Rogues, Rascals, and Nicknames: The Curious Case of Newcastle’s Forgotten Mugshot Book
- Cassy Morgan
- Oct 5, 2024
- 6 min read
Updated: Sep 7
It began in the most ordinary way: a forgotten book spotted in the corner of a Newcastle junk shop. Dusty, worn, and easily overlooked, it might have been thrown away without a second thought. But this was no ordinary volume. Inside were pages filled with faces — the mugshots of Newcastle’s thieves, tricksters, and troublemakers from another age. Each photograph was more than just an identification record; it was a fragment of human history.
Thanks to the foresight of Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums, this “rogues’ gallery” has been preserved, giving us a rare and candid glimpse into the city’s past. Today, it tells us as much about Newcastle’s social history as it does about its petty criminals.
The Function of a Mugshot Book
Before digital databases, before police radios, even before fingerprinting was widespread, detectives needed some way to track offenders. Enter the mugshot book. Police forces across Britain in the late 19th and early 20th centuries kept albums of suspects and convicted criminals. If someone was robbed, officers would leaf through the pages with the victim, hoping they recognised a face or a description.
It was a practical tool, but also a psychological one. Officers learned to look for patterns — repeat offenders, the same “modus operandi” cropping up in different cases. A cut purse here, a stolen bicycle there, a pub fight that ended badly. For the police, mugshots became a kind of visual shorthand for human behaviour.
As one former detective later recalled of the practice: “We knew half their faces before they even walked through the door. The book was our memory.”
A City of Contrasts
To understand the mugshots, you need to understand Newcastle itself at the time. The late 1800s and early 1900s were decades of immense change for the city. Shipbuilding and coal made it an industrial powerhouse, but the wealth was unevenly spread. Working-class districts often suffered poor housing, overcrowding, and poverty.
Crime was a predictable companion to such conditions. Petty thefts, burglaries, drunken disturbances, and the occasional violent outburst made up much of the police workload. For many, stealing was about survival. For others, it was opportunistic — a way to pocket quick money in a rough-and-tumble city.
But the mugshot book shows another side of Newcastle: the humour, resilience, and sheer humanity of its people.
Nicknames and Notoriety
One of the most striking things about the book is its nicknames. You can almost imagine the laughter — or groans — in the police station when they were recorded.
There’s “Fatty Potter,” whose very name suggests he was well-known enough that no formal description was needed. There’s John Gallagher, whose entry originally described his “eyes” before the “s” was scratched out, for reasons obvious to anyone who looked at him. The correction was almost certainly made by a weary clerk who decided precision mattered.
Nicknames often stuck to repeat offenders. They were part description, part insult, part shorthand — and sometimes affectionate, in a rough sort of way. You can sense the familiarity between police and their regular customers.
A Gallery of Faces
Flipping through the mugshot book feels a little like walking down a Newcastle street in 1900.
Here is a young man with hair slicked down, attempting dignity in front of the lens, though his crime was probably nothing grander than pinching from a shop till. Over there is a woman in her best dress, defiant eyes betraying no shame for whatever disturbance landed her in custody. Another page shows a middle-aged labourer whose weary face tells you his greatest crime might have been drinking too heavily after a week’s work.
Each photograph freezes an instant, but together they build a mosaic.
The Petty Thieves – Men and women caught stealing handkerchiefs, watches, or a few shillings from a pocket. The bread-and-butter of police work.
The Public Disturbers – Drunken singers, brawlers, and disorderly locals who turned Saturday nights into paperwork.
The Opportunists – The ones who saw a bicycle leaning against a wall and couldn’t resist.
The Repeat Offenders – Familiar faces who show up across multiple years, often with new scars or lines etched on their features.
Crime, Punishment, and Policing
The mugshot book also reveals how justice worked at the time. For many petty offenders, punishments were short prison terms, fines, or hard labour. The system was harsh, but it reflected the values of the day, crime was to be corrected through discipline.
Newcastle’s police themselves were part of the Victorian and Edwardian push toward a professionalised force. Founded in 1836, Newcastle City Police were tasked with keeping order in a rapidly expanding industrial city. Their job was as much about prevention as punishment.
The mugshot book was one of their most valuable tools. In an age without DNA evidence or forensic labs, memory and recognition were everything. Officers would study the book until they could spot familiar faces at a glance.
Stories Hiding Between the Pages
What makes the mugshot book so compelling isn’t the crimes, but the glimpses of humanity it captures.
Take, for example, a photograph of a young lad barely in his teens, caught stealing coal from a yard. His crime was survival — coal meant heat, and heat meant life in a freezing Newcastle winter. Or the woman arrested for causing a disturbance after a pub landlord refused her another pint; her flushed cheeks in the mugshot speak louder than any report.
Even the editing of John Gallagher’s “eye” shows the bureaucracy of crime records couldn’t fully erase individuality. The people in the book weren’t just offenders. They were fathers, mothers, workers, neighbours.
Rediscovery and Preservation
The mugshot book could easily have been lost to time. Discarded as outdated, or left to decay in a forgotten drawer. Instead, it resurfaced in the most unlikely of places — a junk shop.
Its rediscovery highlights the fragility of history. Without the chance find, and without Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums stepping in, these faces might have vanished forever. Now, digitised and preserved, they form part of the region’s collective memory.
The Archives’ team have stressed that such records are more than curiosities. They’re valuable resources for understanding crime, justice, and everyday life in the North East. They remind us that history isn’t just about kings and battles, but about the ordinary people who lived — and sometimes strayed — in the shadows.
Why We’re Fascinated by Mugshots
Why do mugshots hold such appeal, even today? Part of it is curiosity. We see the faces of people who lived long ago and wonder what their lives were like. Part of it is the drama of crime, the sense of crossing a boundary. And part of it is recognition — we see ourselves reflected in their expressions.
In Newcastle’s mugshot book, you find mischief, despair, defiance, humour. You find people who made mistakes, big or small, and left behind an unguarded portrait because of it.
A Human Archive
When you strip away the official purpose, the mugshot book is really a human archive. It’s a collection of micro-histories, each face paired with a story that was once urgent and now lingers only as a memory.
“Fatty Potter” and John Gallagher probably never expected to be remembered over a century later. But their images, nicknames, and quirks now form part of Newcastle’s heritage.
And perhaps that’s the most remarkable thing about the mugshot book. In capturing crime, it captured humanity.
Conclusion
From a dusty junk shop to a public archive, the forgotten mugshot book of Newcastle has travelled an unlikely path. Once a practical tool for police officers searching for culprits, it now stands as a cultural artefact, reminding us of the lives and stories hidden in the margins of history.
As you look at the faces of “Fatty Potter,” John Gallagher, and countless others, you can’t help but wonder — who were they, really? What paths led them to those pages? And how much of their lives can we read in the set of their jaw, the glance of an eye, or the correction of a single “s”?
In the end, the mugshot book isn’t just about rogues and rascals. It’s about Newcastle itself — a city of industry, struggle, resilience, and unforgettable faces.
Sources
Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums – Collections and blogs about Newcastle police history and mugshot books.
Newcastle Libraries – Local studies collections, including material on policing and social history in Newcastle.
National Archives – Background on 19th and early 20th-century police records and the use of mugshot albums.
Newcastle City History – Information on the history of Newcastle upon Tyne and its police force.
Local History Blog – Rogues’ Gallery: Victorian and Edwardian Criminal Photographs (contextual information on mugshot use in the UK).
“Newcastle upon Tyne: A Modern History” by Robert Colls (Oxford University Press, 2002) – Context on Newcastle’s industrial and social history.
“Policing the Victorian Town: The Development of the Police in Middlesbrough c.1840–1914” by John Field (local policing study with parallels to Newcastle).
British Newspaper Archive – Reports on crime and petty theft in Newcastle, late 19th to early 20th century.
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