Captured: Portraits of Crime 1870-1930 - Flipbook - Page 17
INTRODUCTION
The age, gender, cultural background, knowledge and personal
values of different researchers all contributed to how a
prisoner’s description was assessed as being ‘compelling’ or
not. This collaborative approach provides a plural, dynamic
way of interpreting historical and cultural material, and it
marks a deliberate shift from the more traditional one-voice/
one-expert curatorial model that prevails in many cultural
institutions. The sub-set of 9,000 records was further
shortlisted to approximately 1,500 prisoner cases and these
were then explored through online source research. Broad brush
stroke stories were gathered for each case, and through this
process, it became apparent which cases would be pursued more
extensively for the project.
As cases were researched and stories of prisoners fleshed
out, the concept of the ‘birth’ of the record remained a
central pillar. After all, a prisoner’s record only existed
because he or she had been convicted (or in some cases,
accused) of a criminal offence and given a penal sentence. The
stories thus focus on the series of events and circumstances
that led to the creation of the record, not on the experience
of incarceration, nor institutional histories of the judiciary
or criminal justice system. In some cases, however, the thread
of a prisoner’s story extends beyond the gaol walls and into
their lives post-sentence. These have only been included where
there is certainty, such as in the case of the execution of a
prisoner or their ‘reappearance’ in official records.
The State Archives Collection, newspapers, publications,
census data, genealogical records and other sources were
utilised to uncover the stories behind the cases presented in
Captured: Portraits of Crime. The featured cases lean towards
offenders who were convicted of serious, rather than petty
crimes, despite statistics indicating that the latter was by
far the most proliferate type of criminal activity during the
period. This reflects a situation that, in general, sees
records from Supreme or Criminal Courts being retained and
surviving, rather than those from lower Police Courts, which
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