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                  Where should I look for photographs of prisoners?

                  This FAQ refers to titles of acts which includes terminology which is now obsolete.

                  Criminal registers or collections of photographs of prisoners survive in police records in Scottish archives and among the records of prisons in the National Records of Scotland. They include:

                  • Albums of criminal register entries compiled by a police force. In most cases, where there is a photograph, it is part of a much larger entry, running to several pages.
                  • Albums of photographs. With the minimum amount of information about the criminal, compiled by a police force, possibly using the photographs supplied by prison authorities as part of the criminal register entries, or, more likely, from photographs taken by the police force itself of each prisoner at the time of arrest.
                  • Printed notifications under the Licensing (Scotland) Act 1903. Details of a person convicted of three or more offences mentioned in the first schedule of the Inebriates Act 1898 were circulated to licensed premises and secretaries of clubs and police forces in counties, etc.

                  Examples of the above are held by several archives. Perth & Kinross Council Archive holds photographic and conviction records for Perthshire, Perthshire & Kinross-shire and Perth & Kinross constabularies for the periods 1875-1906 and 1915-55. Glasgow City Archives hold four registers among the records of Strathclyde Police: two for Glasgow, covering 1910-33 (SR22/63/11-12) do not contain photographs. Two for Dunbartonshire, covering 1903-14 (SR22/77/8-9) do contain photographs. The National Records of Scotland hold several albums, including one for Greenock prison, 1872-88. (HH12/56/7). Aberdeen City Archives hold two criminal registers compiled by Aberdeen City Police: the first covers prisoners liberated from Perth Prison, 1882-84, and the second is a ‘register of returned convicts’, 1869-1938, containing notes on the whereabouts of released convicts, and including photographs of prisoners between 1869 and 1897. Among the records of Dunbarton County Constabulary (held by Glasgow City Archives) are three ‘notifications of inebriates’ under the Licensing (Scotland) Act 1903 supplied to the Colquhoun Arms Hotel, Rhu (SR22/77/23).