In 1839 Parliament passed the County Police Act, which allowed counties to establish their own police forces. Northumberland first had a police force, or constabulary, in 1857.

Portraits like this were taken in police stations across the country so that policemen could identify criminals. In a time before personal identification documents, it was easy for people to adopt another name, or alias. Mary Robson also called herself Lily Hogg. John Nuttall and Mary Robson were both noted as being guilty of shop-breaking – breaking into shops and stealing from them – in this album of photographs.

During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries some scientists suggested that a person’s face could be used to interpret their character. This “science” was called physiognomy and although it was widely discredited in the nineteenth century, many of its ideas remained popular into the early twentieth century (see link to “A Practical Character Reader”.) The registers of mental hospitals in the nineteenth century often contain photographs of the inmates.

A Newcastle Evening Chronicle article dated 8 January 1907 sheds a little more light on Mary’s life. According to the newspaper, Mary often posed as Lily Hogg and used this alias to obtain shoes, food and lodging “under false pretenses”. She lied to Dorothy Bloomfield, aged 83, of North Shields, so that she would have food and somewhere to stay. May/Lily told Dorothy that she would pay her rent from the wages that she earned at a laundry. When the police investigated they found that Mary/Lily had never worked there. She used a similar trick to get two pairs of shoes from Esther Black of Chirton. She said that she would pay for the “slippers”, which were worth 5s 11d (about £20 in 2020), from her pay as a barmaid at Victoria Hotel in North Shields.

The article states that Mary/Lily was already serving six months in Newcastle Gaol for three other crimes (house-breaking and two counts of larceny). Another four months was added to the sentence that she was already serving.

The Newcastle Daily Chronicle of 29 June 1907 included a report on the theft of 96lbs (43.5kg) of
scrap metal worth £5 (about £400 in 2020) In Wallsend. John Nuttall had already been convicted of stealing the scrap and was standing as a witness at the trial of the two older men who bought the copper and brass. The newspaper article states that William Miller was a “hawker” (someone who bought and sold things) and William Monsey was a marine-store dealer (someone who bought and sold things to do with ships).

“John Nuttall, one of the lads convicted of stealing the scrap, stated that he met Miller, and told him about the scrap, and asked him to buy it. Witness [John] wanted 25s for it, and Miller said he would give him a sovereign. Miller then went off to Monsey to borrow a sovereign, and both came back with a cart. Monsey asked witness where he had got the scrap, and witness said ‘It is all right’. Miller asked no questions. He received £1 from Miller for the metal.”

Photography was still a fairly recent technology. Until the beginning of the twentieth century equipment was bulky and expensive. It could only really be afforded by the wealthy or by professional photographers (like the photographer who took this picture).