Criminal Britain

by Mark Rowe

Author: Mirrorpix

ISBN No: 9780750990745

Review date: 28/03/2024

No of pages: 144

Publisher: History Press for Mirrorpix

Publisher URL:
https://www.thehistorypress.co.uk/publication/criminal-britain/9780750990745/

Year of publication: 26/07/2019

Brief:

price

£12.99 (paperback)

Sub-titled ‘A photographic history of the country’s most notorious crimes’, apart from a brief introduction by the true crime historian Simon Farquhar, Criminal Britain gives us black and white photos; of crime scenes (of Whitechapel in London’s East End, scenes of the Jack the Ripper murders, before the old East End was pulled down as slums), and the aftermath, of the criminal justice system; police searches on the Moors; the Moors murderer Ian Brady, looking somehow shockingly young, in the back of a police car; and the three Kray brothers in suits; and then the twins peeping out of the back of a police van after their sentencing at the Old Bailey.

Naturally different readers will turn to this book and come away with different impressions. Perhaps most haunting will be the urban landscape scenes, deserted and yet pregnant with the wrong that took place there; outside the London home of Lord Lucan; inside the Cromwell Street basement in Gloucester, home of Fred and Rosemary West; the pub near London Bridge, the Bunch of Grapes, as it was abandoned in the Saturday night terror attack of June 2017. While 2017 is the most up to date for crimes – also including the Manchester Arena terror attack, and the 2015 Hatton Garden safe deposit bank robbery – black and white photography seems appropriate throughout; it gives something that colour photography, however proficient, cannot; a sense of melancholy.

The black and white photos also hint at the past, and this book reaches back a century or more to the very infancy of press photography, such as the Crippen murders. This reminds us how true crime, in words and pictures, was a staple of the popular press. This is reinforced by crowd pictures, whether outside Wandsworth Prison in 1953 (awaiting the judicial murder of Ruth Ellis) or outside a court, or (to quote from the captions) a ‘lynch mob’ outside Dewsbury police station where the suspected and later convicted ‘Yorkshire Ripper’, Peter Sutcliffe, is being questioned. One young man of the crowd – and it includes women and children – holds up a noose, for the camera. Behind him, a lad grins. As that implies, the press photo is not only a picture that goes with a report, but is a mirror to society and the prurient fascination in crime of so many. They stand packed outside houses of murder victims as police go about their business.

The book works also as a historical document, of how policing used to be – the old ‘zebra cars’, the Scotland Yard detectives – including women, after the ‘Great Train Robbery’ court case – and their changing fashions. Police play a tape, supposedly of the Yorkshire Ripper, to the Top Rank bingo club in Bradford in 1979. Two detectives in what can only be garish 1970s clobber walk the damp alley where one of the Ripper’s victims was killed; as that implies, the press is not only doing straight reporting but putting its own reality together, for the sake of giving drama, motion and emotion, adding ‘colour’, to a newspaper page. Crime, and most of all the worst of crimes, sell newspapers, which is as true of the ‘gangland’ crimes, the seemingly random gun massacres as at Dunblane (we see a youthful John Major and even more youthful leader of the Labour opposition, Tony Blair, on their way to laying tributes), and photos of criminals so infamous they are known by their surnames, decades or even generations later: such as (Dr Harold) Shipman, and some that are not, such as John Haigh, the ‘acid bath murderer’, behind the wheel of a car.

Some photos more than others – notably police searching Saddleworth Moor for the bodies of Ian Brady and Myra Hindley’s victims – place us in the role of voyeurs, whether at a distance or closer up, such as outside the Grand Hotel at Brighton after the IRA bomb; or uncomfortably close, as plain-clothes police dig in back gardens, sleeves rolled to the elbows, or search for clues to the ‘acid bath’ murders. What’s left unsaid is whether or how much the photographer has intruded on anyone’s privacy, or whether he is standing where he should be. Also unsaid, and linked to that, is the proficiency of the photographers, for the Daily Mirror, once the mass-market daily.

Anyone can view Mirrorpix, which has worked through the History Press on this collection. Mirrorpix still offers a service (at a price). Want to make something of the 50th anniversary of the Kray twins being jailed for murder? Take your pick of photos.

As that implies, everything is for sale; and has a price. What you don’t get from any photo is an insight into what made the criminals tick, partly because they are long gone (the IRA after the Birmingham pub bombings for example) or because photos cannot penetrate into people. The best we get is the criminal being led away in handcuffs, impassively (Dennis Nilsen) or eyes down (Peter Sutcliffe) or with his head in his hands (John Christie). More shocking than any picture of actual criminals is the tie as used by Dennis Nilsen to strangle his victims, held up by an anonymous hand, the tie and string throwing a macabre shadow on the wall.

See also a similar collection of Mirrorpix, on protest.

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