Читать книгу Charles Peace, or The Adventures of a Notorious Burglar онлайн

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As a fact it has been and is still used with some success for the purpose, but even at the present day, with the system and its immense ramifications in full working order, the “dangerous classes,” as they are termed, manage to exist in strong force.

Photography lends its aid in the same direction.

Twenty years ago the police established what are known as “routes,” and many an old gaol bird has been recognised by that means.

When a prisoner has been arrested, and it is suspected from his familiarity with the prison rules and for other reasons that he is known to the police, notwithstanding his air of pastoral simplicity, he is photographed, and his “picture” is circulated.

In a few days it is returned with an accumulation of information signally fatal to the prisoner’s assumed innocence, and largely in the public interest.

Instead of a “moon” (a month) in the local gaol he finds himself before a jury as an old offender, and ultimately back again to a convict establishment.

But photography is not always quite reliable, and it is not even imperative upon an untried prisoner to sit for his photograph, and only “chumps” (the inexperienced) consent; and, although after conviction a prisoner is duly “taken” and carefully registered, his personal appearance naturally changes. This change, as in the case of Peace, is sometimes assisted by art.