THOMAS F. BYRNES (1842-1910) Lot n° 122

Rogues Gallery, State of NewYork, c. 1891 Wooden cabinet (75.2x58.2x26 cm), conceived as a large album of wooden pages, the door is ornate with a NewYork vernacular oil painting, an exotic Jack the Ripper leaving a male victim. It opens on 10 hinged pannels, bearing each 25 locations for cdv mugshots. This system cabinet especially designed contains about 100 Bertillon portraits of American criminals, albumen prints on police cards, with written anthropometric data on verso, 1880's-1890's. 34 prints bear the stamp "CW Bigden photographer" and 2 others the stamp "Fay photography". Charles Bigden (1838-1902 was a "vernacular" photographer from Buffalo, NewYork. Thomas F. Byrnes became NYC Detective Bureau chief in 1880, and instituted the "Mulberry Street Morning Parade" of arrested suspects before the assembled detectives. He built up a famous book of photographs of criminals, which he called the "Rogues Gallery". In 1891, three years after publicly criticizing London police officials on the way they handled the Jack the Ripper investigations, Thomas Byrnes was faced with a similar crime in NewYork. Amid mammoth publicity, Byrnes accused an Algerian called Ameer Ben Ali (and nicknamed Frenchy) of the crime (a male victim). He was convicted despite the evidence against him being doubtful, but pardoned eleven years later... A very unique piece of wooden furniture, from the time when the New York Detective Bureau adopted Bertillon standardized identification system. Provenance: Gallery Patterson Smith, Bibliothèque Philippe Zoummeroff