Oct 17, 2013 - Sale 2325

Sale 2325 - Lot 61A

Price Realized: $ 4,000
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 4,000 - $ 6,000
(CRIME)
Remarkable Sacramento mugshot album related to the Inernational Workers of the World, including pictures of Wobblie members and Bolshevik allies. With a total of 141 portraits, a group of which are mugshots (and two portraits) distributed for identification and note country or state of origin, including several from Russia. Notably includes Jennie Newman, wife of Edward Newman, an I.W.W. organizer and Bolshevik, as well as Frederick Esmond; also with a cut up copy of a wanted poster and copies of mugshots with the headline "Arrest for Criminal Syndicalism." Silver prints, most approximately 2 3/4x4 inches (7x10.2 cm.), usually with a typed caption label below, including a combination of name, age, a description of appearance, arrest date, crime, and/or place of origin; also occasionally with additional notations, in ink. 4to, marbled paper with an I.W.W. label on the front cover; partially disbound; internally scattered soiling, also with laid in and bound in lists of names. 1918-1919

Additional Details

From the Collection of Mark Michaelson.

About 35 of these images appear to have been included after being broadly distributed for identifying purposes (wanted individuals), and list additional characteristics and place of origin. There album begins with mugshots of men (with three or so women) arrested between 1918 and 1919, apparently in Sacramento. About 20 list the I.W.W. affiliation as a part of their label, but the arrest dates and arresting officers are the same in many cases, and appear to have been collected specifically as an I.W.W. log. Then, there is a small section devoted to what appear to be distributed mugshots. A large portion of the pages of this album are empty, but the rear pages show about 10 pictures, most of which are mugshots, but a couple of which are snapshot portraits of wanted individuals along with descriptions and identifying information, in ink.