By Filipa Gaspar via SWNS
Thousands of Victorian images of inmates at a notorious jail have been released – offering a glimpse of life in the late 1800s.
Mugshots of people held in Scotland’s largest prison Barlinnie over 100 years ago have been made available online for the first time.
The National Records of Scotland (NRS) has released a collection of more than 2,000 rare images of 19th-century criminals.
Barlinnie opened in Glasgow in 1882 and had a reputation as a tough prison.
Two thousand rare images have been added to a site along with 180,000 records containing details of people entering the prison between 1882 and 1899.
There are 180,000 registered entries in total – with some people jailed more than once.
The photographs show imprisoned people on the day of their release – and only some of them were captured on camera.
Most served sentences of only a few days for petty offenses. The harsh social conditions of the time are evident in the photographs.
John Porter features three times as an inmate all by age 18 – charged with “being a rogue and a vagabond” at a time when homeless people were imprisoned for minor offenses.
Inmates carried out hard labor, breaking rocks from a local quarry and punishments for misbehavior were harsh.
Archivist Jessica Evershed of National Records of Scotland, which runs the Scotland’s People website, said:
“Prison records are an excellent resource for social history research. You may even track down your own relatives in these records, and – in some cases – find a photograph of your ancestor.
“These photographs are a fantastic resource for researchers. The Scotland’s People website now allows you to put faces to names in a way that isn’t possible for other records.
“While Barlinnie prison did hold some people convicted of serious crimes, most prisoners were serving short sentences. The most common entries are for petty offenses such as minor thefts and drunkenness.”
The images and records are available on Scotland’s People, a website run by the National Records of Scotland.
