Description:Reproduction of Joseph Pagett, aged 14, a young offender from the admission register of Norton Reformatory.
Identification photographs such as this were made for the authorities to be able to identify and catch escaped offenders. Reformatories were essentially prisons for convicted delinquents. By the second half of the 19th century photography had borrowed from the ‘science’ of physiognomy the convention of the full-face photograph as a means of gathering ‘measurable’ information about a person. Much 19th century interest in penal administration was based on ideas about the criminal classes being ‘genetically’ different from the rest of society.