Special uses

Police used Specials photographs in different ways.

They could show the prints to witnesses in an attempt to identify a perpetrator. Beat cops and detectives used the prints to familiarise themselves with the faces of people they might encounter in their work. From time to time, police also provided the photographs to press: direct reproductions of the images and sketches based on them appear in newspapers during the 1920s.

A R C Fulton, 9 August 1921.

See also: Sketch based on the Special photograph of Albert Raymond Clarence Fulton, Truth, 21 August 1921 [Trove website].

Published on 
Barbara Turner Taylor, Special photograph number 570, 10 October 1921, probably Central Police Station, Sydney
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