Photos on Wanted Posters

[Dutch Limbach]

Have you ever heard that the technology didn’t exist in the 1800s to put photos on things like Wanted Posters, so the concept of photos on Wanted Posters was strictly Hollywood.

Well, today while perusing a book entitled, “America: An Illustrated Early History, 1776-1900,” I saw a picture in the book of a Wanted Poster issued by the War Department on April 20, 1865, with not one but 3 photos on it.

[Deadeye Don]

Considering the crime comitted by those individuals perhaps the government pulled out all the stops and invented the technology on the spot.  An acutal picture on a wanted poster is so much better than a line drawing.

[Grizzle Bear]

Look at it again.  What they did was to take actual photographs and paste them on the printed poster.

The half-tone process that allows printing of pictures was not invented until after 1900.

(Neat poster, though.  Would be great to try and print one out.)

Grizzle Bear

[Advertising]

[Dutch Limbach]

Yeah, Grizzle Bear, I had noticed that. That is why my original post says, "...put photos on...", instead of "...photos printed on...". You can see it on all three photos if you look closely, but it shows up really well on the bottom left corner of the photo on the right (Harold). The corner of the picture has curled enough so you can see shadow underneath it.

It does look like there was a lot of work that went into this poster. I wonder how many of them were produced?

[Books OToole]

While not a wanted poster David Cook, superintendent of the Rocky Mountain Detective Assoc., used photo arrays of suspects and had witnesses pick out the individual in the 1880s.

Books

[Dutch Limbach]

Didn't the Pinkerton's pass out cards with suspect's photos on them similar to what we would call trading cards?

[Steel Horse Bailey]

Didn't the Pinkerton's pass out cards with suspect's photos on them similar to what we would call trading cards?

Wow!  I wonder what one of THOSE cards - 'specially of some well-known suspect - would be worth on the antique market?!

[Grizzle Bear]

Many Pinkerton's had their own "mug shot" books with photos of miscreants.

That would be a neat collectors item!

I keep telling Will Ketchum he needs to make one up with pictures of the rest of us in it.

GB

[Delmonico]

I keep telling Will Ketchum he needs to make one up with pictures of the rest of us in it.

GB

Now I like that idea.

[Dutch Limbach]

Many Pinkerton's had their own "mug shot" books with photos of miscreants.

That would be a neat collectors item!

I keep telling Will Ketchum he needs to make one up with pictures of the rest of us in it.

GB

I saw a thing that said that not all of the "miscreants" were cooperative when it came to having their picture taken. It seems some of those photos also show several Pinkerton employee hands holding the suspect in place with his head braced facing the camera.

"Hear the poor orphans tell their sad story
Father was killed by the Pinkerton men."
http://sniff.numachi.com/pages/tiPINKMEN;ttPINKMEN.html

[Books OToole]

The photos of Butch Cassidy and Co. that the Pinkertons used were obtained from the photographer.  He recognized who they were and after they had gone on their way, he sold copies to the Pinks.  (A very enterprizing fellow.)

Books