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.
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.
Hampton Hirscham, Cornellius Joseph Keevil, William Thomas O’Brien & James O’Brien, 1921Herbert Ellis, 1920William Frederick Long, circa 1920Eugenia Falleni, 1920Gilbert Cochrane Burleigh & Joseph Delaney, 1920“Silent Tom” Richards and T Ross, 1920Augustine ‘Gus’ Gracey & Edgar ‘Eddie’ Dalton, 1920Thomas William Gunn, William Carl Neilson & Albert Alfred Beck, circa 1921Frederick Edward Davies, 1921John Walter Ford and Oswald Clive Nash, 1921Clara Brooks, 1922Ernest Joseph Coffey, 1922Patrick Riley, 1922George ‘the Midnight Raper’ Wallace, 1922Henry Marchant, 1922John Daniel ‘Snowy’ Cutmore, 1922Joseph Messenger, 1922Cameron McIntosh Bean, 1922William Cahill, 1923Alex Westland Robertson, 1923Sydney Skukerman, or Skukarman, 1924Nancy Cowman, 1924Eileen May Burt, 1924Guiseppe Fiori, 1924Sidney ‘Kicker’ Kelly, 1924Antonius Jacobus Francisco Zetto, circa 1924Jean Dawson, 1926William Stanley Moore, 1926Thomas Craig, Raymond Neil, William Thompson and FW Wilson, 1928Fay Watson, 1928Olga Anderson, 1929Frank Murray, 1929Edna May Lindsay, 1929Athol Smith, 1929Alison McCann, 1929
Yesterday Today 
Some of them looked like they were posing for a magazine cover picture.
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