Born into a life of crime in Sydney's city of shadows

FEATURING confidence tricksters, gangsters and prostitutes in the confused moments immediately after their arrest, these striking criminal mugshots from the 1920s inspired Underbelly Razor.

1920s mugshots: Mugshot of William Cahill, July 30, 1923, Central Police Station, Sydney Picture: Sydney Living Museums

Confused and frightened, a pair of lovestruck teenage ruffians from a century ago demand our attention.

They are Joseph Messenger and Valerie Lowe, photographed in 1922 after being charged with breaking and entering in Sydney's eastern suburbs.

First arrested after stealing boots and overcoats from an army warehouse a year earlier, their destinies intertwined as Messenger became one of Sydney's most feared hard men.

The young lovers are just two of the thousands of hauntingly vivid mugshots snapped in the cells of Sydney's Central Police Station in the 1920s.

1920s mugshots: swindler Sydney Skukerman (alias Kukarman, alias Cecil Landan) "obtains goods from warehousemen by falsely representing that he is in business". Picture: Sydney Living Museums

The vast NSW police photo archive features confidence tricksters, gangsters and prostitutes staring down the camera defyingly in the moments immediately after their arrests.

Rescued from a flooded Lidcombe warehouse by the Historic Houses Trust in 1990, the images caused a sensation when they were first exhibited at Sydney's Justice and Police Museum in 2005, inspiring the hit television show Underbelly Razor.

1920s mugshots: Matilda "Tilly" Devine used a razor to slash a man's face in a barber's shop and was sentenced to two years gaol. She was Sydney's best-known brothel madam and her public quarrels with sly-grog queen Kate Leigh provided the inspiration for television series Underbelly Razor. Picture: Sydney Living Museums

Next weekend a new exhibition reveals the hitherto forgotten stories of criminals like Messenger and Lowe - helped by members of the public who identified perpetrators in the earlier show.

"The images capture a tiny micro sliver of someone's life, a tenth of a second," says exhibition curator Peter Doyle. "I'm always amazed by what they reveal."

"The subjects' lives somehow seem to have been distilled into that moment."

The charges against Messenger and Lowe were eventually dropped but they were arrested again later in 1922 for stealing a saddle and bridle from Rosebery Racecourse.

Messenger became increasingly active in Sydney bloody underworld throughout the 1920s, earning a notorious reputation. In 1928 he was shot outside Randwick Races, but despite a huge crowd of witnesses neither he nor anyone else would identify his assailant.

1920s mugshots: Joseph Messenger photographed in the cells at the Central Police Station, Sydney in 1922. Picture: Sydney Living Museums

The NSW police description of his modus operandi reads: "Violently [resists] arrest ... frequents wine saloons, billiard rooms, and racecourses ... consorts with prostitutes."

"Eventually he would stop at nothing in pursuit of his aims," says Doyle. "But here he and Lowe look like Dickensian children. Were they poor things or evil beings in the making?"

1920s mugshots: Valerie Lowe photographed in the cells at the Central Police Station, Sydney in 1922. Picture: Sydney Living Museums

Eventually the pair turned up some years later, hanging out around Foveaux Street in Surry Hills.

"Packed with brothels, grog joints, dope dens, this was the epicentre of the city of shadows," says Doyle. "Lowe was hanging around there, probably working, talking to another man."

"Messenger pulled a knife on his rival and dragged her away. She had him arrested, but by the time they got to court she refused to press charges and simply smiled at him in the dock."

1920s mugshots: William Stanley Moore, "Opium dealer./ Operates with large quantities of faked opium and cocaine./ A wharf labourer; associates with water front thieves and drug traders." Picture: Sydney Living Museums

The pictures are one of a series of around 2500 mugshots taken by New South Wales Police Department photographers between 1910 and 1930.

Forgotten for half a century, the NSW Police forensic archive contains 130,000 highly detailed glass plate negatives featuring crime scenes and forensic evidence as well as mugshots.

1920s mugshots: Mugshot of William Cahill, July 30, 1923, Central Police Station, Sydney Picture: Sydney Living Museums

The most extensive such collection in the southern hemisphere has no rival in Australia.

Similar archives around the nation ended up in landfill before their value could be recognised.

When Melbourne's Russell Street police station was redeveloped in the 1980s, construction crews filled dumpsters with unwanted negatives.

The City of Shadows exhibition opens at the Justice & Police Museum on June 29, 2013

###