Oct 22, 2009 - Sale 2191

Sale 2191 - Lot 31

Price Realized: $ 12,000
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 3,000 - $ 4,500
(CALIFORNIA CRIME)
Very rare and early California mug shot album with more than 230 pictures of pickpockets, safe crackers, burglars, murderers, forgers, stage robbers, runaway boys, con men, sodomites, and all-around crooks, including a "snide detective," many of whom had escaped their local prisons; a few of the men are from Marysville. Albumen prints, each approximately 3 1/2x2 inches (8.8x5 cm.), many with a signature in the negative or on print recto. Each page contains handwritten information regarding the nature of the person's crime as well as their alias, physical appearance, and a warning. Large 4to, morocco. 1885-1892

Additional Details

The album includes a photograph of Black Bart, the notorious stagecoach robber, and Martin Foy (page 133), who was captured in Oakland, California and returned to Saratoga, New York, where he was elecrocuted for the murder of his mistress. Foy was one of the first criminals killed in "the chair," a brutal style of execution that originated in the U.S.


with--Album containing 170 mug shots of California criminals who are depicted frontally and in profile, many of women, African-Americans and immigrants. Silver prints, 3 1/4x4 1/4 inches, mounted several to a page, each with a typewritten, mimeographed caption on the facing page. Tall folio, binding defective; contents very good. 1913-1919.