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Mug shot of Leslie Louis Bernstein, 29 November 1929, Central cells.
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Title:
Mug shot of Leslie Louis Bernstein, 29 November 1929, Central Police Station, Sydney.
Creator:
New South Wales. Police Dept.
Date:
November 1929
Format:
Glass plate negative:
Inscription:
Emulsion side:
Subject:
Central Police Station (Sydney, N.S.W.)
police detainees and suspects
men's clothing and accessories
criminals
Description:
Special Photograph no. 1889. Bernstein (under the alias "L Berman") was the subject of a warrant issued in early 1929 charged with obtaining a diamond ring value 14 pounds by false pretences from an Oxford Street jeweller. In April 1930 he was further charged, along with Patricia Irving, with 'conspiring ... to cheat and defraud divers members of the public of divers large sums of money', for which he was sentenced to 18 months hard labour.
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."
Published in:
Peter Doyle with Caleb Williams City of shadows: Sydney police photographs 1912-1948 Historic Houses Trust, 2005, pp.201, 237.
Exhibited in:
City of Shadows at the Justice & Police Museum, Sydney, November 2005-January 2007.
Source:
Justice & Police Museum ; 057
Rights:
You may save or print this image for research and study. If you wish to use it for any other purposes, you must contact Museums of History NSW to request permission.
Material Type:
Picture
Record number:
31216
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