at all in the police Gazette in 1920, but is listed in the Photo Supplement of 1928, eight years later as being wanted on warrant.
This picture is one of a series of around 2500 "special photographs" taken by New South Wales Police Department photographers between 1910 and 1930. These "special photographs" were mostly taken in the cells at the Central Police Station, Sydney and are, as curator Peter Doyle explains, of "men and women recently plucked from the street, often still animated by the dramas surrounding their apprehension". Doyle suggests that, compared with the subjects of prison mug shots, "the subjects of the Special Photographs seem to have been allowed - perhaps invited - to position and compose themselves for the camera as they liked. Their photographic identity thus seems constructed out of a potent alchemy of inborn disposition, personal history, learned habits and idiosyncrasies, chosen personal style (haircut, clothing, accessories) and physical characteristics."
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| Published in: |
Peter Doyle with Caleb Williams City of shadows: Sydney police photographs 1912-1948 Historic Houses Trust, 2005, pp.218, 238.
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| Exhibited in: |
City of Shadows at the Justice & Police Museum, Sydney, November 2005-January 2007.
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| Source: |
Justice & Police Museum ; 047
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| Rights: |
Justice & Police Museum
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Record no:
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31206
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